The Accidental Taxonomist Blog

Taxonomies and Ontologies as Semantic Models

In describing what taxonomies and ontologies are and what they can do, we are hearing the word “semantics” more often. “Semantics” means “meaning,” which is nothing new, and taxonomies and ontologies are not new. What is new is that taxonomies and ontologies are now combined more, and we need a…

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Synonym Rings (or Search Thesaurus)

A synonym ring is a simple kind of controlled vocabulary that, as the name suggests, has controlled synonyms for concepts and nothing more. I have long included mention of synonym rings in presentations I’ve given with sections listing and describing controlled vocabulary types, and the synonym ring has appeared on…

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IT and Taxonomies

Taxonomies are related to many fields of work, including knowledge management, information architecture, website design, website marketing at SEO, document management, terminology management, publishing, product management (for information products), content management and strategy, digital asset management, machine learning for classification, natural language processing for auto-tagging, data management, library and information…

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Generative AI at Taxonomy Boot Camp Conference

Generative AI and large language models (LLMs), the technology behind ChatGPT, have been topics of presentations, keynotes, and attendees’ conversations at all the varied conferences I had the fortune to attend this year, including the Taxonomy Boot Camp conference held November 6-7, in Washington, DC. Taxonomy Boot Camp is the…

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