Taxonomists and others whose work involves taxonomies have not been a unified professional community. Taxonomy development work is interdisciplinary, spanning different specializations, and different organizational functions, including the following: Information services taxonomies and thesauri, developed by those with a background in library/information science, thesauri, and cataloging, and possibly indexing Product/ecommerce…
The Accidental Taxonomist Blog
Polyhierarchy in Taxonomies
A defining characteristic of taxonomies is that terms/concepts are arranged in broader-narrower hierarchies, which may resemble tree structures. A limited number of top concepts each have narrower concepts, which in turn may have narrower concepts, etc., and the narrowest concepts at the bottom of the hierarchy are sometimes referred to…
Taxonomy Quotes
Taxonomies are very valuable, but not always easy to define, and they are described in various ways. They are also interdisciplinary, as taxonomies are developed by people in different fields for slightly different, yet similar purposes. I have heard various comments about taxonomies over the decades. In the earlier years…
Defining a Taxonomy’s Scope
In planning a taxonomy, I have often said that it is important to define the taxonomy’s scope, specifically the subject area scope of the taxonomy’s terms, but without going into more detail. Recently I was asked by a client how to define a taxonomy’s scope. This is a good question.…
Taxonomist Survey
In keeping with the title of this blog, it’s time to check in again to learn more about who taxonomists are and what they are doing. I conducted a survey of taxonomists (promoted through discussion lists, groups, and social media) in 2009 to gather information for my book, The Accidental…
Named Entities in Taxonomies
I have long felt that there is some uncertainty as to where named entities (names of specific people, places, organizations, products, etc.) fit into taxonomies. Standards suggest one way, and practice tends to follow different way in dealing with these proper nouns. As taxonomy trends evolve so does the position…
Attributes in Taxonomies
When I had done consulting for ecommerce taxonomy clients years ago, and they would refer to the taxonomy facets for products as “attributes,” I felt that might be confusing, because I considered “attributes” something else: a characteristic like metadata of a taxonomy term or a feature of an ontology. I…
Taxonomies for Data
Coming from an editorial content background, I have always valued taxonomies for making content findable, but more recently I have come to appreciate how taxonomies can also play a role in making data accessible and useful. Taxonomies have successfully aided people in finding and retrieving desired content since the 1990s…
Taxonomies and Sitemaps
I was recently asked if a website’s sitemap of company’s website could serve as the start of a taxonomy for an organization. The sitemap, after all, includes all the relevant topics pertaining to an organization’s business offerings, and they are arranged in a hierarchy. I have previously blogged on the…
Taxonomies for Human Resources
I just attended the HR Technology Conference this week, my first time at an industry or functional specialty conference, so it was interesting to learn how taxonomies could be positioned within this specialized sector. I usually speak or write about taxonomies as useful in general knowledge and information management, with the only specialization discussed in ecommerce. Human resources…