1st Edition
Taxonomies Practical Approaches to Developing and Managing Vocabularies for Digital Information
Taxonomies have become more widely-understood and used in the last decade as organisations seek to manage and exploit their information. The rise in understanding of the potential of semantic models has also led to an increase in demand for controlled vocabularies and ontology models. While education in classification and categorisation is becoming more and more mature, it does not necessarily prepare taxonomists for the everyday realities of working with stakeholders, sponsors and systems so that their taxonomies remain useful and relevant.
Taxonomies: Practical Approaches to Developing and Managing Vocabularies for Digital Information is a curated anthology of expert-contributed chapters and case studies that cover the wide range of ways in which taxonomies are used in digital applications including the web, enterprise systems and libraries. The book brings together experts from a range of disciplines to provide realworld insights on how to build and implement a taxonomy in an organisation. The book will cover everything a working taxonomist - whether they’re an inhouse resource or a consultant - needs to consider, including business buy-in; working on a project team; choosing software; governance and maintenance and the wider societal dimensions of choosing categories and terminology.
Foreword
Heather Hedden
Introduction
Helen Lippell
Part 1: Getting Started
1. Business Buy-in and Scoping
Maura Moran
2. Choosing Taxonomy Software
Joyce van Aalten
Part 2: Building Taxonomies
3. Taxonomy Structuring and Scaling: A Standardised Approach
Jonathan Engel
4. The Diversity of Terms: Respecting Culture and Avoiding Bias
Bharat Dayal Sharma
5. Relationships, Hierarchies and Semantics
Bob Kasenchak
6. User Testing and Validation
Tom Alexander
7. Taxonomy and Vocabulary Interoperability
Yonah Levenson
8. Everything that Will Go Wrong in your Taxonomy Project
Ed Vald
Part 3: Applications
9. Enterprise Search
Michele Jenkins
10. Taxonomy and Digital Asset Management
Sara James and Jeremy Bright
11. Powering Structured Content with Taxonomies
Rahel Anne Bailie
12. Information Architecture and E-commerce
Margaret Hanley
Part 4: Business Adoption
13. Implementing Taxonomies and Metadata: Lessons from a Busy Newsroom
Annette Feldman
14. Taxonomy Governance
Cynthia Knowles
15. Taxonomy Maintenance
Helen Challinor
16. The Taxonomist's Role in a Development Team
Jo Kent
Appendix A: Metadata Template to Capture Taxonomy Term Diversity
Bharat Dayal Sharma
Appendix B: Semantics: Some Basic Ontological Principles
Bob Kasenchak
Appendix C: Metadata Model Template
Yonah Levenson
Glossary
Bob Kasenchak and Helen Lippell
Biography
Helen Lippell is an independent information professional and consultant who focuses on helping organisations organise their content and data. She designs information architectures, metadata schemas, ontologies, taxonomies and semantic models to help companies fully exploit the value of their "stuff". Helen has worked for a wide range of clients in different sectors, including the BBC, Metropolitan Police and Pearson and is a regular speaker on taxonomies, ontologies and other knowledge model frameworks.
