Editorial Reviews. Review. Clearly details the conceptual and practical notions of controlled vocabularies. provides a crash course for newcomers and offers.
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They are directed by various departments to create classifications and use terms that only a small group of people understand and even they create ambiguous, duplicative, overlapping and frequently incoherent taxonomies. With the increasing proliferation of data and our dependencies on data, we need some practical tools and techniques for business organizations to use when designing taxonomies. For example how to select facets and validate facets. This book does not provide this. Those creating taxonomies lack Data Literacy and as a result we continue to create code lists, reference data and classifications that are random, temporal and biased.
One person found this helpful. This very readable book starts with a nice story of how the author became a taxonomist, and then dives right in to the technical details. Well, not too deep - but certainly deep enough for aspiring taxonomists to get a great overview of the skills and techniques required to build, maintain and apply good taxonomies.
The Accidental Taxonomist contains life lessons and practical advice about taxonomies, ontologies, vocabularies, entities, relationships and all manner of other semantic tools. The thing about taxonomies is that they really are simple for humans to understand. We all think in terms of hierarchies of knowledge whether we are conscious of it or not.
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The human cerebral cortex is even organized physically as a hierarchy of layers. Along with pattern matching and the four F's - feeding, fighting, fleeing and reproduction - implicit taxonomies inform how we perceive just about every object and concept around us. This book makes these concepts accessible as either a primer or a refresher for seasoned readers. As CEO of a company that makes taxonomy software not featured in this edition of the book, lest you smell some astroturf , I can tell you that it really represents much of our philosophy of the best way to use taxonomies in the enterprise.
We chose SharePoint, partly because we wanted our users to have greater control of their content and partly because we needed better built-in Search.
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Well, with Search comes taxonomy, and this was new to me. This book helped me understand the principals, and THIS in turn helped me to select an excellent consultant to help us with this effort and the book continues to be a great reference. If you have been presented with the task of "making Search work better", you could not ask for a better book. If you have to create a taxonomy a controlled, hierarchival vocabulary for your business, you MUST read this book.
It is thorough but extremely pragmatic, and that is its main value. It doesn't require the reader to have a master's degree in library science, or to read the entire ANSI standard Z I currently teach an online version of an information organization and representation course knowledge and information management for Indiana University's School of Library and Information Science and am using this book as an assigned text this semester Summer This is an excellent resource for library science students and really helps provide a practical example in the classroom of how Librarians' skills can be used beyond the classroom.
However, as a practicing information architect, I also keep a copy close at hand for professional use as well. There is not a plethora of resources such as this in the field and this text helps provide both a good overview as well as offering additional resources for practitioners and students alike. In a field where corporations are still struggling to manage both their information and knowledge, this book is not only a wonderful addition, but a necessity for IA's in the field.
One person found this helpful 2 people found this helpful. Helps me as a reference tool at work. This book is a great reference for anyone who is starting a taxonomy, modifying one, or maintaining one. The history portion can be skimmed through if you're just looking for practical how-tos and best practices I'm an information architect, and keep this by my computer constantly.
I would recommend it to beginners and intermediate professionals trying to get their hands around the, sometimes very large task, of organizing your company's digital assets to facilitate searching and delivering the digital assets.
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Blog post taxonomies , Linked data , Linked open vocabularies , Tags , Taxonomy terms. A common feature of taxonomies is the hierarchical relationship between terms. Terms are linked to each other in a relationship that indicates that one is the broader term BT of the other, and in the other direction, one is the narrower term NT of the other. Thesauri for Information Retrieval. The standards say that in a correct hierarchical relationship the term that is narrower to the broader term may be a specific type of the generic broader term, a named instance of the generic broader term, or an integral part of the whole broader term.
These standards, however, are for thesauri, not taxonomies. In taxonomies which lack related-term relationships, the conditions under which the hierarchical relationship is permitted need not be followed quite as strictly.
Nevertheless, the thesaurus standards for creating the hierarchical relationship should be the starting point and the default for hierarchical relationships in taxonomies. Hierarchical taxonomies may be created from the top down, the bottom up, or a combination of both approaches. The top-down approach involves creating broadest categories first, then adding narrower terms and then adding narrower terms to narrower terms. This approach makes it easier to create good hierarchical relationships. Rather, analysis of content yields specific terms that are needed, so some degree of bottom-up taxonomy creation takes place.
In the bottom-up approach there may be the challenge of determining and creating the appropriate broader term. An example of Categories that are not exactly broader terms is for the term Stress management: Stress, Management by type, Psychotherapy, and Psychiatric treatments. Stress management is not exclusively done as is a part of Psychotherapy or Psychiatric treatments, so those are not suitable broader terms.
Technically, Stress management is not a kind of Stress or a part of Stress, so Stress should not be its broader term. If this were in a thesaurus, they would definitely be related terms. If your controlled vocabulary is not a thesaurus, and the related-term relationship is not supported, then you may ignore the thesaurus rule in this case, and make Stress the broader term of Stress Management. This relationship is likely to be expected and accepted by users. Even creating a taxonomy from the top down taxonomists may encounter challenges or confusions with the hierarchical relationships.
One challenging case is the concept of membership. Things and their members could be industries and their companies or international organizations and their member countries.
The Accidental Taxonomist
Companies can change their industries, and countries can change their international organization affiliation. Another potentially confusing case involves occupations and job titles.
The subordinate nature of narrower terms should not be confused with the subordinate role of one job title to another. Thus, while a marketing specialist reports to a marketing manager, Marketing managers is not a broader term of Marketing specialists. Furthermore, while a marketing manager reports to a marketing director, we might make the hierarchical relationship in the other direction, with Marketing Directors as a narrower term to Marketing Managers, because directors are a kind of manager. Perhaps the most confusing case involves specificity which is not taxonomical specificity.
For example, the Syllabi plural of syllabus , as instructional outlines, in a certain sense are more specific than Curricula plural of curriculum , which are also kind instructional outlines. Syllabi are for individual courses, and curricula are for a series of courses, such as an entire program of study or degree.
Thus, it might seem logical that Syllabi would have the broader term of Curricula. But a syllabus is neither a specific type of curriculum, nor is it part of a curriculum. It is something different. So, it would be better not to have Curricula as a broader term of Syllabi, even in a taxonomy that is lacking related-term relationships. Posted by Heather Hedden at Hierarchical taxonomy , Linked data , Taxonomy creation , Taxonomy standards.
Monday, July 30, Taxonomy Hierarchy Levels. A taxonomy comprises a hierarchy of concepts terms , and those hierarchies can be considered to be in different levels.
In actuality, levels are somewhat artificial, and its important not to think of levels too strictly. In some taxonomies the levels are even named for example: Domain, Category, Subcategory, Topic , but I would caution against such a practice. Besides the legacy of the Linnaean taxonomy, we may think of designated levels of a taxonomy, because the most common tool of developing taxonomies is MS Excel. In Excel, each column is used to designate a deeper hierarchical level, broader to more specific, from left to right.
leondumoulin.nl: The Accidental Taxonomist (): Heather Hedden: Books
People may feel compelled to designate column headers a typical thing to do in spreadsheets , whether as names or merely as Level 1, Level 2, etc. Excel is not intended to be taxonomy management software, and all dedicated taxonomy management software tools do not support the default naming or numbering of hierarchical levels, since there is no need for it in a taxonomy.
A distinction needs to be made between hierarchical relationships and hierarchies.