Apidays Singapore 2024 - Modernizing Securities Finance by Madhu Subbu
Principles of Taxonomies
1. Principles of Taxonomy
Theresa Putkey
Information Architect
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Consulting, Inc.
2. What We’ll Cover
• A brief history lesson
• A look at modern day taxonomies
• Taxonomies purpose and uses
• Building a taxonomy
• Taxonomy maintenance
• Transferring your skills
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4. Modern Day Taxonomies
• We have information products that are
extremely content heavy
• Managed with CMS, DAM, digital library
• Taxonomies help us re-use content
• Taxonomies help users find content
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9. Taxonomy Purpose
• Find like items
• Improve search results
• Disambiguate terms
• Differentiate between dissimilar items
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10. Taxonomy Use
• Used by an author to find and reuse
content
• Used by a customer to find and use
content
• Label items with terms
• Search on those terms
• Browse through the terms
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13. Metadata & Taxonomy
• Metadata is data about data, or
information about information. We have a
shoe, then we have information about the
shoe.
• Some of this information can be assigned
by the taxonomy. Company: Hunter
Style: Hunter Original
Colour: Purple
Boot Shaft: Knee High
Width: M
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14. What We’ll Cover
We’ve covered:
• A brief history lesson
• A look at modern day taxonomies
• Taxonomies purpose and uses
Now we’ll get into:
• Building a taxonomy
• Taxonomy maintenance
• Transferring your skills
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15. Basics of Building a Taxonomy
• Do a content audit and assign keywords to
each component.
• Pull out all the keywords into one list, then
consolidate.
• Decide on your controlled vocabulary.
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16. Ways to Categorize
• Controlled vocabulary refers to an
authority list, thesaurus or taxonomy.
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17. Taxonomies
• Hierarchical and faceted
• Outlines relationships between items
• Used in computer systems to retrieve non-
physical objects.
• Images, content components, documents,
videos.
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18. Relationships
• Scope Note
• Broader Terms
• Related Terms
• Narrower Terms
• Use
• Use For
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19. Hierarchical Taxonomy
• Used when hierarchical structure of items
is very important
• Preserves relationships
• But can be more difficult to navigate
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21. Faceted Taxonomy
• Used when attributes are more important
than hierarchy
• Easier to navigate
• But can hinder someone looking for
hierarchical relationships
• Traditionally one facet value from each
facet (but used more casually outside of
libraries)
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22. Faceted Taxonomy
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23. Faceted Taxonomy
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24. Taxonomy Review
You may need to teach others how to read
and use a taxonomy
Need to work with stakeholders to make
sure:
• Taxonomy reflects real-world language
• BT, RT, and NT are accurate
• Nothing is missing
• Nothing needs to be removed
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25. Taxonomy Maintenance
• New content always being created
• Some of it may not have a “spot” and
needs to be accommodated
• Keywords can be promoted to taxonomy
terms
• Weekly, monthly, quarterly reviews
• Email list for suggestions and discussion
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26. You, a Taxonomist
• Aware of content
• Aware of how people use content (authors
and customers)
• Know how to classify information (think
indexing)
• One of a few people interested and good
at information organization
• Volunteer yourself
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Consulting, Inc.
27. What We Covered
We covered:
• A brief history lesson
• A look at modern day taxonomies
• Taxonomies purpose and uses
• Building a taxonomy
• Taxonomy maintenance
• Transferring your skills
Copyright (C) Key Pointe Usability
Consulting, Inc.
28. More Resources
• National Information Standards Organization (2004).
Understanding metadata.
http://www.niso.org/publications/press/Understanding
Metadata.pdf
• Thesaurus Principles
http://willpowerinfo.co.uk/thesprin.htm
• Metadata? Taxonomy? Thesauri? Topic Maps!
http://www.ontopia.net/topicmaps/materials/tm-vs-
thesauri.html
• Getty AAT
http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/aat/
• Hedden, Heather. (2010). Accidental Taxonomist.
• Taylor, Arlene G. (2004). The organization of
information, 2nd ed. Westport, CN: Libraries
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30. Contact Info
• 604 563 6317
• tputkey@keypointe.ca
• www.keypointe.ca
• @tputkey
Copyright (C) Key Pointe Usability
Consulting, Inc.
Notes de l'éditeur
Who has heard the term taxonomy? Who knows what taxonomies are used for? Who here has experience creating a taxonomy? If you create indexes, then I assure you that you can create taxonomies. It’s just a matter of understanding some basics and getting the opportunity to do it. Not only is creating a taxonomy interesting work, but it can also help with information organization within your company and raise your usefulness profile. I’m sure you’ve encountered taxonomies on websites, even if you didn’t recognize them as such. There’s no mystery to them, but people don’t always understand why and how they’re created. That’s what we’ll talk about tonight.My background.
Business men use clay tablets kept track of accounts and contracts – struggle to store them all and be able to find them again. During the Dark Ages (in the west), monks store the books, recopy them, organize them. With the printing press, a huge explosion of information. The world’s first information glut.Linneaus wants to classify all the species in the world and starts his taxonomy. Jefferson has his own extensive library which he classified. Donated to the LOC after that library burned in 1814 during the War of 1812. LOC subject headings started with Jefferson. NA libraries use.Melvil Dewey was the first to give us a “universal” classification scheme – a scheme that could be used by multiple libraries and easily implemented. He implemented his system using women to do the grunt work as he felt women were docile and wouldn’t question his system. They were also cheaper labourers. Ranganathan creates his colon classification based on facets, and gives modern day information professionals a basis for non-traditional classification schemes. Very useful in our modern day information glut.
Start with some examples
I liken taxonomies to drop-down lists. When you have to select from a drop-down list, that’s a predefined list somewhere. It controls your choice and ensures you enter information in a standardized format.
An authority list is a list of the terms that may be used for a particular collection. Libraries maintain authority lists of authors’ names, so that Samuel Clemens, Samuel Longhorn Clemens, and Mark Twain are pulled together as the same person. To be precise:A taxonomy arranges the terms in the controlled vocabulary into a hierarchy without adding scope notes.Thesaurusis an authority list for authorized subject terms that adds features such as identifying the broader,narrower and related relationships between terms on the list, listing unauthorized terms and referring the user to the correct terms, listing scope notes. A lot of the work I do is divided between taxonomies and thesauri, though everyone calls them taxonomies.