Taxonomies

As organisations across the globe commit to digital transformation, well-managed taxonomies are more critical than ever in supporting a wide range of business applications. Amidst growing industry uptake of controlled vocabularies, ontologies and knowledge graphs, taxonomists are at the forefront of helping organisations manage content and data of unprecedented breadth, depth and variety.

Taxonomies: Practical Approaches to Developing and Managing Vocabularies for Digital Information is a comprehensive guide to building, implementing and using taxonomies. Featuring contributions and case examples from some of the world's leading experts, the book supports professional development through practical advice and real-world case studies. Readers will learn best practices for the everyday realities of working with stakeholders, sponsors and systems to ensure that taxonomies remain useful and relevant. Addressing all the key stages of the process of building and implementing a taxonomy, including scoping, user testing and validation, and the creation of governance processes, the book is invaluable for the optimisation of systems for users and stakeholders alike.

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