Taxonomy Community

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About the Taxonomy Community

The Taxonomy Community in the Special Libraries Association (SLA) addresses ways to organize and structure information so that content is accessible and useful. It offers a practical context for exploring issues and sharing experiences related to planning, creating and maintaining taxonomies, thesauri, authority files, and other controlled vocabularies and information structures. The Community encompasses traditional and emerging cognitive approaches to organizing information and the full range of settings in which taxonomies are applied.


Vision Statement

The vision of the Taxonomy Community is to be a community of information professionals with an interest in taxonomies, ontologies, thesauri, authority files, and other controlled vocabularies, cultivating shared interest by pooling expertise, providing challenging and relevant year-round learning opportunities, and nurturing a vibrant, responsive and sustainable unit within the Special Libraries Association.


Community Scope Note:

Added by mhlava , edited by llempert on Nov 22, 2014

This is the scope note as agreed to by the group that met at the SLA Annual Conference on June 14, 2009, and used in the petition to form the new "division," now called "community."  

The Taxonomy Division addresses ways to organize and structure information so that content is accessible and useful. It offers a practical context for exploring issues and sharing experiences related to planning creating and maintaining taxonomies, thesauri, authority files, and other controlled vocabularies and information structures. The division encompasses traditional and emerging cognitive approaches to organizing information, and the full range of settings in which taxonomies are applied.

Areas of interest include:

  • Strategies for planning and creating taxonomies for example: identifying and articulating the need for taxonomies; demonstrating and communicating their value; analyzing existing vocabularies to inform the creation of new ones; and selecting technologies and tools to support them.
  • Implementation, maintenance, and use of controlled vocabularies for all types of information and all relevant contexts, such as support for search and navigation.
  • Standards, governance, and management of taxonomies and other controlled vocabularies.
  • New and emerging approaches to organizing information, such as the semantic web, ontologies, folksonomies, and tagging, including relationships between user-generated tags and formal controlled vocabularies



Taxonomy Community Committees:

For more information about each committee and/or volunteering on a committee, please see the Volunteer page.

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