Taxonomy Design & Creation
Taxonomies are becoming increasingly important and common for organizing and retrieving information. Implementations include library systems, museum and archive systems, digital asset management systems, content management systems, document management systems, records management systems, web publishing, and data analysis. Through this CE course, information professionals can go beyond a basic understanding about taxonomies and learn the practical aspects of designing and creating taxonomies and thesauri so that they can take on or manage a taxonomy development project. Standards and best practices are important, but do not cover every situation, and there are numerous occasions when different factors need to be considered in making decisions in designing and creating taxonomies. This CE course provides guidance in making those decisions.
The outline of course topics comprises:
- Definitions and types
- Applications, uses, and benefits
- Creating and wording of terms
- Synonyms, alternative labels, non-preferred terms
- Sources for terms
- Term relationships
- Structural design: hierarchies and facets
- Software tools
- Project process, management
- Taxonomy governance
Level: Fundamental
Speaker: Heather Hedden, Senior Vocabulary Editor, Gale, A Cengage Company, and author of The Accidental Taxonomist
Heather Hedden is a senior vocabulary editor at Gale, a Cengage Company, where she edits the subject thesaurus for Gale research databases and develops discipline taxonomies for the management of content for Cengage online educational resources. She also provides taxonomy consulting through her own business, Hedden Information Management, designing taxonomies for both web and internal content management. Additionally, Heather independently teaches an online course in taxonomy creation (formerly through Simmons School of Library and Information Science Continuing Education Program) and gives several conference presentations and workshops each year. She has been involved in ISO and ISO working groups for indexing and controlled vocabulary standards and is currently the North American representative/editor for the Basel Register of Thesauri, Ontologies & Classifications. Heather is the author of The Accidental Taxonomist, 2nd ed. (Information Today Inc.) and blogs regularly on taxonomy topics.