What is a taxonomy?

The first point in my list of taxonomy issues relates to the definition of taxonomy. Many people have a limited understanding of what a taxonomy is.  The following will illustrate the many ways a taxonomy can be represented and applied. 

We just ran one of our Taxonomy and Metadata Jumpstart calls - (a free four part series on taxonomy issues - you can write Patrick@earley.com for access to the archive of the call).  The first topic was "What is a taxonomy and why do you need one?".  Here is a summary of the "what is it" section:

What is a taxonomy?

• A taxonomy is a system for classifying and organizing documents and web content
• It helps us improve search and search mechanisms
• It allows us to integrate information sources
• It is a common language for business processes

What are examples of taxonomies?

Taxonomy deliverables can range from the simple to highly complex, here are a couple of examples: (click to enlarge)

 

The first image is a simple "taxonomy" - a directory really.  A true taxonomy has parent child and whole part relationships among its terms.  But many people consider directories to be the same as taxonomies.  For our purposes we'll go with this looser definition. 

The second represents both a site map "navigational taxonomy" and a list of attributes that pull from controlled vocabularies.

The third represents metadata standards that need to be aligned with taxonomies along with mapping of fields between applications (where a branch of a taxonomy can feed multiple systems).

The fourth slide shows the range of technical to non technical incarnations of taxonomy.  The application developers in the house need to use taxonomy values in reference data and data models and people on the editorial side of the house need to know how and when terms are used.

The fifth slide shows that taxonomies can be used to provide the facets for e commerce navigational applications.  Each "facet" pulls from a branch of the taxonomy.

Finally, the last slide conveys that taxonomies have many constituencies and stakeholders and we need to have governance processes and change management procedures in order for the taxonomy to retain its value in the long term.

The point is that a taxonomy has many different representations and can be used for a variety of purposes depending on context, application and audience.

If you'd like to access an audio recording of the conference call where we discuss these in greater detail as well as get the full slide deck, go to our Jumpstart Series section of the Earley & Associates web site.