Life as a Taxonomist Before I started working in controlled vocabularies myself, I didn’t know the field even existed. Unlike many taxonomists, I didn’t start with a Library Science degree…
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KMWorld Conference The annual KMWorld Conference returned as an in-person event this year for the first time since 2019. The conference ran November 7th – 10th and included the co-located…
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What Is an Information Silo? If you are in the field of information management, you have undoubtedly heard the phrase “information silo” or perhaps “data silo”. I grew up in…
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Legacy in Language There are potential or new clients who come to us with a definitive version of their taxonomy, typically in a spreadsheet format like CSV or Excel. The…
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Records Management According to ARMA International, “Records Management is the professional field dedicated to information that rises to the level of importance that requires ongoing maintenance, whether it be for…
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A Single Taxonomy Controlled vocabularies are meant to provide a single source of truth for terminology. Within the enterprise, the goal of a taxonomy program is to have one or…
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Semantic Relationships I wrote a blog, “Building Healthy Relationships (in Ontologies)” last year, and I’m returning to this content to explore the development of semantic relationships in more detail. Specifically,…
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Hierarchy Depth “Taxonomy” has become the de facto term for most types of controlled vocabularies, including flat lists, authority files, simple hierarchies, or thesauri. Whether we choose to be pedantic…
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Concept Names Language is inherently ambiguous. The dream to create universally agreed-upon, standardized conceptual language will be extremely difficult. We can achieve widely-accepted consensus, but that’s the silent agreement we…
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Looking Forward I have blogged before about trends in taxonomies and ontologies, particularly based on observations from KMWorld and Taxonomy Boot Camp (in 2017, 2019, and 2020), Taxonomy Boot Camp…
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