It has become more common to design faceted taxonomies than purely hierarchical taxonomies, as I discussed in a previous blog post. Faceted taxonomies integrate better with search, serve for filters and sorting, and provide a good user experience for both novices and subject matter experts. The main drawback is that…
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Adjectives as Terms in Taxonomies
Taxonomies need not follow strict standards, but rather best practices. There are standards for thesauri (ANSI/NISO Z39.19 and ISO 25964), and as taxonomies are similar to thesauri, it’s a good idea to follow thesaurus standards for taxonomy design to the extent applicable. According to thesaurus standards, terms should be nouns…
Taxonomy Terms for Different End-Users
The names of taxonomy terms need to be understood by the taxonomy’s users, and all users need to share the same understanding of what the term means. Typically, a taxonomy as two fundamental sets of users: those who tag content with the taxonomy terms and those who retrieve content with…
How Many Facets Should a Taxonomy Have
I’ve given a rule-of-thumb of 3-8 facets to create in a faceted taxonomy, but it’s not that simple, and there are various factors to consider. Creating facets is an assignment in the online taxonomy course I teach, and a student recently submitted good set of facets with sample terms, but…
When a Taxonomy Should not be Hierarchical
The traditional taxonomy is hierarchical. Thus, after it is determined a taxonomy is needed, often it is thought that it should be designed as a hierarchy. However, in practical terms, a hierarchical taxonomy might not be the kind that is appropriate. A taxonomy provides value (1) as a controlled vocabulary…
Navigation Schemes vs. Taxonomies
The feature of being hierarchical does not make something a taxonomy.
Remote Taxonomy Work
Taxonomy design and development work can be done remotely. In fact, I’ve been doing taxonomy work remotely for the majority of my 24 years in the field, both as an employee and an independent consultant/contractor/freelancer. Now that information, knowledge, and content professionals are currently all working from home, this would…
Taxonomies and the Digital Employee Experience (DEX)
Helping employees find information within their organizations is one the uses of taxonomies. Implemented in an ECM, SharePoint, or other Intranet platform, taxonomy terms can link users to desired content more precisely and comprehensively than by search alone. I wrote intranet taxonomies in a recent blog post “Intranet and ECM…
Classification Systems vs. Taxonomies
The design of modern taxonomies tends to involve more lumping, whereas the design of classification systems has involved more splitting
Intranet and ECM Taxonomies
In designing a taxonomy for tagging and retrieving content in intranets or in an enterprise content management (ECM) system, there is a fundamental question of whether to strive for creating a single comprehensive taxonomy to be applied throughout the enterprise or to have multiple specific taxonomies for different sets of…