Explaining a taxonomy as a “knowledge organization system,” our very own Margie Hlava explains how they are used to control the use of terms used in a subject field, as an indexing “vocabulary” to facilitate the storing and retrieving of items from a repository.
These Knowledge Organizations Systems (KOS) are usually specific to a knowledge domain or a topical area, a subject area, or an enterprise area. This interesting article was found on KM World titled, “What is a Taxonomy.” At its simplest, the term taxonomy is quite often used interchangeably with thesaurus. You can think of a thesaurus as a taxonomy with extras. Check out the rest of this informative article to learn more about the purest of a taxonomy.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
