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We who blog on TaxoDiary know that it’s not the only blog that has to do with taxonomies and such. There are a few others out in cyberspace, and each has its own character. Let’s take a look at some of them, starting with what we know best.
TaxoDiary
You already must know something about TaxoDiary; you’re reading it right now. Maybe you haven’t read the description, though, which might provide some new insight:
TaxoDiary covers all types of knowledge organization systems (KOS), and related subjects. It is designed to provide the taxonomist, indexing and content professional with news and opinions about metatagging, and the application of KOS to increase findability of information objects within or across large collections of information, structured in databases, or unstructured in content repositories using controlled vocabularies. These activities are not unique to a single country or language, but rather shared and active globally. It is part of our effort to keep abreast with the constantly changing field and to provide us information for research and used in consideration for the creation of new products and services. We will provide a regular stream of information about these topics and hope to share with you an informative and lively forum for discussion worldwide.
TaxoDiary is somewhat unique in that new posts appear each weekday.
The Accidental Taxonomist
The Accidental Taxonomist blog is written by Heather Hedden, perhaps best known for her book The Accidental Taxonomist. In the first post, in 2011, Heather gave a preview that turned out to hold true for the subsequent years:
Where will my new blog post ideas come from?
As a consultant, I am constantly engaging in new taxonomy projects with new experiences, new lessons to be learned, and new insights into the field. My client names should be kept confidential, so writing complete case studies may not be feasible, but the short informal nature of a blog post is quite appropriate to share some thoughts.
I also attend a number of conferences during the course of a year, and there are always new ideas coming out of these events. Some of my blog posts will be based on my own presentation topics, but not a repeat of the slide bullets, though. Instead I will provide some commentary about the presentation topic, such as why it is significant, timely, of interest, or what my concerns are. Other posts will be my observations an ideas gleaned form what others presented.
I may decide to revisit a topic in my book for a blog post. But I could also explore some new direction of topics related to taxonomies, such as content management, information architecture, search, or digital asset management.
The Accidental Taxonomist blog averages about one very substantial post per month.
The Taxonomy Blog
From the name, it’s fairly clear what this blog is about. While no longer active, it is still online (at least for the time being) and has some very useful posts on taxonomy philosophy and methodology. It was formerly maintained by taxonomist Marlene Rockmore, with help from Heather Hedden. To give you an idea of the approach, here’s how Marlene describes herself:
I call myself the “Classy Taxonomist.” I help organizing concepts which leads to clear thinking, better analysis, and results. I use taxonomies to help you figure out how to communicate by sorting meaning into buckets. Once you have buckets, you can then build interfaces and processes more efficiently. Big Bird once said “One of these things is not like the other.” I’ve been doing this since 1986. Clients include Harvard Business School, Digital, 6.2Million Tax Override, Conoco Philips, Boston College, O’Reilly, and Google.
Earley & Associates blog
Earley & Associates is a consulting organization headed by prominent knowledge management expert Seth Earley. Their blog covers a wide range of information management topics, but the posts indexed with “Taxonomy” far outnumber the posts indexed with other topics. The website has a page of research suggestions, one of which is to “check out our blog” if “you want to get a pulse on what is new and hot.”
Taxonomy Watch
This blog had the tagline “A weblog about taxonomies and their application in organizing digital content. Also includes related topics such as controlled vocabulary, thesauri, topic maps, ontologies and semantic technologies.” It was maintained by Gwen Harris, and discontinued in 2012. Gwen wrote in 2012 that the blog would be taken down soon, but as I write this, it’s still there. There’s a lot of good stuff there; take a look.
Barbara Gilles, Taxonomist
Access Innovations, Inc.
