Thanksgiving in the United States is Thursday, November 26th. When someone says Thanksgiving food, most people think turkey. But not everyone. Cue the Dessert Taxonomy

Pies, cakes and cobblers, oh my. Beyond classification, I could see this as a strategy plan for meal preparation or to-do list. Let’s assign a category to a week and add that to the rotating menu of meals that, at least for us, has grown since the pandemic started, as has the need. Or you could get even more creative and use the alphabet. For example, week one make a dessert that starts with A. This approach is attractive to me, which is ironic as I prefer more control. However, after 9 months of planning 3 meals a day, every day, my decision-making skills are exhausted.

The classification of desserts for holidays or otherwise is a perfect opportunity for information science and food to collaborate. I am always fascinated by unusual and interesting taxonomies, even when they are in video form. However, it is important to remember that, as entertaining and fun as this is, there is value in classification regardless of the topic.

Content managers and information developers will have come across taxonomies at some level, often in a CMS environment. Anyone who has been involved in organizing business content at a more strategic level will know how important it is to be able to think ahead and group content in useful ways from the start. What is often less considered is how vital it is to employ a subject matter expert to help create a taxonomy that considers all the nuances.

True taxonomies can help manage big data by providing a solid standards-based taxonomy to index against. The results are comprehensive and consistent search results. Access Innovations is one of a very small number of companies able to help its clients generate ANSI/ISO/W3C-compliant taxonomies because of consistency.

The effectiveness of a taxonomy is supported by a solid ontology. For example, a pudding in the United States has an entirely different meaning than a pudding in the United Kingdom. A good ontology provides agreed upon definitions for the terms being classified.

Melody K. Smith

Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.