Posts by Melody Smith
Learn More About Taxonomies
Whether you are a Heather Hedden groupie or just a taxonomist looking to enhance your skillset, this workshop might be up your alley. Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science is featuring The Accidental Taxonimist herself in a workshop titled, “Taxonomies and Controlled Vocabularies”.
Read MoreClassifying Men?
I am still surprised at the variety of taxonomies I found and I typically find them in the oddest places. This one came from ECNS in their article, “Male outcast taxonomy.” Though not a true taxonomy, its classification efforts are as unique as the topic.
Read MoreAdding to the Data
The European Training Thesaurus (ETT) is Cedefop’s controlled vocabulary used to index the VET-Bib (the Reference Library of Vocational Education and Training in Europe) bibliographic database.
Read MoreNot the TEXAS You Would Think
Though it is a little short notice, it seemed important to let you know of a workshop at the 2014 Conference on Empirical Methods on Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) in Doha, Qatar, called “TEXAS: Taxonomy Extraction with Applications in Semantics” that may be of interest to those in the field.
Read MoreActive Searching for Taxonomy Resources
“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it you can never get it back.” So muses American businessman Harvey MacKay.
We have no choice in the matter. Time cannot be “saved” …only spent. Our responsibility is to determine how we wish to best allocate it. Otherwise, time will not only be spent but also wasted. How valuable, then, are those skills and tools that help us distribute our time in ways that we consider most useful and productive!
Read MoreGrants Available for Taxonomic Research
The Australian Biological Resources Study (ABRS) at the University of Queensland provides grants to Honours, Masters and PhD students for taxonomic research. Specifically, the ABRS offers three year Research and Postdoctoral Fellowship Grants where the researcher’s primary aim is to undertake taxonomic research on the Australian biota or to develop products that aid in the dissemination of taxonomic information on the Australian biota.
Read MoreData Collections
Researchers at the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Infection and Global Health are building the world’s most comprehensive database describing human and animal pathogens.
Read MoreTaxonomy Classification of Internet Access
An interesting classification scheme draft was posted on October 6 by the Internet Engineering Task Force. You can view it here. The Alternative Network Deployments. Taxonomy and characterization draft-manyfolks-gaia-community-networks-01 deals with available technologies (including alternative ones for use in developing countries) for Internet access.
Read MoreData Everywhere
Data in every form, including digital and print, is growing at an exponential rate. According to the National Science Foundation, 90 percent of the data in existence today was created in the last two years. This interesting information was found on Federal News Radio in their article, “Data retention & records management.” The Presidential Directive on Managing Government Records, and initiatives such as the Open Data Policy, have begun to address this critical situation, but this is only the beginning.
Read MoreReviving the Past
Digitizing documents is a daunting task, especially when those documents are ancient.
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