Posts by Melody Smith

I have another life outside the taxonomy world; one that often reminds me how connected we all really are in this world. I am attending a conference on faith-based communications. See, I told you it was a different life. While doing the “meet and greet” with fellow attendees, one mentioned she used to teach library and information sciences before feeling a call to write and even start her own small publishing company. The others around us queried her about the books, etc. and I waited patiently to ask her about her previous life. You see, when I tell people I write about taxonomy the response is almost always, “Is that about dead animals?”

Is taxonomy dying? The science of describing, naming and classifying living things may be on the verge of extinction. This rather sobering topic was found on the Business Mirror in their article, “Taxonomy, a dying profession.” Fewer students each year are taking taxonomy as a course and the high-paying professions are overshadowing it as a career-choice. What happens when we have no more taxonomist? Before a species can be protected, it must be identified and classified.

Developing a classification system organized into conceptually similar categories can help users gain a better understanding of the taxonomy subject area. For instance, a recently developed taxonomy on communication interventions to improve childhood vaccination is expected to provide these outcomes: understanding the relationships between different types of communication interventions; facilitating conceptual mapping of these interventions; clarifying the key purposes and features of interventions to aid implementation and evaluation; and identifying areas where evidence is strong and where there are gaps.