A few weeks ago, we proudly announced Marjorie (Margie) M. K. Hlava’s impending Miles Conraad Memorial Lecture and award from the National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS). Margie delivered her lecture, “Tales from the Field: Our Changing World” on February 24, 2014, during the 2014 NFAIS Annual Conference to a standing-room-only auditorium.
It is difficult to find a list of taxonomy management software that is both comprehensive and up to date, yet not overwhelmed with related products and services. For a long time the most comprehensive directory of taxonomy software was that of the British consultant Leonard Will, who has since retired. Considering the valuable and respected content, we at Access Innovations recognize our good fortune and huge responsibility of now hosting and maintaining the Willpower Thesaurus software directory.
Learn from professionals with decades of experience all while enjoying the Canadian hospitality in beautiful Vancouver. The "Introduction to Taxonomies" all day workshop features our own Marjorie Hlava and Bob Kasenchak, and is part of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Annual Conference in Vancouver, June 6-10, 2014. The SLA Annual Conference is an excellent international venue for learning new ideas and identifying information trends.
Some vendors of text analytics software claim that their software can identify the occurrences of text reflecting specific taxonomy terms (with the strong, and false, implication that it identifies all such occurrences) using “fuzzy matching” or “fuzzy term matching.” Some explanations of the technology, from Techopedia and Wikipedia, show that it is a fairly crude mathematical approach, similar to the co-occurrence statistical approaches that such software also tends to use, and no match for rule-based indexing approaches that derive their effectiveness from human intelligence.
As noted last week in our article, "A Spirit of Another Name", Saveur has created a glossary of Whisk(e)ys. However, as we all know, a glossary does not a taxonomy make –it can, however, be a good starting point. One of the problems, of course, is that national styles – and even spellings—are mutable. In general, “whiskey” comes from Ireland and the United States, while “whisky” (no ‘e’) comes from Canada and Scotland. However, well-known bourbon Maker’s Mark long ago decided to buck the semantic trend and drop the “e” despite being an all-American brand.
Let's call him George. George was having a very bad day. He needed legal advice. So, over his lunch hour he scheduled an appointment. After George described his situation, the lawyer pulled a book from the shelf behind him. After briefly scanning it and checking precedent, he confidently told George with a smile, “Relax. This is a slam dunk.” On his way out of the office, George gazed at the consultation invoice and muttered to himself: “15 minutes! Only 15 minutes and he charged me $325.00!”
Baseball and biology are not commonly found in the same conceptual space. Neither do you find taxonomy associated with baseball, but in recent news these connections were made. Grant Bisbee, editor of “Baseball Nation”, digresses into the arcane as he laments the coming of the “He’s In the Best Shape of His Life” season. This is the time of year baseball writers must assess the prospects for the coming season, and clichés and hyperbole reign. The dubious practice of evaluating the physical condition of players runs rampant as spring training begins. With tongue in cheek, Bisbee tries to shape a taxonomy to classify this spring ritual. His would be the taxonomy of the “In the Best-shape Stories”.