Access Insights
The Zombies Are Coming
Halloween is approaching fast, and unlike most zombies, we here at Access Innovations wanted to be sure we are ready for the hordes of zombies bound to be knocking down our doors on October 31st. Are you ready? If you’re not, never fear. We created a very unique tool to help you keep your head (pun intended) during the zombie apocalypse: a zombie taxonomy.
Read MoreData Harmony Users Group Meeting – “Then and Now: Addressing the Changing Needs of Content Development”
Monday, February 10, is a full-day overview of the Data Harmony software suite. Attendees will learn how, why, and when taxonomies are used; how to start and maintain a taxonomy; and about resources available for taxonomy development. This information will provide a solid foundation for deeper understanding of the core meeting sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Read MoreBottom Up or Top Down?
Bottom up and top down are two opposite (but completely compatible) approaches to developing hierarchical structure. The controlled vocabulary standard ANSI/NISO Z39.19 explains the two approaches as follows:
Read MoreInformation Science Master Gone
This sad news was brought to our attention today and though we learned of it later than most, we couldn’t let it go by without mentioning. Frederick Wilfrid Lancaster, 79, of Urbana, passed away on Sunday, August 25, 2013 in his home.
Read MoreTypes of Hierarchical Relationships
The defining characteristic of taxonomies is the presence of hierarchical relationships. Information specialists recognize several types of hierarchical relationships. Generic relationship – As explained in ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005 (page 47), “This relationship identifies the link between a class and its members or species.” The generic relationship is generally called the Broader term/Narrower term relationship. In most cases, it’s easy in traditional biological taxonomy of organisms, because of its well-established and well-known groupings of phyla, genera, families, species, and so forth, i.e., Rodents and NT Squirrels.
Read MoreWebinar on Practical Classification – This Week!
The SLA Taxonomy Division presents the second webinar in their Practical Classification series. Sharon Garewal, from JSTOR, and Marcie Zaharee, from MITRE, will each describe how they use tools to build thesauri and classify data. Mark your calendar now for October 3, 2013 @ 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EST. The webinars are free to division members. SLA members may attend for $15, or contact SLA to add the division for $20. Non-members may attend for $50. Register here.
Read MoreKeeping Things Clear
In a controlled vocabulary, we strive for disambiguation, the restriction and clarification of meaning. We want to determine and clarify what exactly is meant by each term. Reading could mean a town in England or it could be a communication process. We might have the word ‘cells’, meaning biological microsystems or electrical equipment or prison housing or other things. You can have a terrorist cell. Cell is a broadly used term, and without some kind of a modifier around it, we can’t be sure what it is exactly.
Read MoreAccess Innovations Improves Indexing Accuracy of the CDC’s Mining Safety and Health Thesaurus
Access Innovations, Inc. is pleased to announce the completion of an automatic semantic tagging rulebase for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Mining Safety and Health Thesaurus (MSHT). The new, state-of-the-art system increases indexing accuracy to 93 percent and provides greater access to the mining safety and health database, thereby aiding researchers and statisticians in improving safety for the mining industry.
Read MoreWe’re Going, Are You?
The annual Frankfurt Book Fair will take place October 9-13, 2013 and is considered the most important marketplace for books, media, rights and licenses worldwide. The trends in publishing change faster than it is sometimes possible to keep up. The Frankfurt Book Fair brings all the new technology and innovations together in one location.
Read MoreTerms and Style
Taxonomists like to view a vocabulary as a literary work, which is more artistic when the style is consistent and cohesive. Consistency – which leads to predictability when searching or browsing – also makes it easier to avoid unintentional inclusion of multiple preferred terms for a single concept.
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