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A Celebration of Roget’s Taxonomy
Later this week is January 18th, which for taxonomists is notable for two things: 1) it’s Thesaurus Day; and 2) it’s the birthday of Peter Mark Roget. This double occurrence is no coincidence. We may consider Doctor Roget to be the inventor of the thesaurus (or at least one of its pioneers), and a person whose birthday is cause for taxonomists’ celebration.
Read MoreMarjorie M.K. Hlava’s Taxobook Published by Morgan Claypool
Access Innovations, Inc. is proud to announce the publication of The Taxobook, a three-volume series on taxonomies and thesauri, written by Marjorie M.K. Hlava, president of Access Innovations. The three volumes are part of a larger series, Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services, edited by Gary Marchionini, Dean of the School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and published by Morgan & Claypool Publishers.
Read MoreRaising a Glass to Rich and Complicated Words
As we anticipate the approaching new Gregorian year, those of us who are taxonomists are looking forward with renewed anticipation to the taxonomic challenges that certain kinds of words bring. Take “glass”, for example. “Glass” is one of those words that contain an abundance of possible meanings. Ironically, this poses the potential for ambiguity. What makes this particular situation even more ironic is that this ambiguity clouds the very clarity that the word often symbolizes. Ambiguous words are tricky to work with in constructing and developing taxonomies and thesauri. Moreover, they make the writing of effective indexing rules challenging. Taking care in the crafting of those rules becomes all the more important, because of the need for disambiguation.
Read MoreThe Ghosts of Concepts Future
As taxonomists, we have a responsibility to discern those future concepts, although they may still be invisible to most. We can save the various expressions of those concepts in search logs from being rejected from consideration for a vocabulary simply on account of their as yet infrequent appearance. In a taxonomy or thesaurus, we can provide labels that will consolidate the indexing for a concept for which researchers have not yet settled on a name. In some cases, especially with widely used vocabularies, we can perhaps determine the name by which a concept will be known on a standard basis.
Read MoreThe Gift of SMEs
A typical thesaurus construction project for a scholarly publisher, policy clearinghouse, medical institution, or any other client with a technical vocabulary involves the input of a number of stakeholders.
Read MoreAccess Innovations Named to EContent’s Annual Top 100 Companies
Access Innovations, Inc., a leader in digital data organization, is proud to announce its inclusion for the fourth time on EContent magazine’s annual list of the top 100 companies in the digital content industry in the category of SEO and Search Analytics.
Read MorePassive Searching for KM Taxonomy Resources
“The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” (Michael Althsuler)
In past blogs we’ve already looked at several ways to actively search the open web for taxonomy, thesaurus, and ontology resources. Today we’ll consider a few tools that enable passive – “set it and forget it” – searching. In these passive search methods, the searching doesn’t require the user’s continuous and direct attention. This search strategy allows you to turn your attention elsewhere while the tool trawls the web for content that is of interest to you. Let’s consider…
Read MoreAdditional Active Searching Techniques for Taxonomy Resources
To continue our theme from last time: “For every minute spent in organizing an hour is earned” (Unknown).
This quotation helps us remember the importance of developing online search techniques that will help you “save” time (or, at least allocate your time wisely!). Previously, we looked at keyword searching on the open web and in full-text search environments. Today, let’s consider another active search technique. This one takes advantage of online website directories.
Read MoreAccess Innovations Delivers Thesaurus for AAAS
Access Innovations, Inc. is pleased to announce the delivery of an extensive thesaurus for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Read MoreThe Use of Data in Election Cycles
Election Day has once again come and gone. Incumbents are ousted, bills are passed, and the political ads have finally stopped, so now the fallout begins. But regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, there’s one thing you can be sure of: lobbying groups and political campaigns have utilized Big Data to try to secure your vote and will place an increasing amount of importance on it. On a smaller level, data analysis been happening in this realm for years, but really, it became huge during President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.
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