Taxodiary – Access Insights

Celebrating 15 Years of Dublin Core

By Melody Smith|November 15th, 2010|Access Insights, Featured, metadata, Standards, Taxonomy|1 Comment

In Pittsburgh, in conjunction with ASIS&T's recent annual meeting, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) celebrated the 15th anniversary of the Dublin Core metadata standards. DCMI describes itself as "an open organization engaged in the development of interoperable metadata standards that support a broad range of purposes and business models. DCMI's activities include work on architecture and modeling, discussions and collaborative work in DCMI Communities and DCMI Task Groups, annual conferences and workshops, standards liaison, and educational efforts to promote widespread acceptance of metadata standards and practices."

You Are In Control

By Melody Smith|November 8th, 2010|Access Insights, News|Comments Off on You Are In Control

Data Harmony users have been given the opportunity to design their own User Group meeting.

Repositioning Information Science

By Melody Smith|November 8th, 2010|Access Insights, Business strategy, Featured, reference, Standards|1 Comment

One of the sessions I attended while at the 2010 meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) in Pittsburgh recently was presented by Michael Buckland, Fidelia Ibekwe-Sanjuan, and Kiersten Latham. This interesting session was actually three coordinated presentations that individually and together questioned the accepted view of information science as an emerging, scientific discipline closely tied with information technology and, mainly, textual data.

Knowledge Organization Systems

By Melody Smith|November 1st, 2010|Access Insights, Featured, semantic, Taxonomy, Term lists|1 Comment

I attended the 2010 meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) in Pittsburgh. There were quite a few papers and posters I found aligned with taxonomies and the whole area of linked data, semantic implementations and the Dublin Core. The DC-2010 conference, sponsored by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI), was held immediately prior to ASIS&T in the same hotel so the over lap in participants and programming was spot on for my interests. The ASIS&T annual meeting is the main venue for disseminating research centered on advances in the information sciences and related applications of information technology. It has veered heavily into usability for the last few years and this change back to mainline information science was refreshing!

Adventures of a TaxoTourist

By Melody Smith|October 25th, 2010|Access Insights, Featured, Standards, Taxonomy|Comments Off on Adventures of a TaxoTourist

The trip was awesome—a dream exotic vacation to Bali. It was not about eat, pray, love, but a rather unbalanced midpoint to meet my Oz-dwelling daughter. I enjoyed dashes of ecotourism and agritourism, but even in full vacation mode I couldn't fully suppress my perspective as a taxonomist.

Where Are They Now?

By Melody Smith|October 18th, 2010|Access Insights, Business strategy, Featured, semantic, Standards, Taxonomy, Technology|Comments Off on Where Are They Now?

Tech companies come and go. There are always tech savvy entrepreneurs with big ideas looking to fill a need in the market and investors looking to get the huge returns that only come from investing in tech startups. But tech is risky, markets are volatile, and oftentimes what seems like a good idea is not always as good once implemented in the real world. A good example of this is the dot com boom and subsequent bust in the early 21st century. You could get funding on a back of the envelop business plan. Billions of dollars were invested in tech startups with big ideas and big dreams. Many of these dreams were shattered when investors realized they were not getting the same returns they had hoped.

Classified Homeland Security: Transforming Data into Information

By Melody Smith|October 11th, 2010|Access Insights, Featured, indexing, Taxonomy|Comments Off on Classified Homeland Security: Transforming Data into Information

October 11, 2010 – You’ve just read the title and already there is trouble. “Classified” has multiple uses. What is meant here? When discussing […]

You Cannot Classify Unless You Connect

By admin|October 4th, 2010|Featured, indexing, Taxonomy, Text processing|Comments Off on You Cannot Classify Unless You Connect

October 4, 2010 — One of the facts of classification and indexing is that one has to have access to the content. Most users […]

Stretching Taxonomy in a Social Way

By Melody Smith|September 27th, 2010|Access Insights, Featured, metadata, Term lists|Comments Off on Stretching Taxonomy in a Social Way

We read with interest “A Revised Taxonomy of Social Networking Data.” In the last month, the arguments in the article have provided a framework for thinking about the amount of the information flowing through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and other social media conduits.

Using a ‘Collabulary’ to Create a Taxonomy

By Melody Smith|September 13th, 2010|Access Insights, Featured, metadata, Taxonomy, Uncategorized|Comments Off on Using a ‘Collabulary’ to Create a Taxonomy

Libraries and librarians have been the gatekeepers to knowledge stores for more than 200 years. As their collections grew, they invented ways to easily find the information and knowledge they stored by creating classification systems and then subject headings to identify the concepts or topics represented in the items being stored. Every major language now has at least one classification system, and most countries have created and adopted classification and subject access systems, such as the Universal Decimal System (UDC) or Lenin’s outline of knowledge for Russia. In the United States, the use of the Dewey Decimal Classification system, Sears Subject Headings, and the Library of Congress Classification system is widespread.