Access Innovations Taxonomist Takes on Classification

Is a hot dog a sandwich? Who gets to decide? And why does it matter? As part of their Professional Development member benefits, the Taxonomy Division of the Special Libraries Assocation hosts webinars on taxonomy and related topics. These webinars and recordings are Free to all Taxonomy Division Members. Non-members register for individual webinars for…

Read More

Taxonomies in Action

MDR, a division of Dun & Bradstreet, has put together a database of 140,000 District Influencers. This enhances its school district staff taxonomy to reflect the relationship between top level decision makers and the support staff that often have an influential role in advising and informing senior staff on key decisions. This interesting information came to us…

Read More

Mastering the Subjects

Creating a taxonomy often begins with input from subject matter experts (SMEs) and by evaluating other taxonomies or thesauri already being used in the subject domain. An SME might be a software engineer, a help desk support operative, an accounts manager, a scientific researcher –  anybody with in-depth knowledge of the subject you are attempting…

Read More

Drama in Taxonomy Naming Conventions

In the world of taxonomy, names are very important. This interesting and slightly humorous information came to our attention from the Ottawa Citizen in their article, “‘These British hosers’: Name ‘vandals’ accused of giving taxonomy a bad name.” Due to some vandalism, biologists are up in arms about the redundancy in species names. Considering the rate…

Read More

The World of Bees

I sat on the porch yesterday for the first time this spring, such as it is. It was so nice to enjoy the sun and warm breeze. What was not so nice was the array of bees who too was enjoying the warm sun and my place of peace. Besides disturbing my “porch time”, my…

Read More

Taxonomies in Finance

Standardization of data is accomplished through a custom taxonomy. Regardless of the topic or subject, taxonomies make findability of content easy and consistent. Markets Media brought this interesting information to our attention in their article, “Taxonomy, Data Crucial For Sustainable Finance.” An economic taxonomy is a system of classification of economic activity, including products, companies and industries.…

Read More