Taxonomy, Thesaurus, or Ontology? – Clearing the Confusion, Part One

Should your organization use a thesaurus, taxonomy, or ontology to make its information assets searchable and retrievable? Let’s talk about the differences. A taxonomy is a system of classifying and organizing data into a hierarchical structure based on shared characteristics. The NISO Z39.19 standard defines a taxonomy as “a collection of controlled vocabulary terms organized…

Read More

When Do You Need a Taxonomy vs. an Ontology? Insights from Marjorie Hlava on Transforming Knowledge Management

In the evolving landscape of knowledge management—especially in the age of artificial intelligence (AI)—organizations are under increasing pressure to structure, retrieve and leverage their data more effectively. But a common question arises: Do you need a taxonomy, an ontology, or both? In a recent KMWorld article, Marjorie Hlava, Chief Science Officer of Access Innovations and…

Read More

Classic Posts Summer – Information Science Works on Consistency

Our regular blogger is out of commission while recovering from surgery. Please enjoy one of our classic posts! Information Science Works on Consistency July 8, 2020 – In information science, an ontology is a formal representation of a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts. When it comes to a specific area, like…

Read More

A Group of Taxonomists Walk Into a Pub

On June 27, 2024, there will be taxonomists, ontologists, data managers, knowledge organizers and data architects gathered in London for Semantic Data 2024: Taxonomy, Ontology, and Knowledge Graphs. This news came to us from PR.com in their release, “Four Weeks to Go Until Semantic Data 2024: Taxonomy, Ontology, and Knowledge Graphs Conference.” In today’s data-driven…

Read More

Building Relationships with Ontologies

The idea of an ontology is that it represents complex relationships among the objects or concepts themselves. The intent of an ontology is to provide a way to connect objects. In computer science and information science, an ontology encompasses a representation, formal naming and definition of the categories, properties and relations between the concepts, data and entities that substantiate one, many,…

Read More

Ontology-Based Technology Developed for Caregivers

The Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) has developed an artificial intelligence (AI)-based service platform to share knowledge on the symptoms of dementia patients and how to care for them. This interesting news came to us from The Korea Bizwire in their article, “Researchers Develop AI Platform to Share Knowledge on Dementia Care.” Based…

Read More

Standards and Ontologies

The National Information Standards Organization offered an interesting webinar last month titled, “Standards-Specific Ontology Standard.” If you were able to attend, you know that the topic of how ontologies are supporting the greater interoperability of standards and standards data. If you missed it, don’t worry. It was recorded and can be listened to here. The NISO…

Read More

Controlled Vocabularies and Taxonomies

When we talk, we speak in natural language. This language is raw, rich, sometimes messy, but real. When we organize our information and label it however, there is so much richness, variance, and confusion in terminology that we often need to impose some order to facilitate agreement between the concepts within the site and the…

Read More