Posts Tagged ‘Taxonomy’
Taxonomies to the Rescue
MEDLINE citations are manually indexed at the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), using as reference the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) controlled vocabulary. In the past, human indexers read the full text of the article to properly index. However, due to growth, the NLM is exploring automatic indexing options. 7th Space Interactive brought this topic to our attention in their article, “MeSH indexing based on automatically generated summaries.”
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 whose 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 MoreA Christmas Miracle
At last. I searched and searched and was starting to lose faith, but never fear, a Christmas-themed taxonomy I have found. If you are a Hallmark movie watching fan, this might not be news to you and you might even be the slightest bit insulted, but just a tiny bit.
Read MoreThe Ghost of Taxonomies Present
Wouldn’t it be splendid if, in the ‘spirit’ of Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Present, we could use taxonomies to accomplish lofty goals such as cure and eradicate sickness; promote international understanding; promote justice and social harmony; and lessen and eradicate poverty?
Read MoreTaxonomy Workshop Available
Before you sign off for the holidays, consider starting your new year out with some educational learning. Our own Margie Hlava will be the instructor for a workshop titled, Taxonomy Essentials. This will be held on January 21, 2014 in Denver, Colorado.
Read MoreBig Data Drives New Glossary
A new glossary of terminology related to big data has been created. The authors state that it is an evolving list, and they invite contributions. This “wiki” glossary appears to be very comprehensive, with terms from aggregation to zettabytes.
Read MoreA Thousand Terms of Light
Last week, my co-workers and I were discussing points of knowledge. The phrase “a thousand terms of knowledge” popped up. It was apparently an off-the-cuff mingling of “a thousand points of light” with “points of knowledge” and with one of the topics of the moment, thesaurus terms. I couldn’t resist following up on the mixture, which has a precedent of sorts in an earlier TaxoDiary blog posting by Marjorie Hlava.
Read MoreTaxonomy of a Turkey
You really aren’t all that surprised if you have read TaxoDiary with any amount of consistency over the years. I love quirky and unusual taxonomies, so considering the season of course I found a turkey taxonomy.
Read MoreWhen Relationships Are Broken
The defining characteristic of taxonomies is the key to hierarchical relationships. It is vital to be sure this step is accurate and the relationships are true. Generic relationships, as explained in ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005 (page 47), 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 MoreDon’t Be Cut Off From Your Data
This small town police records management crashing may not seem like breaking news, but if you were dependent on the information found in the records, you might think differently. Records management is a key part of any organization’s information technology strategy, or should be.
Read More