Taxonomy consultants:
what they do and where to find them

June, 2001

This article is based on interviews with Society members and the consultants they have known. It describes what taxonomy consultants do, what their deliverables look like, how to match their skills with your requirements, and where to find them.

What do taxonomy consultants do?
Taxonomy contractors can help you:

• add a Yahoo-like navigation scheme to your Web site;

• enhance your Web site search function to give users more relevant results;

• personalize information access so that users get only items of interest to them;

• index a book or classify a collection of documents by subject or other attributes;

• customize an auto-classification software tool.

Since taxonomy plays a supporting role in content management, we didn't find many "pure" taxonomy consulting firms. Instead, we found taxonomy specialists in larger firms as well as solo practitioners. Includes links, screen shots, and examples of some deliverables.

TIP
If you need to create a taxonomy and have neither the knowledge nor the staff to do the job, then a consultant is your best bet. However, if you have an employee who can learn the basics and has enough time to create a prototype, consider a hands-on Web course, such as Creating and Using Business Taxonomies or Integrating Taxonomies.

Hands-on courses have the following benefits:

• Your staff knows how to maintain the taxonomy after the consultant leaves.
• The prototype serves as a demo that can be used to educate stakeholders and prepare a business case for better metadata management.
• Data you enter in the Web-based Lab is exported at the end of the course and available for importing into your applications.
• Hands-on learning leverages existing human resources and usually costs less.

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