Taxonomy milestones: lessons learned

August, 2003

Most organizations don't just "create a taxonomy." Instead, they begin a continual process that can affect not only Web site navigation but also:

• publishing standards and work flow;
• the learning environment for knowledge base publishing skills;
• budgeting and reporting procedures;
• inter-departmental collaboration;
• strategic planning.

This article discusses the challenges, benefits, and lessons learned at each stage in the evolution of our own taxonomy infrastructure.

Taxonomy milestones
The evolution of our taxonomy has gone through five stages over a six year period:

1. Creation. Our CFO decided we needed an indexing system to get more value from our past articles, briefings, and courses (see "Upstream knowledge management"). At that point, we had a document repository, a people directory, and a controlled vocabulary stored in a relational database that we called our Knowledge Base. Both people and terms could be linked to documents.

2. A - Z index, thesaurus. We added a thesaurus structure to the Knowledge Base, published a static A - Z index on our Web site, and had our thesaurus reviewed by professional indexer.

3. Dynamic index. We replaced the static A - Z index, which had to be updated manually every month, with a series of templates which displayed data from the Knowledge Base. As long as the Knowledge Base was up to date, the index pages would be current (see "About the indexes").

4. Search engine integration. We acquired a new search engine and customized it to use metadata and rules (see "Best of both worlds"). At the same time, we added document templates to the authoring process.

5. Authorities, integration. In conjunction with publishing a new Web-based course, "Integrating Taxonomies," we took the opportunity to edit Knowledge Base content and add new features to our public indexes.

As it evolved, the taxonomy structure became more complex while the content — labels, categories, and terms — became simpler and more standardized. The amount of time and effort devoted to finding and reusing information shifted from the back end (i.e. post-publishing processes and research) to the front end (i.e. the content-creation process). Details follow in this article.

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