Teaching taxonomies: a hands-on approach

March, 2003

Corporate teams creating enterprise organization schemes are faced with five kinds of challenges:

1. Developing a common mental model;
2. Finding a vendor-neutral technology for prototyping and testing;
3. Presenting proposals to senior executives;
4. Educating and assisting corporate content owners;
5. Sorting out security, access, and governance issues.

In this article, we discuss how a hands-on learning environment addresses each of these issues.

Developing a common mental model
Taxonomy development in the corporate environment has become a multi-disciplinary activity that crosses organization lines. The typical taxonomy team consists of representatives from the following information specialties:

• Library or information center
• Records/document management
• Web site management
• Corporate communications
• Information technology
• Local writers, editors, and publishers

Each person views taxonomy from a different angle – a perspective influenced by their formal education, on-the-job training, job objectives, professional norms, standards, and desktop tools. But everyone has experience using the organization schemes found in such everyday objects as:

• Library card catalogs
• Back-of-the-book indexes
• Bibliographies
• Yellow pages
• File cabinets
• Rolodexes

A discussion of these physical tools is a productive first step in identifying taxonomy objectives and getting everyone on the same page. Why, for example, do library catalogs have different sections for author, title, and subject? Why don’t all books published on the same subject use the same index terms? How do subject matter experts organize their own source materials?

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