Top down or bottom up

September, 2001

A Society member wanted to know whether it's better to create a taxonomy from the "top down" (from the general to the specific) or the "bottom up" (vice versa). Comments from other members indicate that both "bottom up" and "top down" strategies are necessary. "Bottom up" can mean from specific to general, but it can also mean content-oriented. "Top down" can mean from the general to the more specific, but it can also mean user-oriented. In addition, taxonomy developers need to use "sideways" strategies to create the lateral relationships (i.e., "see" and "see also") typical of a thesaurus. Sideways strategies are also used to map the vocabularies and attributes of different taxonomies (e.g. different languages, subject areas or software applications).

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Created on October 2, 2001 I Updated on March 10, 2008