taxonomysociety.com Blog

Essentials of Metadata and Taxonomy Conference, March 11, 08

March 13th, 2008

The Essentials of Metadata and Taxonomy conference held on Monday, March 10, 2008 held in the CBI Conference Centre in London, was an interesting gathering of an ever-growing consortium of experts and novices trying to get their digital houses in order. The fact that so many different approaches were presented only reinforced the fact that the topic was much more than simply describing a classification system or data management model, but a window into the sea change that is affecting business as we know it.

From a meat-and-potatoes (a delicious meal) introduction to taxonomies (from the indefatigable Seth Earley) to BBC’s proof-of-concept demonstration of harvesting Wikipedia’s structured URL’s to import as controlled vocabularies, to analysis of auto-categorization and auto-classification tools available on the market, the conference covered a wide swath. An archive panel even delved into the challenges of raising money for digitisation projects which, while not exactly a metadata or taxonomy topic, resonated as a common ROI dilemma.

It was my first time chairing a conference and I enjoyed myself much more than I thought. Mostly because it was an absolute joy to be in a room with information architects, taxonomists, library scientists, information technologists, XML specialists, and knowledge organizers with such keen and sustained focus. There in the middle of the room were Leonard and Sheena Will, who have been doing information management and thesaurus work since way before the first publication of Wired. Next to them was Stella Dextre-Clarke, the award-winning information consultant who is currently advising the Bridgeman Art Library. Yeah, you heard me right. There are awards for information retrieval!

Unlike other conferences dedicated to taxonomy or search, this small and intimate gathering felt more like a professional association that allowed non-members in for the sake of edification. Even the obligatory vendor presentations were low key and casual.

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The importance of Taxonomy and Metadata

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