Taxonomy Tip

March 13th, 2008

TAXONOMY TIP: for those who attended the How to Build and Maintain a Successful Metadata and Taxonomy Strategy workshop.

Don’t confuse the taxonomy with cataloging.

This is one of the easiest mistakes to make. As you begin to understand how a taxonomy works, it’s common to try and express everything in a taxonomic structure.

A taxonomy never takes the place of cataloging or indexing at the object level. A taxonomy never describes an object, it houses the controlled vocabularies that are used to describe the object.

Huh?

I may use a geographic locations taxonomy to find the term to catalogue a photograph of an old power station in London, but I would not use the geographic taxonomy to describe my photograph.DSCN2976.jpg

Entry Filed under: taxonomy

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