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.
Entry Filed under: taxonomy
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