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It’s taxonomy, taxonomy, taxonomy!

Highlight: Former Argonaut Sam Bailey’s smart article Do you need a taxonomy strategy?

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  1. 1
    Peter

    Here’s what I don’t get: she keeps saying “a taxonomy or controlled vocabulary”. But surely these are different animals: a taxonomy is inherently hierarchical, a controlled vocabulary not. A controlled vocabulary inherently provides preferred words to use, a taxonomy does not.

  2. 2
    samantha bailey

    There is definitely some room for interpretation and disagreement, because we’re dealing with applying terms traditionally used in other environments in new ways. I think that I may blur the terms in my attempts to help people understand that what they’re calling a taxnomy *isn’t* always a taxonomy but is in fact sometimes a classification scheme and in other times a controlled vocabulary. I see these as degrees of specificity more than anything else. Technically a taxonomy is a *kind* of controlled vocabulary in that we’re drawing a subset of specific terms from natural language and putting them into a hierarchical scheme. I disagree that a taxonomy inherently does not provide preferred terms to use; actually, most of the time when taxonomies are used as classification schemes on the web, I would argue that the descriptor itself represents the preferred term.

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