[Asis-l] (New Book) The Taxobook: Principles and Practices of Building Taxonomies, Part 2 of 3

[Shane Clyburn]

I am pleased to announce the latest title in Morgan & Claypool's series on
Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services :

 

The Taxobook: Principles and Practices of Building Taxonomies

Part 2 of a 3-Part Series 

Marjorie Hlava, Access Innovations, Inc.

Paperback ISBN: 9781627055802, $60.00
eBook ISBN: 9781627055819
November 2014, 164 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.2200/S00603ED1V02Y201410ICR036 

 

Abstract:

This book outlines the basic principles of creation and maintenance of
taxonomies and thesauri. It also provides step by step instructions for
building a taxonomy or thesaurus and discusses the various ways to get
started on a taxonomy construction project.  

 

Often, the first step is to get management and budgetary approval, so I
start this book with a discussion of reasons to embark on the taxonomy
journey. From there I move on to a discussion of metadata and how taxonomies
and metadata are related, and then consider how, where, and why taxonomies
are used.  

 

Information architecture has its cornerstone in taxonomies and metadata.
While a good discussion of information architecture is beyond the scope of
this work, I do provide a brief discussion of the interrelationships among
taxonomies, metadata, and information architecture.  

 

Moving on to the central focus of this book, I introduce the basics of
taxonomies, including a definition of vocabulary control and why it is so
important, how indexing and tagging relate to taxonomies, a few of the types
of tagging, and a definition and discussion of post- and pre-coordinate
indexing. After that I present the concept of a hierarchical structure for
vocabularies and discuss the differences among various kinds of controlled
vocabularies, such as taxonomies, thesauri, authority files, and ontologies.


 

Once you have a green light for your project, what is the next step? Here I
present a few options for the first phase of taxonomy construction and then
a more detailed discussion of metadata and markup languages. I believe that
it is important to understand the markup languages (SGML and XML
specifically, and HTML to a lesser extent) in relation to information
structure, and how taxonomies and metadata feed into that structure. After
that, I present the steps required to build a taxonomy, from defining the
focus, collecting and organizing terms, analyzing your vocabulary for even
coverage over subject areas, filling in gaps, creating relationships between
terms, and applying those terms to your content. Here I offer a cautionary
note: don't believe that your taxonomy is "done!" Regular, scheduled
maintenance is an important-critical, really-component of taxonomy
construction projects.  

 

After you've worked through the steps in this book, you will be ready to
move on to integrating your taxonomy into the workflow of your organization.
This is covered in Book 3 of this series. 

 <http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00603ED1V02Y201410ICR036>
Read More

 

 

Series: Synthesis Series on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services

Series Editor: Gary Marchionini, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
http://www.morganclaypool.com/toc/icr/1/1

 

Use of this book as a course text is encouraged, and the texts may be
downloaded without restriction by members of institutions that have licensed
accessed to the Synthesis Digital Library of Engineering and Computer
Science or after a one-time fee of $20.00 each by members of non-licensed
schools. To find out whether your institution is licensed, visit <
<http://www.morganclaypool.com/page/licensed>
http://www.morganclaypool.com/page/licensed> or follow the links above and
attempt to download the PDF. Additional information about Synthesis can be
found through the following links or by contacting me directly.

 

This book can also be purchased in print from Amazon and other booksellers
worldwide.

 

Amazon URL: http://amzn.to/1AYLNUR

 

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Available titles and subject areas: 

 <http://www.morganclaypool.com/page/browseLbS.jsp>
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Information for librarians, including pricing and license: 

 <http://www.morganclaypool.com/page/librarian_info>
http://www.morganclaypool.com/page/librarian_info 

 

Please contact  <mailto:info at morganclaypool.com> info at morganclaypool.com to
request your desk copy

-- 
Shane Clyburn
Marketing Associate
 <http://www.morganclaypool.com/> Morgan & Claypool Publishers
E-mail:  <mailto:shane at morganclaypool.com> shane at morganclaypool.com
Fax: 415.785.2507

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