[Sigia-l] Fwd: Defining "classification", "metadata", IA, ... (Richard Wiggins)

[Marcia Morante]

I agree that the original article uses terminology in a confusing manner.
The terms "classification" and "taxonomy" are not equivalent.

There are many ways of defining a taxonomy, but basically, it's a structure,
usually hierarchical, that organizes a subject area.  Close relatives of
taxonomies are classification schemes such as Dewey Decimal or LC Subject
Headings.

The term "classification" refers to an action.  Both taxonomies and
classification schemes are USED in the act of classification to assign
subject terms to documents.

Since the subject terms taken from taxonomies and classification schemes
describe the documents but are not part of the documents, it has become
common to refer to them as metadata.


Marcia Morante
Knowledge Curve, Inc.
(718)881-5915 - office
(917)821-2087 - mobile
mmorante at earthlink.net