[Sigia-l] How to deal with taxonomists?

[Randy Wilson]

I've been lurking here for months but with this
discussion about taxonomist vs. information
architects, I've decided to take the plunge.I worked
as a "knowledge engineer" which meant that I built
taxonomies to be used by automated categorization
software (Semio).  The other part of my job was to
evaluate a client's data to analyze whether it would
work with the taxonomy(ies) they wanted to use.  I
could build beautiful taxonomies but since we were
working mostly on intranets where there was lots of
legacy data, these taxonomies would be useless if they
didn't bring the user to the appropriate data.

I don't see myself as an information architect but as
someone who is building data structures (more broad
than taxonomies) that are informed by the client's
content, their vision of how it should be
labelled/utilized and that will result in significant
ROI; either the ability of users to more quickly get
at data they know exists and to uncover or reveal data
that they had no idea existed but which will lead to
them creating new sources of revenue or saving costs
for the organization.Semio was sold off and I was laid
off.  I've taken a job doing research and building
business-centric Access database but I want to get
back to doing what I love which is analyzing
unstructure data and organizing it.  The problem is
that there is no demand for this work.  If I could get
work, I think I could prove the value of my skills but
they are so specialized and difficult to articulate,
that I don't know if/when the market for my skills
will materialize.  

A question I have for the list is: are most enterprise
projects dealing with newly generated content or do
these project involved surfacing pre-existing content?
 If most IA projects are the former, I don' t think my
skills are a good fit.  Another question; are there
other people on this list who've had work experience
similar to mine?Thanks!Randy WilsonDo you
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