[Sigia-l] Taxonomists vs. information architects

[dbedford at worldbank.org]

Jean,

It is absolutely true for us.   The various types of taxonomies that we develop
are implemented as core enterprise architecture structures.   These structures
(classification structures - hierarchical taxonomies) can be the backbone of a
website.   The future (and not too distant) lies in our ability to leverage
different kinds of taxonomies as enterprise architecture components to data
drive content to different views, portals and the more traditional website
architecture.  I think the question is a larger one, perhaps -- how does
"semantic information management" fit into information architecture?   When you
ask the question from this perspective, SOA (Service Oriented Architecture),
metadata repositories and utilities become the focus point.   And, taxonomies
and information architecture blend.   There are other aspects to information
architiecture that do not pertain to data structures (which is what taxonomies
are at base), but you cannot do information architecture going forward without
understanding taxonomies.   For example, if you consider enterprise search to be
a component of information architecture, it is difficult to engineer a robust
enterprise search architecture without first considering faceted taxonomies
(metadata), hierarchical taxonomies (classification schemes), and semantic
networks/thesauri (network taxonomies).

Best regards,
Denise Bedford



                                                                                                                                       
                      "jean.graef"                                                                                                     
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One of our members recently asked me whether taxonomists and information
architects (IA's) do the same kind of work. In her experience, taxonomists
develop linguistic tools and IA's apply them to Web sites. But is this true
in other companies? Does the work of taxonomists and IA's overlap, and if so
how? We might also ask where does the enterprise architect or knowledge
base editor fit in?

If you are performing in any of these roles - taxonomist, information
architect, enterprise architect, knowledge base editor - I would like to
hear about what you do and how your work relates to these other jobs. Your
remarks can be "off the record," and you can remain anonymous if we use
anything you say for a future article for the Montague Institute Review.

------------------------------------------------------------
Jean Graef
The Montague Institute
jean.graef at montague.com
www.montague.com
------------------------------------------------------------

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