Taxo Update: Latest in Designing & Maintaining Taxonomies

Librarians are increasingly finding reasons to create taxono­mies or related knowledge organization systems. They may need to classify a special collection or local archives, develop a thesaurus to index a local or institutional periodical, create a controlled vocabulary for tagging pages or posts in a web content management system, or merely categorize a large collection of resource links. This workshop shares best practices tips on designing and maintaining taxonomies for practical use as well as the latest thinking and tools in the industry. Design considerations include whether to create a taxonomy or thesaurus; whether a taxonomy should be primarily hierarchical or faceted; how large it should be; whether synonyms/variants are needed and if so, how many; what the sources are for the terms; and what the guidelines are for properly creating hierarchical relationships.

Topics include: choosing the right type of taxonomy or controlled vocabulary, taxonomy standards, sources for additional concepts to enhance a taxonomy, best practices for concept labels and relationships, designing hierarchies and facets, maintenance and governance, linking taxonomies, and taxonomy management software, as well as recent trends in taxonomies.

Interactive exercises and live Q&A are included.

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