Looking Forward I have blogged before about trends in taxonomies and ontologies, particularly based on observations from KMWorld and Taxonomy Boot Camp (in 2017, 2019, and 2020), Taxonomy Boot Camp...
Read More
Not just NPTs: Thinking in Labels The taxonomy standards (ANSI/NISO z39.19, ISO 25964-1, et al.) were written using the standard thesaural relationships and their abbreviations: BT, NT, RT, NPT (or...
Read More
Graphite KOS 5.0 Another year added to Synaptica’s 25 (+1) tenure and already we have our second major release of our knowledge organization system (KOS), Graphite, in 2021. We are continuing to update and evolve Graphite’s functionality to meet our...
Read More
On Polyhierarchy Definition In taxonomy, a polyhierarchy refers to any hierarchical structure that allows a term to have multiple parents. (The opposite concept, monohierarchy, is used to describe taxonomies that do not allow polyhierarchy.) ...
Read More
Comparing A to B While recently discussing taxonomy versioning with a few of our clients, they cited A/B testing as one of their use cases for creating taxonomy versions. In addition to creating point-in-time versions of...
Read More
In taxonomy, granularity refers to the number of terms describing a concept and its sub-concepts. This rubric can apply to an entire vocabulary or some subset. In short, the question...
Read More
I am not a fan. A taxonomist working on any taxonomy of sufficient size and scope will encounter disambiguation issues. This occurs when the label for a term isn’t clear…
Relationships It is fundamental human nature to form relationships. Forming a relationship between two people is based on transparency, mutually beneficial outcomes, and trust. The world of online semantics is modeled on...
Read More
For this Insights interview we talked with Marisa Hughes about her work as Taxonomist for APA Publishing at the American Psychological Association (APA) in Washington, DC. APA is the leading...
Read More
Facet-nating Recently, I was asked by one of our clients to consider writing about faceted classification and, specifically, how to go about an analysis to determine which facets should be...
Read More