Taxonomies and ontologies are fundamental parts of architectures used to organize, find and present information. A taxonomy is a classification scheme, arranged in a hierarchy. An ontology generalizes this by adding additional relations between the elements. Any organization that needs to use its information effectively, internally or externally, will benefit by taking a serious approach to designing, using modern taxonomy and ontology best practices. Previously unstructured information available only through search becomes accessible. Modern content management systems like Sharepoint and Drupul incorporate taxonomies into the core architecture. Faceted browsing systems work well only if the underlying classification system is well-designed and matches the way users think about the information they contain. As the web becomes more semantic, these organizational strategies can be leveraged to make more of an organization’s information available as linked data making it easier to find and use.
Unlimited Priorities has deep experience in the creation of taxonomies, using metadata in taxonomies, designing and building ontologies to incorporate a taxonomy, markup languages such as XML, HTML, and SGML, and the creation of topic maps to manage the meaning of the information (not just the information), and other information/content management areas.
We can help you with specific problems, provide a hands-on workshop or training session, help you develop a strategy for improving access to your content and even design and implement effective taxonomies and ontologies to meat your needs.
Some specific areas include:
- Before You Begin: Defining the Requirements – If you are considering whether to use taxonomies, we can help you get ready by providing you with a well-grounded understanding by what is meant by “taxonomy” and “ontology”, including the many current variations.
- Taxonomies for Indexing – We can help you understand why a well-built taxonomy is part of the foundation of information architectures underlying Web sites and corporate intranets, connecting search queries to relevant content in databases.
- Implementing a Taxonomy in a Content Management Portal – A taxonomy and the thesaurus behind the taxonomy are both an outline of knowledge and are used heavily in content and knowledge management, capture, creation, reuse and distribution.
- Topic Maps, OWL, Semantic Web Applications: The Myth and The Applications – Representation of information by topic maps, ontologies, or a combination of both, hold promise for findability of not only of textual but also visual (images and streaming media).
- Markup Languages: Theory, Design, Implementation – Markup language provides the guideposts to data optimization for the digital world. Properly designed and implemented, markup provides the structure crucial to turning content liabilities into knowledge assets.
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