Taxonomies: Practical Approaches to Developing and Managing Vocabularies for Digital Information

Taxonomies have become more widely-understood and used in the last decade as organisations seek to manage and exploit their information. The rise in understanding of the potential of semantic models has also led to an increase in demand for controlled vocabularies and ontology models. While education in classification and categorisation is becoming more and more mature, it does not necessarily prepare taxonomists for the everyday realities of working with stakeholders, sponsors and systems so that their taxonomies remain useful and relevant.

Taxonomies: Practical Approaches to Developing and Managing Vocabularies for Digital Information is a curated anthology of expert-contributed chapters and case studies that cover the wide range of ways in which taxonomies are used in digital applications including the web, enterprise systems and libraries. The book brings together experts from a range of disciplines to provide realworld insights on how to build and implement a taxonomy in an organisation. The book will cover everything a working taxonomist - whether they're an inhouse resource or a consultant - needs to consider, including business buy-in; working on a project team; choosing software; governance and maintenance and the wider societal dimensions of choosing categories and terminology.

Helen Lippell is an independent information professional and consultant who focuses on helping organisations organise their content and data. She designs information architectures, metadata schemas, ontologies, taxonomies and semantic models to help companies fully exploit the value of their "stuff". Helen has worked for a wide range of clients in different sectors, including the BBC, Metropolitan Police and Pearson and is a regular speaker on taxonomies, ontologies and other knowledge model frameworks.