Techniques, tips and tools for taxonomists and knowledge managers.
Our very own Noeleen Schenk spent an excellent afternoon listening to taxonomy experts and practitioners from around the world, including Canada, USA, Germany and the UK – at the recent bite sized Taxonomy Bootcamp.
This virtual event, held this March, included three compelling case studies from taxonomy professionals presenting how they have put taxonomies into practice within their organisations to make their information more accessible and findable.
Our top three takeaways
1) How to introduce taxonomies and ontologies
Taxonomist & Information Architect, Fran Alexander, revealed tips to explain taxonomies and ontologies and their benefits to stakeholders. She suggested looking at stakeholders as personas to help craft your story to best suit your audience and ultimately drive buy in and project support.
2) Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) metadata
Erica Hornung, an Insights & Analytics Associate talked about DEIA metadata, and how organisations need to consider what DEIA metadata is applied in order avoid marginalising identities. She also shared best practices how taxonomy and metadata can better reflect the needs of diverse audiences.
3) Climate change taxonomy
Thomas Bahr, Knowledge Management Officer, United Nations, presented the climate change taxonomy created for the United Nations Climate Change. With over 60,000 official and unofficial documents on their website, he revealed how they developed a taxonomy made up of 12 different facets and 3,226 terms to organise their documents by topic, conference/sessions, keywords and country to support findability as well as joining up climate change information both inside UNCC and with external bodies.
Explains Noeleen: “These online practical sessions are a great way to hear real life challenges, top tips and success stories around the use of taxonomies and how they can facilitate findability, research and discovery for all types of business. I’m really looking forward to the next session soon!”
Whether you are new to taxonomy; perhaps struggling to explain taxonomies to budget holders; or even a seasoned professional seeking tips, look out for other bitesize online bootcamps taking place in 21 June 2023 and 11 October 2023.