Comments on Unraveling the Mysteries of metadata and taxonomies

Michael — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:58 GMT

I just attended Bella Haas Weinberg’s annual Thesaurus Design Seminar in New York yesterday. Dr. Weinberg was the chair of z39.19 (Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Thesauri) and has consulted on a many large thesaurus projects such as the AAT.

Weinberg said that taxonomy is simply used today to mean “classification”. And while MeSH is a subject heading list, functionally it is the same as a thesaurus. She used MeSH alongside ERIC to illustrate how thesauri interpret the guidelines, both successfully and poorly. (It is included as a source in the Unified Medical Language System’s meta thesaurus engine.) She indicated that one of the main differences between thesauri and subject heading lists is that thesauri are used for post-coordination and SH lists for pre-coordination, and that pre-coordination is essential for print environments.

In any case, it appears that the term taxonomy is used and understood as loosely in the LIS profession to effectively mean thesaurus. So I’m going with the attitude that “If you can’t beat them, join them”. It is important, however, to understand the nuances of these terms/methodologies as an information professional, which is why I (and three colleagues from my office) go to seminars like these.

Bob Huerster — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:58 GMT

Terrific interview. Samantha explains complex concepts very clearly. I especially like the answer to this question: “Can you tell me the difference between metadata and keywords?”

I totally agree with this statement:
“I’m changing my attitude about business development; from something that consultants or folks in small companies do to something that everyone has to do, in some way or another, all the time.”

Samantha Bailey — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:58 GMT

MeSH is actually a Subject Heading classification scheme (another subject heading scheme you may have encountered is LCSH, library of congress subject headings). Subject headings are their own substrata of controlled vocabularies and they’re generally created for a specific purpose (e.g., to index items in the library of congress collection by subject). When subject headings are very broad and widely developed, they are often useful beyond their originally intended use—hence MeSh is used by medical libraries and LCSH is used by many college and university libraries. Note the level of granularity in a subject heading scheme—you’re typicallly looking to describe an entire item (usually a book) with 2-4 descriptors; so this isn’t going to be as granular as a back of the book index.

Different subject heading schemes function in different ways; in the case of MeSH and LCSH I’m inclined to say they’re more like taxonomies than thesauri, but that’s something of a gut feel and is debateable—so it’s safest to say they’re a slightly different beast altogether.

But they are a controlled vocabulary—as are both taxonomies and thesauri.

You may want to check out:
http://www.carl.org/tlc/crs/shed0014.htm

Michael — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:58 GMT

Right, ML, connecting related terms (RT) is something you do in thesauri. But my understanding is also that multiple broader terms (BT) aren’t usually implied with taxonomies. That is to say, each node in a hierarchy only lives under one branch with one parent, whereas, with a thesaurus, a term can live in several places in a topic tree.

I like to point to Amy J.Warner’s example of the term “viral pneumonia”, which you can search in the MeSH browser. That term lives several places in the subject tree. Because MeSH supports multiple BT’s as well as RT’s is not technically a taxonomy, it’s a thesaurus, right? I dunno. Maybe I should let it go. Please correct me if you have seen/heard of a different application/understanding of taxonomies though, because I yearn to understand how businesses are using the term.

ML — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:58 GMT

From what I have observed is if you start to create relationships between the words then you are building a thesaurus. I guess my understanding of taxonomy is from the hierarchcal camp.

Michael — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:58 GMT

> I think good IAs (like many good librarians) are often generalists at heart-people who have a love of learning and a tendency to be interested in practically anything that comes their way.

Amen, sister. That’s why I like what I do. The world benefits from a generalist. Sad thing, though, is that some large firms don’t see that there is such great value in someone who can wear many hats, e.g. do IA and also write code. In such cases, you’re either with the IA’s or your an IT person. Sigh.

> I’ve just written an article on the uses (and misuses) of the term “taxonomy.”

Was interesting to hear your thoughts about the mis-use of the term taxonomy and your efforts to get people in the industry to understand the LIS terms. I work in a corporate library, and we too have adopted the term taxonomy because our customers bought into the term “business taxonomy” early on. I think the problem with the use of the term is that it implies something specific that people don’t necessarily want—a hierarchical structure for classifying aboutness. Using a hierarchy to organize topics is rigid and if you support poly-hiearchy (multiple parents or broader terms) I don’t think you are technically using a taxonomy any more, you’re using a thesaurus. Is my understanding right? Am I being pedantic? It gets troublesome to me as an IA with an LIS bias to deal with terms like taxonomy and faceted classification because my LIS experience tells me that they’re one thing, and I read the blogs and people are defining things much more loosely.

Was great to hear your innie vs. outtie perspective, by the way. A great discussion.

Brian Williams — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:49:58 GMT

I’m a designer with a keen interest in developing a deeper understanding of the what, how and why of IA. Admittedly, most discussions on the subject sail right over my head. I try to focus, but all I seem to catch is “blah blah information blah, structures blah blah…”

This discussion was different. I think I get it now.
My thanks to you, Christina, and to Samantha Bailey for presenting such a thorough and interesting exploration of the past, present and future of IA.

I feel like organizing something.