Getting Work as a Taxonomist

Occasionally, people whom I don't know ask me for career advice in the field of taxonomies, but this is not easy to answer. For taxonomy work, career paths and prior experiences vary, employers span all industries and organization types, job titles and descriptions are not named consistently, and remote jobs are very competitive.

Two chapters in my book, The Accidental Taxonomist, 3rd ed., can help answer career questions, Chapter 2 “Who are Taxonomists” and Chapter 13 “Taxonomy Work and Profession.” However, I have some additional thoughts, which I am sharing here.

Varied taxonomy career paths

When someone asks me for advice on getting into taxonomy work, especially based on my own experience, I am somewhat dismissive, since no one will repeat my career path. I got into controlled vocabulary/taxonomy management work starting out as an indexer using the controlled vocabularies at a periodical article publisher. Not only is such a company rare and industry unusual, but now there are extremely few manual periodical/database indexers, since the task is increasingly done automatically (auto-tagging, auto-classification, text analytics, AI, etc.)

The following are some of the common paths towards taxonomy careers I have seen, and there are many others that are less common.

• Library/information science > cataloging > metadata
• Arts, photography, film, media > digital asset management > asset metadata
• Technical writing > technical content management > content strategy
• Marketing > web content management > content strategy
• Languages > linguistics > natural language processing > auto-tagging
• Languages > translation > terminology management
• Business management > knowledge management

Of course, in any of the above career paths, one does not have to change careers to become a taxonomist but could merely add taxonomy tasks to an existing job or career. This is especially the case of the following career backgrounds, in which people may add taxonomy work/projects to an existing technical role:

• Science/engineering > technical terminology and glossary management
• Computer science/data science > ontologies
• Information technology > content management system/SharePoint administration

Taxonomy job search challenges

It’s typical to search for taxonomy jobs on the major job search websites, such as LinkedIn and Indeed. But not all taxonomy jobs have “taxonomist” or “taxonomy” in the job title. They could have job titles instead for ontology/ontologist, information architecture/architect, metadata, content management/manger, data governance, etc. So, then a search could be on “taxonomy” in the job description rather than limited to the job title, but this results in many more irrelevant jobs that merely touch on taxonomies but don’t involve developing/managing taxonomies.

Taxonomist jobs are relatively rare compared to traditional jobs. Limiting a job search to a specific metropolitan area will yield few, if any, relevant results. The exceptions, where taxonomist jobs are more frequent tend to be Seattle, San Francisco Bay Area, Austin, New York, and Washington, DC. Taxonomist jobs in other countries exist but are less common than in the United States.  Expanding a job search to all jobs mentioning “taxonomy” in the description, not just the job title, and expanding it to all of the United States will retrieve too many results, but this is a good approach to take in other countries. There is the added complication that “taxonomist” job searches can retrieve jobs postings for biologist-taxonomists.

Fortunately, many taxonomist jobs are remote.  The downside to this, though, is that fully remote taxonomist job postings attract a high number of applicants, so the competition for such jobs is great. Where LinkedIn indicates the number of people who click on an application link on a job post, remote taxonomist jobs have received over 100 applicant clicks in just a couple of days. 

A significant number of taxonomist jobs are temporary contracts, which are hired through recruiting firms. This is an option for someone not currently employed, but, obviously it's not a good idea to leave a permanent job for a temporary one. 

Networking, which is always important for job searching, is especially valuable in the unusual field of taxonomies. Joining professional associations, attending conferences and meetups, and developing a large network and posting on LinkedIn are all recommended.

Taxonomy skills and skills acquisition

There is not a standard set of skills for a taxonomist, other than prior taxonomy experience. Positions may ask for additional skills in varied areas:  

• experience with content management systems, digital asset management systems, or product information management systems
• familiarity with AI, machine learning, natural language processing, auto-classification, etc.
• experience working with large datasets
• experience designing ontologies and working with knowledge graphs
• technical skills with using SPARQL, SQL, and Python

Furthermore, positions may also ask for experience with specific taxonomy management software or specific subject domain knowledge (e.g. finance or healthcare). As a result, it’s rare for one applicant to meet all the experience and skills required. Applicants understand this and may apply anyway.

Taxonomy jobs and the skills expected in such jobs vary. Thus, to become a highly competent taxonomist generally requires experience from multiple different employers. I have learned a great deal having done different kinds of taxonomy work for different companies. It can be difficult to get the first taxonomist job, though. The best approach is to obtain taxonomy work, such as through a project, while in a role that is not a dedicated taxonomist. A lot of taxonomy work is done as part of a job that has other duties.

However, a single taxonomy project as part of a job is often not enough experience to jump to a dedicated taxonomist position. Some training to round out one’s knowledge and to fill in the gaps is highly beneficial. In addition to the information in my book, The Accidental Taxonomist, I teach various taxonomy training workshops. 

Coming up next, I will teach a full-day in-person workshop “Connecting Users to Content through Taxonomies: An Introduction to Taxonomy Design & Creation” on Tuesday, April 29, 2025, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm in Philadelphia, as a pre-conference workshop to the Information Architecture Conference (with separate registration, not requiring full conference attendance).

Talking about Taxonomies in India

I was thrilled to bring together my passions of my taxonomy profession, connecting with people, and international travel on my visit to India this month, my first time to this fascinating country.

I travel to speak about taxonomies at conferences and other events. I like to travel: to meet colleagues in this specialized field, in which I don’t have regular in-person interactions, and to see and learn about new places. Usually for me business travel is the primary purpose and seeing new places (museums or a walking tour of parts of a city) is secondary. However, for January 2025, I decided to choose a new country destination, India, primarily as a tourist, and then to add on some professional events.

Why visit India

India is now the most populous country of the world, and I have met many Indians living and working in the U.S. and in Europe, especially in technology roles. So, I wanted to understand the country and culture better. India also has a long rich history and impressive historical structures to visit, tasty food, and different religions and traditions to learn about.

I have many professional connections in India, especially through LinkedIn, more than any other country outside North America and Europe. A few are taxonomists, some have taken my course, some have bought my book, and many have a significant number of shared contacts in my field. I had also made contacts through conferences.

Finally, the use of the English language in professional activities makes it easier for me to participate in events in India: giving presentations and listening to the presentations of others. I cannot simply give a presentation in English in any country.

Multiple presentations and meetings

Taxonomies are relevant to multiple disciplines: library and information science, content and document management, information architecture, knowledge management, and ontologies. To interact with professionals in these different fields, I had to arrange multiple presentations or meetups.

Library and information science students

I have occasionally been asked to give guest lectures on about taxonomies to library/information science school classes. Close to two years ago, a graduate student of library and information science in Bengaluru (Bangalore), Soumyakanta Barik, who had read my book, asked if I would give a guest lecture (remote) to his class of master’s degree students, which I did. Afterwards informed Soumyakanta that I was thinking of coming to India, so perhaps I might present again in person. Even though Soumyakanta had since graduated, he facilitated the contacts to make such a lecture possible, so I gave an update of my prior presentation “Tidbits of Taxonomies.”

It turned out that this school of library and information science, the Documentation Research and Training Centre at the Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore, had been founded by Dr. S. R. Ranganathan, the developer of the first major faceted classification system in the world (whom I mention in my book and in a prior blog post on faceted classification) and the father of library science in India.

Taxonomists and ontologists

On LinkedIn, I had over 25 connections with the keyword “taxonomy” and 15 with “ontology” in their profiles located in Bengaluru India, so I didn’t want to limit my presentation in that city to just current students. At my request, the Documentation Research and Training Centre organized a second presentation for me to give later the same day to be open to the public. I presented on a slightly more advanced topic, “From Taxonomy to Ontology,” based on a recent presentation that I gave at the Henry Stewart Semantic Data conference. Although the day I chose to present turned out to be a (minor) holiday, I still had a good audience of close to 30 people.

While I did not give that presentation again in Delhi, I did meet two ontologists two days later in the Delhi area (Noida), Dr. Sanju Tiwari, who had been involved in the Knowledge Graph Conference, and Harish Betrabet, an ontologist at Bechtel.

Knowledge managers

Taxonomy work often falls under knowledge management, especially in the area of consulting.
I had noticed that one of my prominent LinkedIn contacts in India (with over 140 shared connections) was a leading knowledge management professional, Ved Prakash. Ved met with me and Soumyakanta for lunch my very first day in India. Ved and I have both been involved in Stan Garfield’s SIKM group of knowledge managers, and Ved invited me to now to join the KMGN (Knowledge Management Global Network) group on LinkedIn, which he leads. Knowledge management in India is more mature than the smaller field of taxonomies.

Academic librarians

I interact with librarians through my membership in the Special Libraries Association (SLA), which has an active Taxonomy Community. At last year's annual SLA conference at the University of Rhode Island, several academic librarians from India, who have been very involved in SLA, participated in the conference and also celebrated the 25^th anniversary of the SLA Asia chapter with an event which I attended. The director of the Central Library of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Nabi Hasan, invited to give a presentation, and then organized a full-day “International Workshop on Open Accessing Publishing” at IIT Delhi around my schedule. To tie taxonomies into the theme, I gave a new presentation “Semantic Standards and Methods for Information Linking.” The audience was not familiar with Semantic Web technologies, so I was pleased to present something new to them, which I hope they will take advantage of.

Former SLA president Seema Rampersad (working at the British Library in London) introduced me, at my request, to another library science professor at the University of Rajesthan in Jaipur, with whom I met on short notice the evening I was visiting that city as a tourist, and we discussed the state of library/information science study.

Technical writers and content managers

With the growth of technology industries and applications of technology in other manufacturing sectors in India, there are now many technical writers along with content/document managers. The Society for Technical Communications (STC) (of which I had previously been a member) has an active chapter in India, so I contacted STC India about organizing a speaking event for me, and I was very pleased that the STC volunteers organized events in both Bengaluru and the greater Delhi area (Noida) to fit my schedule.

The events also each included additional different speakers. I gave the presentation “Indexes, Search, and Taxonomies: Path to Findability,” which I had presented as an STC webinar (not in a suitable time zone for India) in 2023. Taxonomies and indexing are new concepts to many technical writers, whether in the U.S. or India. (My STC contact, Manisha Sardana, will be happy to arrange an event for other visitors to Delhi who want to give an educational presentation.)

Finally, I even met a freelance indexer, a member of the American Society for Indexing, another organization I have belonged to, who attended the STC event in Noida at my invitation.

Summary

I gave more presentations than I initially intended on this trip, but that is partly due to the fact that taxonomies cross over into multiple fields. I then got to meet more people, build and strengthen relationships, and reflect on the field and applications of taxonomies more. The professional activities took three days, while sightseeing took 10 days of my two-week trip. I hope to add on a professional speaking event on future international tourist trips, although I cannot imagine any other country besides India that would offer so many opportunities.

 

Taxonomy and Information Architecture Compared

There is considerable overlap between the fields of information taxonomies and information architecture. Both involve information organization, labeling, search, and findability. In some organizations the job roles and titles are combined. I previously blogged on “Information Architecture and Taxonomies,” observing that “information architecture” in name seemed to be declining while aspects of its practice continued to be strong, since it was an underlying theme in several of the talks at major taxonomy conference, Taxonomy Boot Camp in 2013.

Information Architecture Conference opening. Photo Marisela Meskus

This week, for the first time, I am attending in person the Information Architecture Conference, being held in New Orleans March 28 - April 1, so it’s been interesting to hear how information architects consider taxonomies.

How Information Architecture and Taxonomy Overlap

The fields of information architecture and taxonomy are related beyond the stated shared practices of information organization, labeling, search, and findability. 

When I give an introduction to taxonomies, I explain that a taxonomy is an intermediary between users and content to connect users to content by means of terms that the users understand and by the display of the terms in hierarchies, facet-filters, or type-ahead suggestions, which enable users to explore and interact with the taxonomy. This is clearly an aspect of information architecture. 

In my own career path, I discovered taxonomy and information architecture at the same time. I had been working as a “controlled vocabulary editor” and had the opportunity to work on an interdisciplinary team for a newly design information product. A user interface for school library research database included both a hierarchical taxonomy that was designed to fit with a particular user interface. 

At the Information Architecture Conference, I asked for a raise of hands of my session audience of how many had worked with taxonomies, and it seemed to be over 80%. At the conference, I met information architects who specialized in taxonomies, and taxonomists who had an interest and done some work in information architecture. Even though I identify as a taxonomist, I already knew a number of speakers at the Information Architecture conference due to the overlapping communities.

How Information Architecture and Taxonomy Differ

Information architecture is a discipline and a profession that is larger and more established than that of taxonomies. Although taxonomy work is growing, there are still more college courses on information architecture than on taxonomies, more books on information architecture than on taxonomies, and more people with “information architect” than “taxonomist” as a job title (based on LinkedIn searches). 

Listening to sessions at the Information Architecture Conference and having discussions with participants, I began to see a clearer picture on how the fields of information architecture and taxonomies differ.

The Information Architecture Conference brings together a community of professionals who share ideas and experiences. There is no comparable taxonomist community as taxonomy work, compared to information architecture work, tends to be done by those with different professional backgrounds: information architects, librarians, content managers, metadata architects, indexers, ontologists, etc. It’s telling that there is not just one conference at which I present about taxonomies but multiple. (Knowledge management, content strategy, knowledge graphs, and data science are the fields of conferences at which I have spoken about taxonomies in the past year.) The only conference about taxonomies, Taxonomy Boot Camp, is more of specialized track within the KM World conference, and aims to provide taxonomy best practices and case studies to managers and directors of content, product, or knowledge management. It is not really a forum for taxonomists to discuss topics of their profession, as the Information Architecture Conference is.

It seems that information architecture is more of a discipline and a field, whereas taxonomy is more of tool or system (although a very important one). In addition to information architects in organizations in various industries and consultants, the Information Architecture Conference includes professors and students in the field. By contrast taxonomy is not a field of study, research, or focus in academia. It is a focus area only in industry and consulting. Information architecture seems to allow more room for theory than does the taxonomy field. 

How Information Architecture and Taxonomy Are Related

From a "taxonomic" perspective, which is broader? For information architects, taxonomy is narrower than information architecture. There is no doubt that information architecture is broader in various ways, including content/information organization, design, user experience, and even organization of non-digital information spaces. For example, information architects are concerned not only with taxonomies to support searching and browsing for information, but also with content organization and navigation menu structuring in websites and in software user interfaces. 

Taxonomists, on the other hand, do not consider taxonomies as a sub-field of information architecture, but rather consider the two fields as adjacent and closely related. This is because the taxonomies that information architects create tend to be small, such as term lists for metadata properties or facets or as hierarchies to model menu navigation or site maps. Professional taxonomists tend to work on large dynamic taxonomies or thesauri that are used to tag/index and retrieve content or data in one or more systems, often where the user interface is already prescribed.

The related fields or disciplines are also different. Information architecture has a closer relationship with fields of design, user experience, sociology, and psychology. Taxonomy has a closer relationship with indexing/tagging, natural language processing, ontologies, Semantic Web technologies, and knowledge management. One related field shared by both information architecture and taxonomy is structured content, which was also a subject of presentations at this year's Information Architecture conference and the field of my next conference.

A Taxonomist Community

Taxonomists and others whose work involves taxonomies have not been a unified professional community. Taxonomy development work is interdisciplinary, spanning different specializations, and different organizational functions, including the following:

• Information services taxonomies and thesauri, developed by those with a background in library/information science, thesauri, and cataloging, and possibly indexing
• Product/ecommerce taxonomies, that may be developed by those with varied backgrounds but experience in retail and product information management
• Digital asset management taxonomies and metadata, developed by digital asset managers and others, who might have a background in image and media curation and management
• Website taxonomies developed by information architects with a focus on the user experience
• Enterprise taxonomies developed by those who are primarily knowledge managers but have also learned about taxonomies
• Taxonomies for auto-categorization of large volumes of text, developed by those with expertise in natural language processing, machine learning, and other text analytics technologies
• Taxonomies, as controlled vocabularies, to support metadata and master data management, developed by metadata architects, data managers, and possibly data scientists
• Taxonomies in support of knowledge graphs, integrated with ontologies, developed by ontologists and other experts in semantic technologies

Thus, people who work with taxonomies, accidental taxonomists and others, associate themselves with different professions and belong to different groups or professional organizations. These include 

• Special Libraries Association (SLA) and its Taxonomies Community. The next annual SLA conference will be held July 31 – August 2 in Charlotte, NC.
• International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) and its various country/region chapters, such as ISKO UK. The 17th international ISKO conference will be held at Aalborg University, Denmark, July 6-8, 2022.
• AIIM (Association of Information and Image Management International)
• American Society for Indexing and its Taxonomies & Controlled Vocabularies Special Interest Group
• CILIP (Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals)(UK) and its Knowledge and Information Management Group
• Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T)
• Knowledge Graph Conference (KGC)'s associated community which has an ongoing Slack space for discussion that is open to all

For information architects, the Information Architecture Institute dissolved in 2019 after 17 years, and until now, information architects have temporarily been gathering on Discord servers associated with the virtual IAConference and the World IA Day conference, but these have been relatively inactive at other times of the year. 

Discussion Groups

Taxonomists are thus dispersed among these groups and more. It does not make sense to create a new professional membership association for taxonomists, especially at this time when traditional professional membership associations are experiencing declining membership.

Thus, online discussion groups that do not require a paid professional association membership are a better option. The first taxonomy group, Taxonomy Community of Practice was started as a Yahoo group in 2004. It has become quite popular with over 1000 members posting questions and suggestions about taxonomies. However, Yahoo groups declined, and LinkedIn groups grew, so this group was migrated over to a LinkedIn group, later renamed Taxonomy and Ontology Community of Practice. The problem is that this group, as most LinkedIn groups, is less of a community of practice and more an announcement forum.  People are reluctant to post basic questions, as it might indicate that they are not sufficiently knowledgeable. Another former Yahoo group which migrated to Groups.io is Controlled Vocabulary, which is focused on activities of metadata and controlled vocabulary development and tagging of digital assets, mostly images.

Communities Discussed at Conferences

The need for a community of practitioners, whether taxonomists, or related specialties, is something that has been raised at conferences. 

At the most recent  Information Architecture Conference (IAC), in April 2022, the co-presidents for World IA Day, Grace Lau and Andrea Rosenbusch, gave a talk “(Re)Architecting a Community” discussing their hopes and plans to transform World IA Day from merely a single day annual event to community. 

At the most recent Knowledge Graph Conference (KGC), Katariina Kari led a  brainstorming workshop “Building Ontologies and Knowledge Graphs,” as  “a working group for publicly sharing best practices, stories, and the particularities of our craft of building ontologies and knowledge graphs,” seeking a “soundboard for ideas” that others could participate in. 

The upcoming SLA conference will have a live panel session “Communities of Practice: Where Everybody Knows Your Name” on August 2, 2022, in which I will be one of the panel speakers.

A new Taxonomist Community: Taxonomy Talk

Out of conversations and research conducted by Grace Lau in leading up to her IAC talk on an information architecture community, Grace and I discussed in January the idea of an additionally dedicated taxonomist community. I then invited another taxonomist, Bob Kasenchek, to come up with ideas, including what to use for a free platform. Slack, as used by KGC, was dismissed, since the free version has limited data storage, and old messages get deleted. So, we decided to adopt Discord, as it has been used by the virtual IAC in 2021 and 2022. Taxonomy Talk was launched on April 12, and quickly gained sufficient members that they could contribute ideas and be polled for a name. On May 1 it was named Taxonomy Talk. A charter and mission are still in the works. There are several moderators, including Grace, Bob, and myself. 

As of this writing Taxonomy Talk has just over 300 members. It has a number of dedicated subject “channels,” some of which are:

• New-to-taxonomy
• Looking-for-help
• 
  Conferences-events
• Jobs-and-opportunities
• Tools-for-thought
• Learning-resources
• Reference-resources
• Best-practice
• Ontologies
• Standards
• Vocabularies

New channels are created as requested, and we might decide to retire or merge low-use ones.

Discord supports features such as direct one-on-one chats and one-one or group video meetings. There are still features I have yet to learn. 

So, if you are not yet in the Taxonomy Talk Community and want to join:

https://discord.com/invite/3qyMVYCAsw
(Please use your real name to promote networking. Some existing Discord users are continuing to use their Discord nicknames.)

Taxonomy Quotes

Taxonomies are very valuable, but not always easy to define, and they are described in various ways. They are also interdisciplinary, as taxonomies are developed by people in different fields for slightly different, yet similar purposes. I have heard various comments about taxonomies over the decades.

 

In the earlier years of the Taxonomy Community of Practice discussion group, a Yahoo group, which was the precursor of the current Taxonomy and Ontology Community of Practice LinkedIn group, the group’s moderator, Seth Earley, put out a call to the group’s members for a motto for the group. The winning quote, which became the group’s motto, was: “Taxonomies: That’s classified information,” by Jordan Cassel.

 

 

There were over a dozen other good suggestions for the motto which were posted in the group in January 2009. That turned out to be shortly before I wrote the first edition of my book, The Accidental Taxonomist, so, with permission, I took additional motto-quotes as opening headers to each of the 12 chapters of my book. The same quotes continued in publication of my second edition in 2016.

 

As I now am preparing a third edition (expected out in late fall 2022), I decided to refresh the chapter head quotes. Last month I put out a call for quotes in both the Taxonomy and Ontology Community of Practice LinkedIn group and in my own network. Some quotes were lengthier than before, as they were no longer submissions for a motto. I received far more submissions than I have chapters, and I have also decided to keep some of the original quotes (including the first one). Yet many of these quotes are quite thoughtful and/or clever, so I would like to share these new quotes here.

 

In true taxonomist fashion, I have categorized these quotes as about taxonomies, about taxonomy creation, about ontologies as compared to taxonomies, about taxonomies, and the a few particularly witty quotes at the end.

 

About taxonomies

 

Taxonomies: organizing the disorganized.
—June Tsang

 

Without Taxonomies; entropy!

—Hakan Strom

 

Ambiguity is the thief of Knowledge.

—Robert Vane

 

Good taxonomy is a love letter to the future.

—Gary Carlson

 

Taxonomies - organised, effective tagging. 

—Alison Jones

 

Taxonomy: Levels in the Playing Field

—Merridy Cox (Bradley)

 

Knowledge organisation, search, and use combine to enable us to navigate the workplace.

—Bill Proudfit

 

Your Taxonomy, like all metadata, is an expression of what's important to you and to the collection.

—Peter Krogh

 

Taxonomies are, first of all, an act of self discovery on how we understand the world.

—Andrea Splendiani

 

 

About taxonomy creation

 

Taxonomy: generalize or specify, that is the question.

—Fabiola Aparecida Vizentim

 

Taxonomy: The perfect mix of art and science.

—Mollee Marcus

 

Taxonomies: Normalizing to help you find, report and aggregate across data & content

—Rita M. Benitez

 

Regardless of domain, taxonomy is the science of sorting and labelling information so it can be retrieved for future use.

—Leah B.

 

Do your best to ignore even your most strongly held convictions. If you want to create a user-friendly taxonomy/ontology system, follow the data, not your heart.
—Rebecca B. Weiss

 

Taxonomy is such a great battleground to focus consistently on improving the user experience; it’s a first key activity to drive the user experience.

—Vellaichamy Shunmugavel

 

To ontologize or not to ontologize, that is the question you should ask yourself in the first place.

—Erick Antezana

 

 

 

About ontologies (or ontologies compared with taxonomies)

 

Taxonomies tell stories, ontologies create worlds.

—Fran Alexander

 

Taxonomies classify; ontologies reify.

—Beatrice Larentis

 

Ontology: generating knowledge by connecting the dots.

Taxonomy: is like a drawer organizer for kitchen cutlery.
—Brigita Perchutkaite Vollstedt

 

If a taxonomy is an elevator, an ontology is a Wonkavator!

—Caroline Coward

(Referencing Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: like an elevator but also can go sideways and in all directions.)

 

Ontologies make the implications explicit.

—Michele Ann Jenkins

 

A good ontology maps the way out of chaosville.

—Mark Atkins

 

Ontologies: organizational substrate for your data, information, and know-how enzymes.

—Heather Fox

 

 

About taxonomists

 

—Meg Morrissey

I wanted to figure out my place in the world, so I hired a taxonomist.

 

Only when one’s data is all over the place is it discovered that a taxonomist is necessary.

—Rebecca Custis

 

Be the Taxonomy you want to see in the World!
— Elaine Chu

 

I say this categorically, taxonomists are an organized bunch.

—Jordan Casell

 

Taxonomies: now you're where you belong.

—Alan S. Michaels

 

And the especially witty ones 😉

 

Ontology, Category, Property - Happy user will be! Try me, Find me, Surprise me :)

—Dorothee Balas

 

Year Make Model Engine Transmission Leather Navi Owners Accidents Miles Color: = my used-Taxi Taxonomy.

—Tony Mariella

 

Taxonomy is taxidermy for data -- mounted on a framework and stuffed for the purpose of display and study.

—Phil Taylor

 

Ontology: One graph to rule them all, one graph to find them, one graph to bring them all and in the semantic web bind them.
—Xeni Kechagioglou

I never metadata I didn't like

—Paul Belfanti

 

Taxonomy? Taxonoyou!

—Ron Cascella

 

Taxonomist Survey

In keeping with the title of this blog, it’s time to check in again to learn more about who taxonomists are and what they are doing. I conducted a survey of taxonomists (promoted through discussion lists, groups, and social media) in 2009 to gather information for my book, The Accidental Taxonomist, and again in 2015 for its second edition. I compared the results over those 6 years in a prior blog post, Taxonomist Trends. Now I have republished the identical taxonomist survey from 2015 on the SurveyMonkey platform at the start of this month January 2022, and have already gathered more responses than the 150 who responded in May 2015. So, I can provide a peak at preliminary results of a couple of questions, although the survey will remain open until January 28.

 

Preliminary responses

Following are the preliminary responses from questions 1, 4, and 5.

1. To what extent do you create and/or maintain taxonomies or other controlled vocabularies? 

	Responses
My primary job responsibility	55.48%	86
One of my job responsibilities, but secondary	16.77%	26
Manage taxonomists or taxonomy projects, while also doing at least some taxonomy review work	11.61%	18
A special project, not in my job description or an originally expected responsibility	7.74%	12
Work done as contract/freelance often	4.52%	7
Work done as contract/freelance only occasionally	3.87%	6
	Answered	155

4. What is your current employment situation? 

	Responses
Employee of an organization that uses taxonomies primarily internally, for its website, or in ecommerce	62.75%	96
Employee of an organization that incorporates taxonomies into an information product or information service, which it sells/offers	15.69%	24
Employee of a company or agency that provides taxonomy services or custom taxonomies to clients	5.88%	9
Independent contractor or freelancer (obtaining work primarily through subcontracting, agencies, other third parties, or as a temp employee)	9.80%	15
Consultant or business owner/partner (obtaining work primarily from direct clients)	5.88%	9
	Answered	153

5. If you selected either the first or second response in question #4 (if you are an employee but not in consulting), where do you fit into your organization?

	Responses
Content management/content strategy	19.44%	21
Documentation/technical writing	1.85%	2
Editorial	1.85%	2
IT	8.33%	9
Knowledge management	25.93%	28
Library	4.63%	5
Marketing	4.63%	5
Operations	3.70%	4
Product development/product management	19.44%	21
Search	2.78%	3
User experience	7.41%	8
Other (please specify)		16
	Answered	108

Survey Questions

Following are the rest of the questions

2. How long have you been doing work on taxonomies or other controlled vocabularies?

• Less than 1 year
• 1-2 years
• 2-4 years
• 4-6 years
•  6-8 years
•  8-10 years
• 10-15 years
• 15-20 years
• Over 20 years

3. How long have you been doing work specifically called “taxonomy”?

• Less than 1 year
• 1-2 years
• 2-4 years
• 4-6 years
• 6-8 years
• 8-10 years
• 10-15 years
• 15-20 years
• Over 20 years

6. What is your job title?

7. What degree(s) do you hold?

• Less than a BA/BS
•  BA only (4-year college)
• BS only (4-year college)
• MA
• MS/M Eng.
• MLS/MLIS
• MBA
• PhD/doctorate
• Other advanced degree

8. What is your study or training specifically in the field of taxonomy or classification?

• Concentration/specialty within a degree program
•  Two or three college/university credit courses (but not a specialization)
•  One college/university credit course
• Continuing education course or workshop
• Conference or professional seminar workshop
• On the job formal training
• On the job informal learning and experience
• Self-taught through reading

9. Prior to your work in taxonomies, which best describes your professional background?

• Content management/Web content/Content strategy
• Database design, development, or administration
• Document management
• Indexing
• Knowledge management
•  Librarian
• Marketing/Sales
• Project management
• Records management
• Software/IT
• User experience/Information architecture
• Writing, editing, or publishing
• None/Student
• Other (please specify)

10. In your current position, what are your primary taxonomy-related activities?

• Design/model new taxonomies or other vocabularies, determining structure type and policies
• Based on an established model, develop and build out new taxonomies or other vocabularies
• Edit, update, or maintain taxonomies or other vocabularies
• Map (such as crosswalks), merge, integrate, or restructure existing taxonomies or other vocabularies
• Write auto-categorization rules for taxonomies or other vocabularies

11. What software do you primarily use to work on taxonomies or other controlled vocabularies?

• Commercial, dedicated thesaurus/taxonomy/ontology management software
• Open-source, dedicated thesaurus/taxonomy/ontology management software
• Commercial software, of which taxonomy management is a feature, module, or component
• An internally developed thesaurus/taxonomy management system
• Other commercial software not intended for taxonomies (such as a word processor, spreadsheet, or database management software)

12. Which of the following describes the implementation and use of taxonomies or vocabularies you work on?

• For content organization, search/findability, and retrieval by internal users (employees)
• For content search/findability and retrieval by external users (customers, subscribers, members, partners, prospects, patrons, the public)
• For both internal users and external users

13. What is the size of the controlled vocabularies you typically work on?

• Under 50 concepts per vocabulary
• 50-100 concepts
• 100-500 concepts
• 500-1500 concepts
• 1500-5000 concepts
• 5000-10,000 concepts
• Over 10,000 concepts

14. How are your current taxonomies/vocabularies linked to content?

• By manual tagging or indexing
• By auto-categorization/auto-indexing
• Some of each
• Don’t know

15. Are you familiar with and generally try to follow any of the following national or international standards: ANSI/NISO Z39.19 (2005) Guidelines for Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies and ISO 25964 Information and documentation—Thesauri and interoperability with other vocabularies?

• Don’t know these standards and thus don’t follow them.
• Have read at least some of these standards, but don’t follow them.
• Generally, keep these standards in mind and apply what is relevant, but not strictly.
• Attempt to follow these standards closely and refer to them as needed.

16. What do you enjoy about taxonomy work?

17. What are pain points or challenges in your taxonomy work?

18. How did you first get started doing taxonomy work?

More results may appear in future blog posts, but the full results will be published in The Accidental Taxonomist, 3^rd edition.