I had created a survey of taxonomists to gather some
information for writing my book, The Accidental Taxonomist. It was mainly for
Chapter 2: Who Are Taxonomists? With the
word “taxonomist” in the title, I had to write something about taxonomists, and
not just about taxonomies, and this was the best way I could get more
information than some anecdotes from colleagues.
But that was in late 2008, 6½ years ago. Has there been
change in the industry since? In most fields, 6-7 years is not long at all, but
in field of taxonomies, there could be changes. First of all, there have been
significant changes in the economy over that particular period (recession and
partial recovery), and, at least for internal, enterprise taxonomies, the role
of the taxonomist could be considered something expendable in tight economic
times. (I know, as I was laid off in 2008 and again in 2010.) More
significantly, the field of information science is evolving very rapidly. So, I released a new survey this month.
My previous survey had 9 multiple choice questions and one
open response. I chose to keep those questions with no changes or only minor
wording changes, in order to compare the changes over time. I also decided to
add a few more questions. To help me come up with the questions, I asked for
input from an audience of presentation I have last month ("Taxonomy
Displays: Bridging UX & Taxonomy Design" at the Content Strategy
Seattle Meetup. Suggestions from that group included questions on the size of
taxonomies, job titles, and taxonomy work pain points. The current survey now
has 14 multiple-choice questions, one very short answer (job title), and three
open responses, although all questions are optional, and it is permitted to
skip questions.
Where to find taxonomists to survey
In 2008, I could think of only one logical channel to find
taxonomists, the Yahoo group called Taxonomy Community of Practice.
But it is no longer the only group and no longer the most active. The Taxonomy
Community of Practice Yahoo group averaged only 5 messages per month in the
last 6 months. In contrast, the 6 months around the time of my last survey,
this group average 39 message per month. This is most likely because the
LinkedIn group of the same name, Taxonomy Community of Practice, which was created in September 2007, has
taken over the most of the taxonomy discussions. Furthermore, there are additional LinkedIn
groups, such as “Controlled Vocabularies” and “Thesaurus Professionals.” The American Society for Indexing started a Taxonomies & Controlled Vocabularies Special Interest Group in late 2007, and SLA (Special Libraries Association) started a TaxonomyDivision in 2009, both of which have member discussion
lists.
I have announced the current survey in all of these groups and
more. However, I do not expect to reach significantly more taxonomists than
before. That’s because, whereas the single Yahoo group back in 2008 tended to
be subscribed to by email (individual or digest), the proliferation of groups
and lists of similar or overlapping subjects has led to subscribers/members to
opt out of direct emails. Additionally, email software, such as Gmail, can
filter messages from lists to a category/tab that users may choose to overlook.
So, my email announcements of the survey to groups may go unnoticed by many
group members. It would be tempting to individually contact everyone I know personally
who is involved in taxonomy work, but that could be a personal bias that would
skew the pool of respondents.
Taxonomist tendencies
There have already been enough respondents to the current
survey, that I can safely say that the largest number do taxonomy work as their
primary responsibility, as with the previous survey, and that, like before, the
majority are employees, rather than contractors, freelancers, or independent
consultants. The most common educational or professional background (although
not the majority) is library/information science. What is striking, though, is
that despite the fact that 48% of respondents in 2008 had an MLS/MLIS degree
(and from the early survey returns, the percentage is even slightly higher),
only a small percentage of taxonomists learned taxonomy skills through formal
educational institution coursework. Self-taught through reading, on-the-job experience,
and on-the-job training, and conference workshops or seminars are each methods
of learning taxonomies that are more prevalent than college courses. Additional,
more specific comparisons will be the subject of a future blog post.
