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.