Understanding Taxonomies

Transcription

1 Understanding Taxonomies Taxonomy is effectively an information architecture that defines how you categorize or group content and metadata into a logical and easily identifiable structure for your target audience. Taxonomy architectures are important in designing taxonomies that have the following characteristics: 1. Are suited to their intended purpose 2. Can be maintained i over time (h (thus sustainable) 3. Provide strong application support to information applications in the new challenging Web environment Taxonomy can be summarized by the following formula: architecture + application + usability

2 Types of Taxonomies 1. Flat 2. Hierarchical 3. Plex (aka Network) 4. Faceted

3 Flat Taxonomies Flat taxonomies are merely a listing of items. They are best suited for 30 orfewer objects and do not require a complex design. More than 30 objects can be presented in a flat taxonomy, but only if the list items are intuitive to the users of the taxonomy Flat taxonomies have the following characteristics: They group content into a controlled set of categories There is no inherent relationship among the categories; they are equal groups with labels The structure t is one of membership in the taxonomy and can include the following: 1. Alphabetical lists of people 2. Lists of countries or states 3. Lists of currencies 4. Controlled vocabularies 5. List of security classification values An example of a flat taxonomy would include an ecommerce site with a pull down list of product categories and horizontal list of stores. In SharePoint, flat taxonomies are best for simple lists of items that don't need to be nested. The items can be Links to sites or lists or libraries. Also, if you have a flat taxonomy that has large list of content items in a list, such as a large list of documents, you can use the filtering capabilities in custom views of the lists to ensure that users can find the content items they are looking for quickly. ikl Finally, the filtering Web Parts can be used to help build a limited but flat view of a large list of items.

4 Hierarchical Taxonomies A hierarchical taxonomy is represented as a tree architecture. The tree consists of nodes and links. Therelationship betweentwolinked two nodes (the way they are associated with each other) will be based on meanings. The meanings define the hierarchical link depending on which direction you are going. g Example: Refrigerated > Drinks > Juice > Orange

5 Sample Hierarchical Schema

6 Hierarchical Taxonomies (cont) Hierarchical taxonomies have the following characteristics: Hierarchical taxonomies structure content into at least two levels Hierarchies are bidirectional Each direction has meaning Moving up the hierarchy means expanding the category or concept. Moving down the hierarchy means refining the category or concept. An example of a hierarchical taxonomy would be a Web site which includes a web Site Directory categorized by subject hierarchy. This type of taxonomy is well suited for finding sites via your organizational chart, because those charts are hierarchical in nature and list key individuals and divisions or departments within the hierarchy.

7 Network Taxonomies Network taxonomy is a plex architecture. 1. Each node can have more than one parent. 2. Any item in a plex structure can be linked to any otheritem item. 3. Links can be meaningful and weighted differently (meaning hat their relative importance varies from link to link).

8 Network Taxonomies (cont) They organize content into both hierarchical and associative categories. They combine hierarchy and star architectures. Any two nodes in a network taxonomy can be linked. Categories or concepts are linked to one another based on the nature of their associations i Links can have more complex meanings than you find in hierarchical taxonomies Examples of network taxonomies include the following: Complex thesauri Ontology Concept maps Topic maps Knowledge maps representations

9 Faceted Taxonomies A faceted taxonomy looks like a plant start where each leaf node is connected to the center node. 1. A faceted taxonomy must be suited to its purpose 2. The facets must be needed in the taxonomy 3. Each facet shouldhave have a distinct behavior orreason reason for existing 4. Each facet should have a clear relationship to the central object around which the taxonomy is being built Most faceted taxonomies, when explicitly presented are built using a records or table format

10 Faceted Taxonomies (cont) Faceted dtaxonomies have the following characteristics: ti 1. Facets can describe a property or value 2. Facets can represent different views or aspects of a single topic 3. The contents of each attribute can have other kinds of taxonomies associated with them 4. Facets are attributes, and their values are called facet values 5. Meaning in the structure derives from the association of the categories to the object or primary topic

11 Best Practices for Etblihi Establishing Taxonomies Building taxonomy is hard work and is more art than science! Keep in mind the following elements when designing a taxonomy: Users want options, but not complexity The quality of metadata affects the quality of the taxonomy: ensure that you're using metadata that is rich and accurate Scalability means that the quality of the metadata must increase as the taxonomy scales into millions of represented objects Consistency of metadata is achieved better programmatically than by human intervention Persistency of metadata is foundational to building a taxonomy that will persist over time Enterprise taxonomies must take the following into account: Functional architecture Content types and locations Technical requirements Presentation aesthetics