Organising Knowledge was a challenging book to write, because it is the first book I know of on taxonomy development that is explicitly aimed at practising knowledge managers. Much of the really good work out there comes out of library science or information studies referring to a much more generalised setting than those encountered by the knowledge manager – who typically works in organisations that are seeking pragmatic solutions to their information and knowledge needs centering on work-oriented documents, not publications. So there were no real precedents to rely on.
In writing the book, my intention was to frame the role of taxonomy work inside the larger knowledge management agenda. Hence, as far as I know, this is also the first taxonomy book that combines a practical guide to taxonomy development with a broader explanation of how taxonomy work contributes to knowledge management in a variety of ways.
As I worked on the book, I also realised increasingly that taxonomy work is not just useful in supporting information retrieval (which is the popular starting point for taxonomy projects), but as a key tool for supporting organisation effectiveness, expecially in supporting coordination across organisation boundaries.
I have tried hard to communicate a tricky subject in a clear, accessible style, and have been fortunate in people’s willingness to contribute detailed case studies to support the arguments I make here. A final chapter looks at where taxonomies sit in relation to folksonomies and ontologies. In this book, I hope, taxonomy work finally enters the knowledge management mainstream. If you buy the book, let me know what you think!
See inside the book:
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Defining our terms
Chapter 2: Taxonomies can take many forms
Chapter 3: Taxonomies and infrastructure for organisation effectiveness
Chapter 4: Taxonomies and activities for organisation effectiveness
Chapter 5: Taxonomies and knowledge management
Chapter 6: What do we want our taxonomies to do?
Chapter 7: Preparing for a taxonomy project
Chapter 8: Designing your taxonomy
Chapter 9: Implementing your taxonomy
Chapter 10: The future of taxonomy work
Visit the publisher’s website (Chandos UK)
RESPONSES AND REVIEWS
Lots have people have reviewed and commented on the book, Here’s my favourite, from Kim Sbarcea: “Patrick has brought sexy back to taxonomies!”
For more reviewers’ comments, you’ll find a compilation here.
Jul 07
Misclassification as an Act of Power
It’s one thing to get the taxonomy right. It’s quite another to ensure that it is applied correctly, and that content is classified as intended. In my book I talk about classification as an act of power. It can be used on people (as the apartheid regime in South Africa taught us) to exclude them from equal benefits, to impose sanctions, or to find excuses for genocide. In this story, Fedex has been found guilty of wrongly classifying workers as independent contractors to avoid paying them benefits. An Illinois court agreed that: “FedEx controlled the drivers work to such an extent that all the drivers were and are employees”. This classification error could cost Fedex up to $1 billion in back-payment of lost benefits. Thanks to Maish for the heads up on this one!
Jun 19
Synaptica Express
Synaptica is one of the most powerful taxonomy management software applications available; up till now it has only been available in a rather pricey enterprise version. Now, in a potentially game changing move for this market, they have released “Synaptica Express”, a simpler, single license version hosted in the cloud at just US$100 per month. This is the price where experimentation is possible, and where taxonomies can be developed by individuals for clients internal or external, and then passed on to an enterprise version or another application that uses it. It will be interesting to see how this develops! Here’s the promo video:
Apr 29
The Accidental Taxonomist
I’ve had the honour of writing the foreword for Heather Hedden’s new book The Accidental Taxonomist which will be published in the next few weeks - here’s a snippet of what I wrote, to give you a flavour of the book:
Apr 12
Two Tales of Taxonomy Ignorance
Maish Nichani has an absolutely brilliant post dissecting the taxonomy issues around the reorganisation of TV channel listings on local provider Starhub.
Apr 06
The Role of the Taxonomist
Wendi Pohs has a great case study scenario which unfolds the many nuances of perceptions about taxonomists’ roles, and how they relate to site development teams. This would make a great decision game for teaching where taxonomy sits in this kind of project (the scenario is about merging the internet and intranet teams for the consumer products information company, and implementing enterprise search).
Mar 16
Typologies for Ecommerce
Ecommerce is a big consumer of taxonomies and a poster child for the use of facets. How else can you serve (without the luxury of physical staff to guide a shopper) the diverse perspectives and needs that shoppers come with? However, online sellers often take the more obvious route of identifying facets around the material or price attributes of their products.
Here via “Taxonomist” of Albuquerque is a nice example of what I referenced in my book as a typology of users, used as a browsing/filtering facet: at beauty products site sephora.com you can filter your search for gifts by “personality” – Glamour Girl, Natural Girl, Spa Girl, Gadget Girl, Luxe Girl.
Here’s the connection between customer and market research and taxonomy: a typology derived from or reflecting how customers see themselves, makes a great facet, not just for filtering, but also potentially for primary navigation.
Hmm… would Taxonomist Girl go under Gadget or Luxe?
Mar 15
Where Taxonomy Work is At
A nice post from Virginia Henry summarising a talk given by Fran Alexander on the current state of taxonomy work a few days ago. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, just a nice overview; and it’s reassuring to see that sensible balanced views do seem to be permeating the fog of hype that people sometimes use for – often against – taxonomies. Fran has since posted her own notes from the talk – I particularly like her analogy with a taxonomy system being like a coral reef:
“You can think of your taxonomy as the centre of a coral reef, but coral is alive and grows following the currents and the behaviour of all the crazy fish and other organisms that dart about around it. It’s hard to pin down the crazy fish and other creatures, but they feed the central coral and keep it strong. In practice, this means incorporating multiple taxonomies and folksonomies and mapping them to one another, so that everyone can use the taxonomy and the terminology that they prefer. Taxonomy mapping tools require human training and human supervision, but they can lighten the load of the labour intensive process of mapping one taxonomy to another.”
Jan 29
Folksonomies and Taxonomies on the Intranet
Thomas vander Wal has a very crisp guest post at Oliver Marks’ blog, discussing how to combine the emergent and “up-to-dateness” properties of folksonomies with the “efficiency and clarity” that a taxonomy provides.
Jan 20
Taxonomies Without Commensurate Knowledge = Mistakes
Here’s a story from Annalee Newitz of the problems that can arise when a taxonomy created for one purpose and one knowledge community, is used by others for new purposes.
“Since the 2001 anthrax scare in the US, the government here has maintained a list of 80 microbes and toxins that are essentially forbidden to researchers. Now scientists say the list is undermining security rather than strengthening it.
The list is called the Select Agents and Toxins List (SATL), and the microbes on the list are chosen without any input from researchers in a process that is far from transparent. In an article published today in Nature Reviews Microbiology, scientists Arturo Casadevall and David Relman say that the list is hobbling research efforts as well as the nation’s biosecurity. They say that items on the list are almost impossible to get for legitimate research. And in fact, many of the substances are needed for research into vaccines which would protect people from the very bio-attacks the government fears.
Moreover, the scientists take issue with the microbes placed on the list, many of which are chosen based on their taxonomic category. Unfortunately, taxonomy doesn’t always work well with microbes, which can have many different strains of varying toxicity and whose so-called species often overlap. So the list both overreaches and underreaches, missing dangerous strains and including harmless ones.”
Jan 04
Towards a Taxonomy of DJ-ing
Pedro Lopes, a musician and engineer in Portugal is grappling with putting together a taxonomy of DJ-ing. From his early thinking, it looks to me like it needs a faceted approach. What do you think?
