This Talk will take place in English exclusively on Zoom. Registration is not required to attend.
Abstract:
This presentation will explain the methods to design and build custom taxonomies for information retrieval. A taxonomy, as a more flexible form of thesaurus with hierarchical or categorical structures, is usually custom designed to serve a specific use case of a set of users and a set of content.
As a hierarchy, the taxonomy can be built from broader to narrower terms (top down) or by grouping specific terms (bottom up). The taxonomy design must also consider the needs of the users and the subject scope of the content.  We can also consider the approach of basing the taxonomy on content as building the taxonomy from the bottom up, and basing the taxonomy on the needs of the users as building the taxonomy from the top down. Various techniques in gathering terms for creating a custom taxonomy will be explained, whether the purpose for an information retrieval service, an internal enterprise taxonomy, or for a library’s special collection.
Speaker: Heather Hedden
Heather Hedden is a taxonomy consultant, doing business as Hedden Information Management, who has been working in the field of taxonomies and metadata for over 30 years. Previously she was employed in taxonomist roles at Northern Light, Enterprise Knowledge, Semantic Web Company, Gale/Cengage, Viziant, First Wind, and Project Performance Corp. She taught online workshops in taxonomy creation through the continuing education program of Simmons University School of Library and Information Science from 2006 to 2016 and continues to o]er taxonomy training workshops through her consulting business and other organizations and at conferences. Heather is author of The Accidental Taxonomist, (Information Today Inc., 2010, 2016, 2022) and numerous articles. She is currently a member ISO/TC 46/SC 9/WG 8 Information and documentation: Structured vocabularies for revision of the international thesaurus standard.
The Zentralbibliothek Zurich, the CERN Scientific Information Service, and AILIS (Association of International Librarians and Information Specialists, Geneva) jointly organize the Library Science Talks. A programme of talks for 2025 can be found on the AILIS website.