Search results

Potential and benefits of classification schemes and thesauri in building organizational taxonomies cannot be fully utilized by organizations. Empirical data of building an organizational taxonomy by the top‐down approach of using classification schemes and thesauri appear to be lacking. The paper seeks to make a contribution in this regard.

A case study of building an organizational taxonomy was conducted in the information studies domain for the Division of Information Studies at Nanyang Technology University, Singapore. The taxonomy was built by using the Dewey Decimal Classification, the Information Science Taxonomy, two information systems taxonomies, and three thesauri (ASIS&T, LISA, and ERIC).

Classification schemes and thesauri were found to be helpful in creating the structure and categories related to the subject facet of the taxonomy, but organizational community sources had to be consulted and several methods had to be employed. The organizational activities and stakeholders' needs had to be identified to determine the objectives, facets, and the subject coverage of the taxonomy. Main categories were determined by identifying the stakeholders' interests and consulting organizational community sources and domain taxonomies. Category terms were selected from terminologies of classification schemes, domain taxonomies, and thesauri against the stakeholders' interests. Hierarchical structures of the main categories were constructed in line with the stakeholders' perspectives and the navigational role taking advantage of structures/term relationships from classification schemes and thesauri. Categories were determined in line with the concepts and the hierarchical levels. Format of categories were uniformed according to a commonly used standard. The consistency principle was employed to make the taxonomy structure and categories neater. Validation of the draft taxonomy through consultations with the stakeholders further refined the taxonomy.

No similar study could be traced in the literature. The steps and methods used in the taxonomy development, and the information studies taxonomy itself, will be helpful for library and information schools and other similar organizations in their effort to develop taxonomies for organizing content and aiding navigation on organizational sites.

Due to various historical differences in organising, documenting and managing information across cultural institutions, cross‐domain resource discovery in the cultural heritage sector remains problematic. Leveraging on the lessons learnt from current efforts to enhance access to networked digital cultural resources, this paper seeks to explore the development of a taxonomy for the same purpose.

A methodology was developed for the construction of a 500‐term taxonomy for a Singapore‐based cultural heritage network. Based on this taxonomy, the benefits and problems of developing such a knowledge organisation system for a cultural network are also discussed.

Collecting terms and concepts from various external and internal sources was sufficient to kick‐start the taxonomy development process. One of the key aspects of the Integrated Museum and Archives System (IMAS) taxonomy is its ability to show a broad overview of the all the resources held by the National Heritage Board, regardless of originating institution.

No single scheme currently best fits the needs of cultural networks, but all can benefit from each other's learning process. The development of the IMAS taxonomy particularly benefited from the insights provided by faceted classification and the possible relationships between terms and concepts in ontology. Such guidelines and recommendations also provide much ground and basis for the NHB to start a framework for standardising documentation practices.

This paper aims to present the results of the second phase of a research project aiming to develop a bilingual taxonomy for the description of digital images. The objective of this second stage entailed the formal structuring of the taxonomy. It involved the choices of top‐level categories and their subcategories.

The taxonomy development process consists of several steps that are iterative in nature, and, as such, an incremental user testing needed to be carried out in order to validate and refine the taxonomy components. For the first validation phase, the card sorting technique was used. To increase the value of the testing, two different sorting exercises were performed by ten respondents, who completed feedback forms to provide comments and suggestions.

The analysis of the data provided by the card sorting exercises and the feedback forms highlighted the difficulties participants encountered using the taxonomic structure. This step was especially useful in understanding why the cards of a group were classified together. A summary of the decisions that were made following the first part of the validation process, as well as suggestions to improve the final version of the taxonomy, are also included.

The participation of the end‐users is of crucial importance in the taxonomy development. The card sorting method is generally used in domains such as psychology, cognitive science and web usability. For this project, it proved to be an invaluable source to identify difficulties encountered using the taxonomy structure and dynamically suggested ways to improve it.

The purpose of this paper is to explore theoretically and empirically the understanding and implementation of an information taxonomy in the UN organization World Food Programme (WFP) by analysing users’ information behaviour and by establishing a minimum set of cross-silo metadata (taxonomy).

The study implies the use of both qualitative and quantitative methods. This includes desk review of key documents and interviews with information architecture staff from various WFP units; data collection carried out as semi-structured staff interviews in WFP; log analyses of search log-files from WFP intranet portal (WFPgo) from September to November 2013, the results were applied and a suggested taxonomy tested at workshops conducted for the staff in headquarters.

The results reveal an organization with a high demand for easier access to information and knowledge, greater internal collaborations and stronger links with various sources of knowledge. Staff participating in the various workshops pointed out that work processes as well as the human resources component cannot be left out of a solution development.

There has been little research carried out on current taxonomy projects in corporate environments and international emergency response organizations and few has touched on how knowledge organization systems can enhance or constrain staff’s ability to access online content.

This research project aims to provide a new visual representation of the Artefacts Canada digital collection, as well as a means for users to browse this content. Artefacts Canada Humanities is a database containing approximately 3.5 million records describing the different collections of Canadian museums.

A four‐step methodology was adopted for the development of the faceted taxonomy model. First, a best practice review consisting of an extensive analysis of existing terminology standards in museum communities and public web interfaces of large cultural organizations was performed. The second step of the methodology entailed a domain analysis; this involved extracting and comparing relevant concepts from terminological authoritative sources. The third step proceeded to term clustering and entity listing,which involved the breaking‐up of the taxonomy domains into potential facets. An incremental user testing was also realized in order to validate and refine the taxonomy components (facets, values, and relationships).

The project resulted in a bilingual and expandable vocabulary structure that will further be used to describe the Artefacts Canada database records. The new taxonomy simplifies the representation of complex content by grouping objects into similar facets to classify all records of the Artefacts Canada database. The user‐friendly bilingual taxonomy provides worldwide visitors with the means to better access Canadian virtual museum collections.

Few methodological tools are available for museums which wish to adopt a faceted approach in the development of their web sites. For practitioners, the methodology developed within this project is a direct contribution to support web site development of large cultural organizations.

The main objective of the paper is to assess selected taxonomy building tools to review their features and capabilities for supporting development and deployment of taxonomy functions.

A checklist of desirable features and capabilities of taxonomy tools was used for assessment focusing on development, deployment, display, and information environment supported. White papers and product information datasheets on vendor sites were consulted to analyze features and capabilities of selected taxonomy tools.

The review indicates that more than 50 per cent of the selected tools support automatic and hybrid taxonomy building; about 80 per cent allow import and export of taxonomies and vocabularies; and all tools reviewed support classification and tagging. User interfaces, for maintenance, and display in facets, are supported by some tools, while, some have also integrated other visualization tools, or modules to provide clear representation of contents, and relationships.

Analysis is based on review of white papers and product information sheets and is therefore limited to indication of availability features and capabilities. The review does not assess performance of tools which would require use of tools and feedback from actual users.

The checklist used for assessment provides a useful template for organizations interested in assessing tools for taxonomy implementation. A summary of features and capabilities of selected taxonomy tools may also be useful in selecting tools for taxonomy application projects.

Little research has been reported in the literature on assessment methodology and evaluation of taxonomy tools. This study makes a good contribution to the literature on this important aspect of research and makes available useful practical information as well.

The purpose of this paper is to help researchers and practitioners to understand and respond to consumer complaining behaviour (CCB) by developing a taxonomy that addresses the inadequacies of previous consumer complaining taxonomies and models, simplifies the terminology and covers both traditional and new ways of complaining.

Based on a systematic review of 210 studies, a concept-centric analysis of CCB literature was conducted. Seminal taxonomies and models of CCB are revisited and a critical evaluation of these is presented.

An integrated taxonomy of CCB is proposed which enhances the understanding of complaining in the twenty-first century by clarifying the ambiguities and overlapping constructs in the previous taxonomies.

The integrated taxonomy of CCB eliminates the ambiguity of previous approaches and introduces more coherent constructs in relation to the theory of CCB. The taxonomy comprehensively defines and describes the range of complaining actions to provide a complete framework. As a result, the authors’ understanding of CCB is developed through a focus on complaining actions, their characteristics and what these actions afford companies in their attempts to deal with complaints (i.e. audience and amount of information available).

Practitioners can use the integrated taxonomy of CCB to structure their complaint handling processes to obtain maximum customer feedback, to improve their product/service and to retain customers through satisfactorily addressing their complaints.

Although the literature on consumer complaining is mature, this is the first paper that offers a comprehensive taxonomy that explains CCB while addressing new developments in computer-mediated communications.

Several frameworks have been developed to map and document scientific societal interaction and impact, each reflecting the specific forms of impact and interaction that characterize different academic fields. The ReAct taxonomy was developed to register data about “productive interactions” and provide an overview of research activities within the social sciences and humanities (SSH). The purpose of the present research is to examine whether the SSH-oriented taxonomy is relevant to the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines when clarifying societal interactions and impact, and whether the taxonomy adds value to the traditional STEM impact indicators such as citation scores and H-index.

The research question was investigated through qualitative interviews with nine STEM researchers. During the interviews, the ReAct taxonomy and visual research profiles based on the ReAct categories were used to encourage and ensure in-depth discussions. The visual research profiles were based on publicly available material on the research activities of the interviewees.

The study provided an insight into how STEM researchers assessed the importance of mapping societal interactions as a background for describing research impact, including which indicators are useful for expressing societal relevance and impact. With regard to the differences between STEM and SSH, the study identified a high degree of cohesion and uniformity in the importance of indicators. Differences were more closely related to the purpose of mapping and impact assessment than between scientific fields. The importance of amalgamation and synergy between academic and societal activities was also emphasised and clarified.

The findings highlight the importance of mapping societal activities and impact, and that societal indicators should be seen as inspiring guidelines depending on purpose and use. A significant contribution is the identification of both uniformity and diversity between the main fields of SSH and STEM, as well as the connection between the choice of indicators and the purpose of mapping, e.g. for impact measurement, profiling, or career development.

The work sheds light on STEM researchers' views on research mapping, visualisation and impact assessment, including similarities and differences between STEM and SSH research.

The purpose of this study is to provide a systematic literature review on taxonomy alignment methods in information science to explore the common research pipeline and characteristics.

The authors implement a five-step systematic literature review process relating to taxonomy alignment. They take on a knowledge organization system (KOS) perspective, and specifically examining the level of KOS on “taxonomies.”

They synthesize the matching dimensions of 28 taxonomy alignment studies in terms of the taxonomy input, approach and output. In the input dimension, they develop three characteristics: tree shapes, variable names and symmetry; for approach: methodology, unit of matching, comparison type and relation type; for output: the number of merged solutions and whether original taxonomies are preserved in the solutions.

The main research implications of this study are threefold: (1) to enhance the understanding of the characteristics of a taxonomy alignment work; (2) to provide a novel categorization of taxonomy alignment approaches into natural language processing approach, logic-based approach and heuristic-based approach; (3) to provide a methodological guideline on the must-include characteristics for future taxonomy alignment research.

There is no existing comprehensive review on the alignment of “taxonomies”. Further, no other mapping survey research has discussed the comparison from a KOS perspective. Using a KOS lens is critical in understanding the broader picture of what other similar systems of organizations are, and enables us to define taxonomies more precisely.

It is crucial for information retrieval systems to learn more about what users search for in order to fulfil the intent of searches. This paper introduces query taxonomy generation, which attempts to organise users’ queries into a hierarchical structure of topic classes. Such a query taxonomy provides a basis for the in‐depth analysis of users’ queries on a larger scale and can benefit many information retrieval systems. The proposed approach to this problem consists of two computational processes: hierarchical query clustering to generate a query taxonomy from scratch, and query categorisation to place newly‐arrived queries into the taxonomy. The results of the preliminary experiment have shown the potential of the proposed approach in generating taxonomies for queries, which may be useful in various Web information retrieval applications.