Have you ever thought about doing work in the field of

taxonomy development? In this chapter from her new

edition of The Accidental Taxonomist, Heather Hedden
discusses the nature of taxonomy work, offers advice
and encouragement, and recommends a number of
top training and networking resources.

Taxonomy Work and

the Profession
Heather Hedden

If you find what you’re looking for, thank a taxonomist.

—J. D. Henry

An accidental taxonomist could be asked to create, revise, or map a

taxonomy, and after the project is finished, resume his or her previous
job responsibilities. Often, however, an accidental taxonomist
remains a taxonomist, in both job responsibilities and professional
life. This chapter describes the characteristics of taxonomy jobs,
whether full time or freelance, and also suggests sources where
taxonomists might look for continuing education and professional
networking opportunities.

The Nature of Taxonomy Work

The heart of being a taxonomist is dealing with concepts, figuring out
what words are best to describe them, and determining how best to
relate and arrange the concepts so that people can find the information
they are seeking. The task requires a degree of logic as one must
scrupulously analyze relationships between terms. It is neither
entirely technical/mathematical nor entirely linguistic but a little of
each. You always need to keep in mind how others might look for
information when considering how to word a term, create

1
2 The Accidental Taxonomist

nonpreferred terms, structure relationships, and contribute to the

design of the user interface display. Helping people find information
is indeed rewarding, but unlike a traditional librarian, you may never
meet the people whom you are helping. If you work within a large
organization to develop and maintain its internal taxonomies,
however, then you do have the added benefit of constantly being able
to check with users to find out how the taxonomy is serving them and
how it can be improved. However, you would not deal with the
diversity of subject areas that a taxonomist working for an information
provider or a contract taxonomist encounters.
While the skills and qualifications taxonomists need (listed in
Chapter 2) are similar for any kind of taxonomy work, the actual
working environment, conditions, responsibilities, and related duties
can vary greatly. These depend on whether the taxonomist is a full-
time employee, a temporary contract employee, a consultant, or a
freelancer and, in the case of a full-time employee, whether taxonomy
work is the primary job responsibility.

What Taxonomists Enjoy About Their Work

Our survey in May 2015 of those engaged in taxonomy work asked the
open response question: “What do you enjoy about taxonomy work?”
The 90 responses revealed that the vast majority enjoy taxonomy
work for reasons that fall under one or more of the following general
categories, listed in order of the number of responses, and many
actually did list a combination of such reasons:

• Organizing information, and for some a more intellectual

extension of modeling knowledge

• Solving problems and “puzzles”

• Helping people find the content they need or want

• Dealing with language, words, and meaning

• Learning new subjects

 Taxonomy Work and the Profession 3

In the area of organizing information, some of the responses were:

• I LOVE sifting out similarities and differences, cross-

referencing and adding synonyms, and sorting and
standardizing terms. —Margaret Nunez

• I enjoy the structural interconnections and bringing

alignment between metadata, taxonomies, and ontologies,
and the content delivered in the customer/user experience
on websites and in web applications. —Allan Grohe
• I love how a well-planned taxonomy gives us the flexibility
to develop intelligent content models. —Vinish Garg
• The division of a body of knowledge into discrete yet related
concepts, while envisioning how a searcher would think of
the information.

In the area of being challenged and solving problems and puzzles,

responses included:

• I really love the puzzle involved in parsing out the right way
to categorize content. Especially when these categories
might overlap and need to intersect each other in ways that
specifically benefit the user.
• It combines language and technology in interesting ways.
There are complicated puzzles to solve and rarely a “right”
answer. Taxonomy work utilizes my attention to detail.
• I love the daily challenge of the work. No two days are ever
the same.

Examples of responses on the subject of helping other find what

they are looking for included:

• It’s just something I feel passionate about. I love knowing

that the work I do will help users find or discover the right
people or content.

• I like lining up points of view to provide better

understanding and usability.
4 The Accidental Taxonomist

• I also love to teach others how they can improve findability

through tagging. Seeing those a-ha moments in their eyes is
almost better than a paycheck.

• The work itself is systematic and methodical, and if

the taxonomies are deployed well, can result in major
improvements in the client’s information and knowledge
environment. —Patrick Lambe

Regarding working with languages, some responses were:

• First off I love how creative you can be when finding the
perfect words to describe whatever the user wants.

• I like the tricky intersection between the informality

of language/meaning and the formality of structured
relationships.

• I love vocabulary and its relationship to other words, the

structure of the taxonomy.

Comments about getting to learn new things through taxonomy

work included:

• I’m always learning! It requires a breadth of knowledge and

a willingness to learn and research.
• Talking to subject matter experts and understanding how
they classify concepts in their minds.
• Working with taxonomy is about gaining a deeper
understanding about what the taxonomy is about. If it’s the
enterprise taxonomy for a business, it’s truly understanding
what makes that company tick. If it’s a taxonomy about
an idea or an industry or a process, it’s about becoming
thoroughly educated in those items as well. —Seth Maislin

Some further comments of what is enjoyable about taxonomy

work included:

• The analysis, creativity and stakeholder engagement.

 Taxonomy Work and the Profession 5

• I enjoy the far-reaching impact that is possible for such little

effort.

• I enjoy the product development aspect, integrating

taxonomies into the user experience. How to do this well is a
challenge without it feeling clunky and forced.
• What I like most about working on taxonomies is that
they’re at the heart of the problem. Good information
retrieval relies on good indexing, and good indexing
simply isn’t possible without a good taxonomy to
work with. Like any craftsman’s product, a well-
crafted taxonomy is a combination of artistry and
technical skill that is well structured for its purpose.
—John Magee1

What Challenges Taxonomists Face

Our survey also asked the question, “What are pain points or
challenges in your taxonomy work?” What is particular to the field of
taxonomy is getting others to understand a taxonomy’s role and value
and how those who are stakeholders should and should not be
contributing.
Responses around achieving stakeholder understanding and
buy-in included:

• Frequently my biggest challenge is justifying the

work to begin with. A lot of companies want fast solutions of
which taxonomy is not. Nor should it be. So getting buy-in
and once you have that tagging is very challenging.

• Articulating the ROI of taxonomy work.

• Stakeholder buy-in is challenging. Explaining how much

time, effort and money an enterprise taxonomy requires
is a tough sell … especially since the benefits are not
immediately evident.

• People not understanding what I am talking about,

understanding the value, or wondering why development
will take “so long.”
6 The Accidental Taxonomist

Sometimes interest in the taxonomy is too great, where there are

competing interests, expectations, and requests, as suggested by the
following comments:

• Too many opposing or conflicting opinions of how the

taxonomy should be structured.
• Employees want to reflect organisational structure into the
taxonomy.
• Company politics and self-styled “experts” who are product
managers, librarians with no taxonomy experience, or
marketing people.
• Contributors who insist that more keywords are better.
• Outside influences/marketing and sales reps requesting to
alter taxonomy to better fit key words and buzz terms as
opposed to technical terms.
• Different people in our organization expect different things
out of our taxonomy.

The lack of ideal tools or technology is also an issue for some with
such responses as:

• Setting up a system and processes to get the metadata

aligned is frustrating and slow going.
• Finding good software that isn’t enterprise-level.
• SharePoint—people are often forced to use it, and it is
really not that great at anything, especially taxonomy
management.
• Software not intended for taxonomies
• Keeping up with shifting technologies.

Limited resources, such as in time or money, are typical concerns:

• The most difficult challenge for me is advocacy for

appropriate resources (e.g., tools, personnel)
 Taxonomy Work and the Profession 7

• Having to move quickly without the proper time to consider

the implications of additions or changes

• Finding the time to do it well

• The expense and effort involved in classification can limit

project scope

Some other comments of note regarding difficulties faced in

taxonomy work included:

• The two biggest challenges I have had are (1) getting

assurance that the taxonomy will be maintained after
completion and (2) explaining how a taxonomy is useful to
teammates with different professional backgrounds.

• Getting follow-through from business teams, walking the

line between business and technical communication, poor
data quality, explaining how the taxonomy works, finding all
stakeholders in a project.

• Balancing standards/best practices with actual needs of

customers, systems.

• (1) Acquiring quality taxonomy tags when the

taxonomy is deployed. (2) Ensuring continued maintenance
and governance of the taxonomy once deployed. —Patrick
Lambe

Employment Opportunities
Taxonomists work for varied employers: governments, international
agencies, publishers, information providers, online retailers,
consultancies, software vendors, and large corporations in any
industry, with examples named in Chapter 2. The fact of the matter is
that taxonomists often move around from one industry to another,
between products and services, between profit-making and nonprofit
enterprises, which certainly contributes to interesting careers. Only
some fields, such as medical, pharmaceutical, and scientific/technical
publishers, tend to require subject matter expertise.
8 The Accidental Taxonomist

Dedicated, full-time, permanent taxonomist positions exist, but

they are still not very common compared with other types of positions.
Any large corporation or government agency that cares to structure
and organize its terminology has enough ongoing information
management needs to keep at least one full-time taxonomist busy all
the time and at times needs even more assistance. However, one or
two taxonomists out of a staff of thousands do not amount to much of
the labor force. Businesses involved in the sale of indexed content
also employ taxonomists and may even support a small team of
taxonomists, but such businesses are few. The job-seeking taxonomist
who does not wish to relocate may have to wait a while before a
position opens up.
If you are searching for a taxonomist job, you will find relatively few
openings in any given geographic area. It’s not merely a matter of the
diversity of job titles used (see Chapter 2), though that does complicate
the search. The fact is that the number of positions in which taxonomy
is the primary role is rather limited, and the number of open positions
is much smaller still. What is more common, however, are positions in
which taxonomy is one of several responsibilities. A search on
taxonomy or taxonomies within the job descriptions of open positions
yields many more results than a search for taxonomy or taxonomist
limited to the job title. For example, on October 30, 2015, the aggregate
job search board Indeed.com listed only 15 jobs with taxonomist and
28 taxonomy in the title for all of the United States, but 1,776 with
taxonomy in the job description (after excluding jobs with the words
biology, biologist, plant, and zoology), with such titles as business
analyst, technical writer, data modeler, digital content specialist, and
so on. What this means is that you need not be a taxonomist to find
yourself using taxonomy skills in your job.
Although the number of jobs may be relatively small, they are
growing. The exact same search conducted on Indeed.com six years
prior (September 30, 2009) yielded only six jobs total with taxonomist
or taxonomy in the title and less than 1,000 with the words in the job
description.
 Taxonomy Work and the Profession 9

A resource for locating jobs that comprise primarily taxonomy

work is the Yahoo! mailing list group called Taxonomy Jobs (groups.
yahoo.com/neo/groups/taxonomy-jobs). Job postings are from
employers and recruiters, who proactively submit such job
announcements, but many other taxonomy job openings are not
included on this list.

Taxonomists as Contractors
A taxonomy project can take a considerable amount of work for only
a temporary period of time. This usually applies to the design and
creation stage, but revision and integration projects can also demand
periods of intensive work. Thus, to supplement internal resources, a
great deal of taxonomy work is done by contractors, whether
consultants, or temporary employees. For small operations, these
outsiders can take the place of a full-time taxonomist employee, but
for larger taxonomy needs, they merely supplement the work of
in-house experts.
Some differences in working conditions between employees and
contractors are common across industries, but there are also certain
specific differences with regard to taxonomy work. For contractors,
the biggest benefit is that a lot of taxonomy work can be done at home,
and thus they can work for clients in other parts of the country or
even in other countries. Most taxonomy management software
permits remote access, but many contract projects require only Excel.
Contractors also encounter a variety of subject areas to work on, and
when working on terms, this diversity is important to many. (As a
contractor, I have worked on taxonomies for consumer products,
industry categories, insurance, news, business management, travel,
food, mining, banking, academic fields of study, transportation,
travel, and names of writers, among other areas.)
On the negative side, contractors usually lack access to the latest
software and other technical support services. Tasks such as
comparing or merging lists of terms could often benefit from scripts
that perhaps only more technical colleagues at an office can provide.
10 The Accidental Taxonomist

It is difficult for a contractor to design a taxonomy for a content

management system without the benefit of ever having been the user
of any content management system or for SharePoint if they are not a
user of SharePoint. Finally, the self-employed taxonomist does not
have the support of workplace colleagues who can provide input and
answers to questions for subjective taxonomy-building tasks. (Of
course, not all taxonomist employees have as much co-worker
support as they would like either, particularly if they are the only
person in an organization who is knowledgeable about taxonomies.)
For a self-employed person seeking taxonomy work, there are
plenty of opportunities, but there is a distinct difference between
working as a consultant, directly for a client, and working as a
freelancer, a step removed from the taxonomy’s users. The nature of
the work and the working conditions for each role are quite different.

Working as a Consultant
One of the main distinctions between consultants and freelancers, in
general, is that consultants tell their clients what to do, whereas
clients tell their freelancers what to do. To be fair, consultants usually
(but not always) undertake work on actually constructing the
taxonomy as well, but consultants are expected to do at least some
consulting, which means giving formal advice to the client. Thus,
consultants need to take more initiative, do more research on the
taxonomy’s intended use, and make more decisions, and they may
have to persuade the client that the taxonomy should be done a
certain way. In compensation for this, of course, consultants get paid
more than freelancers do. It is also more fulfilling to design an entire
taxonomy and make the decisions about its structure. However, even
consultants do not always get to design new taxonomies. Increasingly,
consulting projects involve reviewing existing taxonomies and
making recommendations for improvements.
Following is a summary of what is expected of taxonomy
consultants in contrast with taxonomy freelancers.

• Write up a proposal of what you intend to deliver (and then

deliver it).
 Taxonomy Work and the Profession 11

• Estimate how much time you will need (and then meet
these deadlines).
• Set a pay rate as high as you dare without risking losing a
bid to a competing consultant (and do not ask for more
money later if it takes more time and effort than expected).
• Meet with the client face-to-face at the client’s site, and
possibly make several visits to conduct research for the
taxonomy based on stakeholder interviews, card-sorting
exercises, and test searching a system within a firewall.
• Deliver (PowerPoint) presentations to the client of what you
intend to do and later what you have done, and what the
issues are.
• Write up recommendations that will contribute to the
taxonomy governance.
• Negotiate any differences of opinion on taxonomy design.
• Have your own thesaurus management software (with
compatible export format options).

Consultants can work for distant clients, too, if they are willing to
travel, and in the taxonomy field, most do. Recognizing the fact that
there are relatively few qualified taxonomy consultants, a client does
not necessarily expect to find a local consultant and will look
nationally and reimburse travel expenses. Similarly, a consultant
cannot expect to find all clients locally. A three-month project might
involve three on-site visits of one to three days each, but a six-month
project may not involve much more.
Working directly with a client on a taxonomy project, especially an
enterprise taxonomy project, can be challenging, though. The client
might have difficulty communicating the scope and requirements of
the project or might not even know which makes it difficult for the
consultant to know what is expected and what to deliver. Indeed some
of the complaints taxonomists have about their work pertain
specifically to consultant–client relationships. A survey response
regarding the difficulties of taxonomy work in consulting stated: “The
12 The Accidental Taxonomist

hardest part to taxonomy challenges is getting the full story from your
clients. I work at an agency and often have to walk clients through our
thinking.”
A successful taxonomy project, though, can be very rewarding for
the taxonomist.
Finally, consultants need to aggressively market themselves. This
includes speaking at conferences and trade shows (commercial and
industry shows, more so than librarian/indexer association events),
publishing articles in trade journals, publishing a blog, participating
in professional networking organizations, and actively contributing
to discussion groups and social networking sites. The consultant
should have a professional website, and the website should include
all relevant informational resources (articles, presentations, etc.) and
be optimized for search engines.

Working as a Freelancer
The work of a freelancer, on the other hand, may be less challenging
than that of a consultant, but the diversity of projects usually keeps it
stimulating. A freelancer typically works on only part of a taxonomy
and does not get to see the bigger picture. The freelance taxonomist is
usually immersed in terms, not in structure.
Following is a summary of what is expected of taxonomy freelancers
in contrast with taxonomy consultants.

• Follow instructions, guidelines, and editorial policy

provided by the client.

• Agree to work a set number of hours per week and/or

complete a project by the client’s deadline.
• Work with little or no contact with the taxonomy users.
• Accept any decisions that have already been made regarding
the taxonomy design.
• Expect the client to provide any software that is not part of
the standard Microsoft Office suite.
• Expect to do all or most work from home.
 Taxonomy Work and the Profession 13

• Accept the hourly rate proposed by the client (with perhaps

a little negotiation at the start).

In comparison with in-house taxonomist employees, freelance

taxonomists do not usually get involved with full taxonomy and
thesaurus development. A large thesaurus may be too complex and
interrelated to be broken up into sections for freelancers, even if web-
based thesaurus software permits remote access. Also, a project
manager might feel that all taxonomists need to have broader overall
knowledge of the thesaurus and favor former employees over new
freelancers. An exception is work on named entities, whose
relationships with other terms are generally not as complex. (Research
regarding additional attributes for each name term might be a bigger
part of the project.) A freelance taxonomist might not even be called a
taxonomist but rather a taxonomy editor, with the implication that
taxonomists design taxonomies. Freelance projects could include the
following:

• Building term hierarchies for website taxonomies

• Building a top-level straw-man taxonomy
• Mapping nonpreferred search terms to taxonomy terms
• Researching, adding, and/or editing named entity terms
• Adding and editing additional attributes to terms
(particularly named entities), involving research and
data entry

• Providing training documents or writing term rules in

support of auto-categorization

Freelance taxonomy work is paid on an hourly basis, and this

could be frustrating for the freelancer who comes from an editing or
indexing background and is accustomed to being paid per page or
per database record. It is impossible to estimate how many terms
one can create or edit per hour, because there are too many variables.
14 The Accidental Taxonomist

Freelance Opportunities
Freelance work is available for taxonomists, but unless you have a
steady client, the work is quite sporadic, more so than book indexing
or editorial freelance work. Thus, freelance taxonomists often
combine this work with something else, such as consulting, teaching,
indexing, or a part-time library job. Steady clients might be found
among the few taxonomy vendors, information vendors, or software
vendors mentioned in Chapter 2, but these opportunities are
somewhat rare. Most of the freelance work offered by information
vendors and publishers consists of indexing/tagging rather than
taxonomy work. Sources of intermittent freelance taxonomy work
include web/online advertisers and directories, search engines,
ecommerce sites, and portals. Taxonomy consultancies are also a
good source of work for freelance taxonomists, but their work is never
steady or predictable, as it depends on when the consultants wins a
contract with a client. Then on very short notice, there will be a
substantial amount of work to take on. Thus freelancing requires
flexibility.
Freelancers must also market and promote themselves, but not
necessarily as publicly as consultants do. The best way for freelancers
to get work is through networking, especially among taxonomy
consultants and fellow freelancers. As taxonomy projects vary in size,
often one project needs multiple part-time taxonomy editors. Thus,
when one freelancer joins a project, the client may ask that freelancer
to refer more taxonomy editors to help. In a more concerted effort to
support freelance taxonomists in finding projects, the Taxonomies &
Controlled Vocabularies Special Interest Group of the American
Society for Indexing (ASI) has set up a directory of available freelance
taxonomists on its website (www.taxonomies-sig.org/members.htm).

Taxonomists as Temporary Contract Employees

Finally, taxonomists on temporary assignment for a project could be
hired as temporary contract employees, typically through a staffing
agency to work at the staffing agency’s client. They would be on the
payroll of the staffing agency and treated as employees of the staffing
 Taxonomy Work and the Profession 15

agency for the duration of the project. This type of employment is

quite common for short-term assignments in technology professions,
and it is increasingly the case for the semitechnical role of a
taxonomist.
The main difference from the previously described consultant and
freelancer roles is that the contract employee is generally expected to
work on-site full time for the duration of the project. Thus, contract
work is typically only an option for taxonomists already living in
major metropolitan areas. In other cases, they just might be very
lucky to find something locally. Computer hardware and software will
often be provided to the on-site contractor.
The nature of the temporary work may vary and could involve
some level of responsibility and decision making, as is characteristic
of the consultant, but it also could involve following more direction
as is the case for the freelancer. It really depends on the level of
expertise in taxonomy that the organization already has. A contract
taxonomist, unlike a freelancer, may be the sole taxonomist on a
project, so a certain degree of expertise and decision making may be
expected, but their authority and flexibility is not as great as a
consultant. The hourly pay rate is similar to freelancing, considerably
less than consulting, but many more hours can be logged in a short
period of time.

Education and Training

Taxonomy is still an accidental profession. Dedicated academic
programs in the field are lacking. There are no majors, concentrations,
or certificate programs and only a few courses on the subject. Thus,
an aspiring professional cannot plan to become a taxonomist and
take all the necessary university courses for it. Educational
opportunities for learning how to create taxonomies, thesauri,
controlled vocabularies, and so on consist of individual courses in
library schools, continuing education workshops, professional
organization online learning programs, consulting firm training
programs, conference workshops and sessions, and online tutorials.
16 The Accidental Taxonomist

Information and Library Science Graduate

Degree Courses
A review of the course catalogs on the websites for the 58 academic
institutions with a graduate degree program in library/information
science accredited by the American Libraries Association (ALA) in the
United States and Canada, with instruction in English, reveals very
few courses with the words taxonomies, thesaurus, or ontology in the
titles. (There are no undergraduate courses in these fields.)
Furthermore, some of these courses are only offered occasionally (not
every year) or in the summer. In the 2015–2016 degree program course
catalogs, there appeared to be only seven such courses:

• Indexing & Thesaurus Construction, University of California

at Los Angeles

• Indexing, Abstracting, and Thesaurus Construction, Catholic

University of America

• Knowledge Taxonomies, School of Information Studies,

McGill University

• Taxonomies: Research and Evaluation, University of British

Columbia

• Ontologies, Indiana University at Bloomington

• Ontology Development, University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign

• Thesaurus Construction, University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign

Courses that include coverage of various kinds of controlled

vocabularies, while not dedicated exclusively to these topics, are
greater in number. There are another 25 courses at ALA-accredited
institutions that have various types of knowledge organization
systems (controlled vocabularies, thesauri, taxonomies, or ontologies)
mentioned in the course descriptions, as one of several topics covered.
There are of course many other courses that may include a single
class session on taxonomies but do not mention it in the brief, one- to
 Taxonomy Work and the Profession 17

three-sentence course description. Examples of courses with various

kinds of knowledge organization systems mentioned in their
description are as follows, as follows:

• Information Modeling, University of Illinois

• Introduction to Knowledge Organization, Long Island

University

• Knowledge Management, University of Washington

• Managing Organizational Information Assets, University of

Michigan

• Metadata & Access, McGill University

• Metadata and Resource Description, Drexel University

• Organization of Information, Dalhousie University

Graduate courses on knowledge organization or organization of

information, however, tend to be surveys about the subject, rather
than how to create knowledge organization systems. Sometimes the
course is about organization of information just in libraries, such as
Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, Dewey Decimal Classification,
Library of Congress Classification, and Library of Congress Subject
Headings. But other times it covers various controlled vocabularies,
such as taxonomies, thesauri, or ontologies.
Many library/information science programs include some
instruction (perhaps only a class session) on thesaurus construction
as part of a course on information management or indexing. Such
literature retrieval thesauri, however, are only one kind of controlled
vocabulary. A class session or project in creating an indexing thesaurus
does not constitute sufficient training to start creating website or
enterprise taxonomies. Nevertheless, even this instruction in the
creation of traditional literature retrieval thesauri is not widespread
in library school, compared with instruction in the cataloging of
books.
Courses in cataloging and classification are taught in most library
science programs, but the courses typically cover cataloguing
18 The Accidental Taxonomist

standards, codes, and formats with respect to existing systems

(Resource Description & Access (RDA), Dewey Decimal Classification
(DDC), Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), and Machine-
Readable Cataloging (MARC21), rather than how to develop a new
knowledge organization system.
Other courses of related interest are taught at schools of information
science, without library science in the name, where the scope of study
is broader. These courses include the following:

• Content Management Systems, University of Michigan

• Data Mining, McGill University
• Information Systems Design, Indiana University
Bloomington
• Semantics-Based Knowledge Descriptions and
Organization, University of Michigan

Although library and information science courses tend to be limited

to students enrolled in a degree program, some graduate schools
permit nondegree students to enroll in one or two regular courses if
space is available. Such nondegree student options include the Open
Classes program at San Jose State University School of Information,
the Nondegree/Community Credit program at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign, and the Nondegree options at St. Catherine
University. The prerequisite is usually just a bachelor’s degree. These
courses may be online (as is the case for San Jose State), making them
accessible to anyone.

Information and Library Science Continuing

Education Programs
“Continuing education” does not mean the same thing at every
institution. Many schools of library and information science offer a
form of continuing education, whereby someone who already has the
MLIS or equivalent degree can take individual courses, as a nondegree
student, selected from the regular course catalog. In other cases, the
only option to take courses as a nondegree student is to be enrolled in
 Taxonomy Work and the Profession 19

a post-master’s certificate program, which requires a minimum

number of credits. Post-bachelor’s certificate programs are rare.
Only a few schools of library and information science offer a
dedicated continuing education program or professional development
comprised of separate short classes or workshops available to anyone
with no prerequisites. Such dedicated continuing education classes
or workshops are not for credit, are shorter than a regular college
course, and are less in-depth, but they do offer an interactive learning
experience. They may be offered as single, full-day on-site workshops
or as online classes for just a few weeks. These classes are an especially
suitable source of instruction in new or hot fields as they can be
created and added on short notice and may be taught by practicing
professionals rather than academic faculty. Such continuing
education workshop programs are offered at the following institutions:

• Kent State University, School of Library & Information

Science (http://www.kent.edu/slis/continuing-study-
courses-workshops)

• Simmons College, School of Library and Information

Science (www.simmons.edu/academics/professional-
education/slis-continuing-ed-workshops)

• University of Toronto, School of Continuing Studies and

Faculty of Information (Classes are part of a certificate
program in Information Management, but classes are
shorter and less expensive than regular credit courses. Only
some are online.) (learn.utoronto.ca/courses-programs/
business-professionals/ischool)

• University of Wisconsin at Madison, School of Library and

Information Science (www.slis.wisc.edu/continueed.htm)

At this time, only one of these continuing education programs

offers an online workshop in taxonomies, and that is Simmons
College, with a five-week workshop, “Taxonomies and Controlled
Vocabularies.” Other college continuing education programs could
add a knowledge organization system class or workshop at any time.
20 The Accidental Taxonomist

Professional Association Programs

Several professional associations offer online taxonomy workshops
and seminars, which are accessible globally. Examples of such
programs are the following:

American Society for Indexing (ASI)

Part of ASI’s Online Short Course program is “Practical Taxonomy
Creation,” a webinar series comprising three one-hour sessions,
originally presented live and video-recorded in 2015. Handouts are
also provided. Registrants have access to unlimited repeat viewings.
Sessions are (1) Taxonomy types for different applications, (2)
Gathering terms for a taxonomy, and (3) Thesaurus management
software use with recorded demos (www.asindexing.org/online-
learning/taxonomy-hedden).

AIIM (Association for Information and Image

Management International)
“Taxonomy & Metadata Practitioner Course” is an online, self-paced
course including an audio slide presentation. The topics are especially
business-focused, including scoping a taxonomy project, developing
a business case, selecting a taxonomy tool, and establishing a
governance framework. There is one exam at the end of the course
that must be passed in order to obtain a certificate. Once purchased,
the course topics, supporting materials, and exams are accessible
online and on demand from AIIM’s training portal for six months.
AIIM has also offered face-to-face workshops from time to time.
Registration is 10 percent discounted for AIIM members (www.aiim.
org/Training/Certificate-Courses/Taxonomy-and-Metadata).

SLA (Special Libraries Association)

SLA Taxonomy Division’s Continuing Education program comprises
one-hour live webinars on taxonomy-related topics presented several
times a year. Registration is free for SLA Taxonomy Division members,
and recordings are available at different rates for SLA members and
non-SLA members (taxonomy.sla.org/category/ce).
 Taxonomy Work and the Profession 21

American Libraries Association (ALA)

ALA-affiliated divisions may offer taxonomy-related webinars from
time to time, as the Association of College and Research Libraries
(www.ala.org/acrl) has in the past. In addition, the Association for
Library Collections and Technical Services division of the ALA had
codeveloped a full-day PowerPoint workshop for the Library of
Congress Catalogers Learning Workshop/Cooperative Cataloging
Training program called “Controlled Vocabulary & Thesaurus Design,”
intended to be taught by qualified instructors (www.loc.gov/
catworkshop/courses/thesaurus).

Conference Workshops
If you prefer a live workshop with instructor interaction, then
conference workshops might be your best option. A number of
professional association and commercial conferences in the
information management field include workshops on taxonomies.
The exact programs and speakers will vary from year to year. In the
case of professional organization conference workshops,
nonmembers are typically permitted to attend at a slightly higher
rate. If the program is offered as pre- or postconference workshop,
either full day or half day, then there is a separate registration from
the main conference with no obligation to register for the main
conference. Sometimes taxonomy workshops of only two to three
hours are offered as part of the main conference program.

Professional Organization Conference Workshops

Professional organization conferences with workshops include:

• The SLA Annual Conference (www.sla.org/attend) is usually

held in June in different North American cities. There are
both half-day and full-day preconference workshops called
Continuing Education Courses with separate registrations,
and typically there is a workshop on taxonomy creation.
Some years there are even two taxonomy-related workshops.
SLA chapters in different regions and countries also hold
22 The Accidental Taxonomist

conferences and meetings, which may include taxonomy-

related sessions.

• The American Society for Indexing (ASI) Annual Meeting

(www.asindexing.org/conferences) is held every spring,
usually in May, in different US cities. ASI typically offers a
workshop on creating taxonomies and thesauri, either a
half-day workshop as part of the regular two-day conference
program or a full-day pre- or postconference workshop.
Regional ASI chapters have also held taxonomy-related
sessions and workshops.

• The Association for Information Science and Technology

(ASIS&T) Annual Meeting (www.asist.org/events/annual-
meeting), which is usually held in October or November in
different North American cities, has two and half days of
preconference workshops, and often there is a workshop
on an aspect of knowledge organization systems. Although
ASIS&T has the reputation of being more academic in its
membership and in its regular conference sessions; its
preconference workshops are very practical and are more
often taught by practitioners than by academics.

• The Information Architecture (IA) Summit (www.iasummit.

org), held in March or April in various North American cities
and sponsored by ASIS&T, is a conference dedicated to
information architecture. Most participants are not ASIS&T
members but rather are practicing information architects.
Often there is at least one taxonomy-related session among
the numerous preconference workshops or regular sessions.
Euro IA (www.euroia.org) is an affiliated English-language
conference with a similar program that takes place on
the European continent in September or October each year.

• The American Libraries Association (ALA) Midwinter

Meeting in January and Annual Conference in June or July
are held in different, major US cities every year (www.ala.
org/ala/conferencesevents). Both of these annual events
feature full-day and half-day preconference workshops,
 Taxonomy Work and the Profession 23

called Institutes, typically sponsored by ALA divisions.

Considering that any topic related to libraries could be on
the program, there often is not enough space to include a
session on taxonomies, but occasionally a taxonomy-related
workshop is included. ALA is very large, so its divisions
are also large and have their own national, multiday
conferences. These may also be venues for taxonomy-
related workshops, especially the Association for Library
Collections and Technical Services and the Library and
Information Technology Association. Similarly, state and
regional ALA chapters also hold conferences.

• The AIIM Conference (www.aiimevents.com) is held

annually in March or April in different US cities. Its
preconference workshops are some of the same as its
certificate programs, which could include the Taxonomy
& Metadata Practitioner Course described in the previous
section, Professional Association Programs. In addition,
the regular conference sessions typically include a
session on a taxonomy topic. AIIM regional chapters also
have conferences that may include half-day taxonomy
workshops.

There are also several conferences pertaining to ontologies and the

Semantic Web, which might be of interest, such as the International
Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) (swsa.semanticweb.org/content/
international-semantic-web-conference-iswc), but these conferences
do not have workshops.

Commercial Conferences
Commercial conferences, some of which have workshops, include:

• Taxonomy Boot Camp (www.taxonomybootcamp.com),

put on by Information Today, Inc., takes place every year
in Washington, D.C., in late October or early November.
It comprises two days of all taxonomy-related sessions.
A taxonomy fundamentals workshop (1.5 hours) is often
presented the first morning.
24 The Accidental Taxonomist

• KMWorld (www.kmworld.com/conference), a larger

Information Today conference co-located and overlapping
with Taxonomy Boot Camp (sharing the same exhibition
and one keynote presentation), features sessions of related
interest on knowledge management. KMWorld includes
several half-day, preconference workshop options (with
separate registration), which may be on taxonomy-related
topics.

• Henry Stewart Conferences & Events hosts the

DAM (Data Asset Management) Conference (www.
henrystewartconferences.com) at different times of the
year in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and London.
Presentations often include a taxonomy topic, although the
preconference workshops, called Tutorials, are usually not
dedicated to taxonomies.

• SPTechCon (www.sptechcon.com) is one of several

SharePoint conferences. It is usually held in Austin in winter,
and San Francisco in spring, and Boston in late summer. The
conference includes full-day and half-day Tutorials, although
these are on various technical aspects of SharePoint, and not
about developing taxonomies in SharePoint.

Organizations, Networking, and Resources

All kinds of taxonomists can benefit from networking, whether they
are seeking jobs or clients or not. Employed taxonomists, too, feel a
need for professional networking, perhaps because they are the only
taxonomist in their organization or because new projects and
technologies always bring new challenges. In addition, since it is
often difficult for taxonomists to explain to others what they do, it is
nice to get together, even if only virtually, with others in the same
profession to exchange experiences.

Professional Associations
There is no professional association dedicated to taxonomists, but it
is questionable whether there even should be one, since most
 Taxonomy Work and the Profession 25

taxonomists already belong to at least one, if not two or more, of the

professional associations mentioned in the previous section. There is
no shortage of conferences, and if a dedicated discussion forum is
needed, a number of those already exist independently.
Two established professional associations have dedicated
taxonomy subgroups. The American Society for Indexing (ASI) has
had a Taxonomies and Controlled Vocabularies Special Interest Group
(SIG) since 2008, and SLA has had a Taxonomy Division since 2009.
There is some overlap in membership, but most of ASI’s members are
indexers, especially freelance back-of-the-book indexers, and most of
SLA’s Taxonomy Division members are corporate, special, or academic
librarians.
ASI’s Taxonomies and Controlled Vocabularies SIG (www.
taxonomies-sig.org) is, according to its website, “for those in the
indexing profession who are involved in creating or editing
taxonomies, thesauri, or controlled vocabularies used for indexing.”
Some indexers may need to create controlled vocabularies for larger
indexing projects, but others are simply attracted to thesaurus
creation work due to its similarities with writing book indexes. Most
of ASI’s members are freelancers, and so are the members of the
Taxonomies and Controlled Vocabularies SIG. The SIG’s website thus
serves the additional purpose of promoting members’ freelance
services. Membership in the SIG is open to members of ASI and
affiliated indexing societies, such as the Indexing Society of Canada,
the Society of Indexers (United Kingdom), and the Australia and New
Zealand Society of Indexers.
The Taxonomy Division of SLA (taxonomy.sla.org) “offers a practical
context for exploring issues and sharing experiences related to
planning, creating and maintaining taxonomies, thesauri, authority
files, and other controlled vocabularies and information structures,”
according to the SLA website. In contrast with ASI’s group, the
Taxonomy Division focuses more on conference program planning,
educational webinars, and social networking applications. Although
membership in the division is limited to SLA members, SLA is an
26 The Accidental Taxonomist

international organization with chapters and members throughout

the world.
Other professional associations of possible interest to taxonomists
include the IA Institute (www.iainstitute.org) for information
architecture and ASIS&T (the Association of Information Science &
Technology) (www.asist.org).

Networking
Well before these new professional organization subgroups were
formed, taxonomists began actively networking through conference
gatherings, discussion lists, and other social networking groups.

Conferences and Meetings

Taxonomy Boot Camp (www.taxonomybootcamp.com), sponsored
by Information Today, Inc., is the only conference completely
dedicated to taxonomies. As such, it is the best face-to-face networking
event for taxonomists, whether employees or self-employed. In
addition to those who already consider themselves taxonomists,
many attendees simply want to learn more about taxonomies because
of a project they are involved in. Taxonomy Boot Camp, usually held
in late October or early November, first opened in New York in 2005
and took place in San Jose, California, for four years, but since 2010 it
has been held in Washington, D.C. It is co-located with the KMWorld
Conference and usually also Enterprise Search & Discovery and
SharePoint Symposium, so all four conferences share the same
exhibits and preconference workshops.
Local taxonomy gatherings are more difficult to arrange due to the
relatively small numbers of taxonomists, but such events have
occurred from time to time.
A growth in local face-to-face professional gatherings has been
encouraged by the networking portal Meetup.com, founded in 2002,
which facilitates the establishment and functioning of groups that
meet regularly or periodically in locations around the world through
hosted websites for event scheduling and attendee response. Although
the field of taxonomy is probably too narrow for a dedicated meetup
 Taxonomy Work and the Profession 27

in any city, meetups in related fields, such as content management or

information architecture, may include occasional taxonomy-focused
events on their agendas.
In addition to the conferences mentioned in the previous section
on Education and Training, other commercial conferences of potential
interest with topics related to (if not about) taxonomies include
Document Strategy Forum, CMSWire’s DXSummit, the Gilbane
Conference, and various text analytics conferences. Networking can
be done at the exhibits and receptions without registering for the full
conference.

Online Discussion and Social Networking Groups

Online discussion groups are a great way to both network and obtain
advice or information. The platforms for the groups have been shifting.
Originally they were just listserv mailing lists, then Yahoo! Groups
became popular, and more recently LinkedIn is where most of the
activity is. Taxonomy Community of Practice is the leading group. It
started in 2005 and still exists as a Yahoo! Group (groups.yahoo.com/
neo/groups/taxocop/info), where there are about 1,250 members, but
discussion volume has dropped from over 100 messages per month in
some of months of the early years to around 5–20 messages per month
in recent years. As the name implies, most of the discussion centers
around taxonomy development and maintenance practices. The
corresponding LinkedIn group of the same name (www.linkedin.
com/groups/1750) has 3,330 members as of fall 2015 and continues to
grow. The LinkedIn group, however, tends to be used more for
announcements than for topical discussions.
As a spin-off from Taxonomy Community of Practice, a live, Webex-
based discussion group, called Real-World Taxonomy, was started in
October 2015 by a taxonomist at Forrester Research, Marie Rodgers. It
has periodic meetings, and discussion topics are proposed in advance
via shared Google Docs. Topics of discussion have included taxonomy
governance, taxonomy management and taxonomy management
software, and integration with content management systems.
28 The Accidental Taxonomist

Other LinkedIn groups of related interest include ASI Taxonomies

& Controlled Vocabularies SIG, Classification and Metadata for
Information Governance, DAM Pros, Metadata Management, SLA
Taxonomy Division, Semantic Technologies, Semantic Web,
SharePoint Community Group, Text Analytics, Thesaurus
Professionals, and User Experience.

Web Resources
Finally, there are a number of web resources on taxonomies. The
following is only a sampling, and it also does not include the websites
of the professional organizations previously mentioned in this chapter.

Online Tutorial:

• Construction of Controlled Vocabularies: A Primer, written

by a member of the ANSI/NISO Z39.19 Standard Committee
(marciazeng.slis.kent.edu/Z3919/index.htm)

Blogs:

• Accidental Taxonomist (accidental-taxonomist.blogspot

.com)

• Earley & Associates Blog (www.earley.com/blog)

• Enterprise Knowledge (www.enterprise-knowledge.com/

category/blog)

• Green Chameleon (www.greenchameleon.com)

• Semantic Puzzle (blog.semantic-web.at)

• Synaptica Central (www.synapticacentral.com)

• TaxoDiary (taxodiary.com)

Resource-rich sites of consultants or vendors:

• Access Innovations (www.accessinn.com/media-library)

• Controlled Vocabulary (www.controlledvocabulary.com)

 Taxonomy Work and the Profession 29

• Taxonomy Strategies (www.taxonomystrategies.com/html/

library.htm)

• Taxonomy Warehouse (www.taxonomywarehouse.com)

In addition to these web resources is, of course, the website of this

book (www.accidental-taxonomist.com). The taxonomy profession is
definitely an evolving one. New businesses and information needs of
organizations and new technologies will impact the field. Taxonomists,
too, can help define and direct the field through their professional
organization activities, their writing (including blogging), and their
speaking engagements. Individuals who are not afraid to try new
things, such as taxonomy work, are also not likely to be afraid of
changes and evolution within the field over time.

Endnote
1. John Magee, email to the author (rather than a survey response), October
23, 2015.

About the Author

Heather Hedden has been developing and editing taxonomies since
1995. She has worked as an independent consultant and is currently a
senior vocabulary editor at Cengage Learning. She is also an instructor
of taxonomy development through the continuing education program
of Simmons College School of Library and Information Science.
In addition to her writing, Heather has given presentations and
workshops at Taxonomy Boot Camp, Enterprise Search Summit,
Gilbane Conference, Content Management Professionals, SLA, ASI,
Indexing Society of Canada, Society of Indexers (UK), and Netherlands
Society of Indexers. She is currently (2015–2018) a member of the
board of the American Society for Indexing and a member (2015–
2016) of the NISO working group “Development of Standards to
Support Bibliographic Data Exchange.”

This chapter will appear in The Accidental Taxonomist,

Second Edition, by Heather Hedden (April 2016). For more
information visit http://books.infotoday.com.