Taxonomy Strategies is an information management consultancy that specializes in applying taxonomies, metadata, automatic classification, and other information retrieval technologies to the needs of business.
What is a Taxonomy?
A taxonomy provides the overall scheme for organizing content to solve a business problem such as improving search, browsing for content enterprise-wide, enabling business users to catalog reports or syndicate content, and otherwise providing the basis for effective and efficient content use and re-use.
Taxonomies represent a predefined organizational structure that can cover a range of subjects from general industries or fields of study to the relevant words and terms unique to the business. They are usually arranged hierarchically, reflect general to more specific relationships and show correlations between subject areas.
Taxonomies also help to provide an optimized map or information architecture that allows users to intuitively navigate content, or directs users to the content the site owner wants them to see.
What are the key benefits of a Taxonomy?
Effectiveness to help you make money
Control of your content and compliance with regulations
Efficiency to help you save money
“For a large enterprise to share information across diverse product lines and functions, a common language or taxonomy is required to classify the information. The best way to develop the common taxonomy is to look at the hierarchies currently in use.”
Powerful Presentations
Using Vocabularies to Provide Consistency Across Structured Content
Description:
Application profiles provide a framework for structuring information related to a particular application. These can include two types of vocabularies – schema and value vocabularies. Schema vocabularies such as SKOS, RDFS, Dublin Core, and Schema.org specify the properties and attributes related to the application, while value vocabularies (ranging from simple controlled vocabularies to taxonomies and ontologies) specify the valid instances for those properties and attributes. This talk provides an accessible overview of application profiles and makes the case for why this type of documentation is important in the context of artificial intelligence.
Date: April 15, 2026
Venue: Taxonomy Bootcamp London 2026
Location: London
Broad Topic: Taxonomy
Presenter: Joseph Busch, Principal Analyst, Taxonomy Strategies
Click here to watch the presentation, read the script, and download files.
Thesaurus Standards for Taxonomies
Description:
In this talk Heather Hedden and Joseph Busch discuss the similarities and differences of thesauri and taxonomies, provide an introduction to the standards used for thesauri and taxonomies, and talk about the relevance of thesaurus standards for taxonomies. Then they talk about the recent revisions to ISO 25964 Part 1 of the thesaurus standard, provide an overview of the Simple Knowledge Organization System known as SKOS, and explain how ISO 25964 Part 1 aligns and compares with SKOS.
Date: April 15, 2026
Venue: Taxonomy Bootcamp London 2026
Location: London
Broad Topic: Taxonomy
Presenters: Heather Hedden, Taxonomy Consultant Hedden Information Management and Joseph Busch, Principal Analyst, Taxonomy Strategies
Click here to watch the presentation, read the script, and download files.
Using Schema and Value Vocabularies to Provide Consistency Across Structured Content
Description:
Application profiles provide a framework for structuring information related to a particular application. These can include two types of vocabularies – schema and value vocabularies. Schema vocabularies specify the properties and attributes related to the application, while value vocabularies specify the valid instances for those properties and attributes. This panel discusses the interplay between schema vocabularies that structure content with value vocabularies that provide consistency across structured content, and particularly how automation can optimize the linked data ecosystem.
Date: October 23, 2025
Venue: University of Barcelona
Location:Barcelona
Broad Topic: Information Architecture
Moderator: Joseph Busch, Principal Analyst, Taxonomy Strategies
Presenters:
- Heather Hedden
- Lief Erickson
- Noz Urbina
- Peter Winstanley
Click here to watch presentations, read scripts, and download files.
Interesting Information
NKOS Workshop @ DCMI 2026
On Monday, August 3 an excellent NKOS Workshop was held at DCMI 2026, the international conference on Dublin Core and metadata applications. The Workshop included five presentations on AI-assisted KOS modeling, mapping, indexing and retrieval applications, and a panel discussion with five perspectives on establishing ethical guidelines for use of AI tools in KOS and metadata services. The NKOS Workshop program is available on the DCMI 2026 website. A short Workshop report is available on the NKOS website. The Zoom webinar recording of the NKOS Workshop is also available.
KOS in AI and AI in KOS
- Editorial by Joseph Busch and Marcia Lei Zeng https://www.imrpress.com/
journal/KO/52/6/10.31083/ KO47822/htm. - “A Bibliometric Analysis of AI-Driven Healthcare Literature Containing KOS Keywords: Trends, Themes, and Gaps” by Julaine Clunis and Eric Asare https://www.imrpress.com/
journal/KO/52/5/10.31083/ KO47054/htm. - “Advancing Thesaurus Construction With Generative AI: A Structured Approach to Synonym Identification and Scope Note Development” by Shu-Jiun Chen https://www.imrpress.com/
journal/KO/52/5/10.31083/ KO46865/htm. - “AI for KOS Discovery: Refining Search, Recommendation, and Hallucination Mitigation” by Ziyoung Park https://www.imrpress.com/
journal/KO/52/4/10.31083/ KO45889/htm. - “Knowledge-Based Ontology Model With a Case Study” by Naoual Smaili and Adil Kabbaj https://www.imrpress.com/
journal/KO/52/4/10.31083/ KO45165/htm. - “From Editorial Records to Structured Provenance Information: Documenting Warrant in Knowledge Organization Systems Using Large Language Models” by Yi-Yun Cheng and Inkyung Choi https://www.imrpress.com/
journal/KO/52/3/10.31083/ KO39046/htm.
Report on KM World 2024
KM World is one of the leading knowledge management events, held annually in Washington, D.C. The conference theme – “KM & Enterprise Intelligence: Human or Artificial?” included presentations from vendors, consultants and KM practitioners. There are several co-located events including Taxonomy Boot Camp (where I gave two presentations), Text Analytics Forum, Enterprise Search & Discovery, and Enterprise AI World.
Clients
Clients Taxonomy Strategies provides specialized consulting services to help organizations arrange their information for its most effective use.
Partners
Taxonomy Strategies often partners with other consulting organizations and leading edge vendors that focus on helping organizations arrange their information for its most effective use.
CONSULTING ORGANIZATIONS
VENDORS
“Before [the taxonomy project], the location of digital images, slides, CDs, etc. was stored in my neural network. Now those resources reside in the digital asset management system. They are all digital, and they are all tagged. Access is now open. We can meet requests for specific assets quickly and accurately.”
Susan Levings, UCSF School of Pharmacy, Associate Dean for Planning and Communications
Contact Us
mobile +1 (415) 377-7912
fax +1 (202) 450-2737
Business Address
5253 Nebraska Ave NW
Washington, DC 20015