Presentation Description This talk, developed by Heather Hedden and Joseph Busch, discusses the similarities and differences of thesauri and taxonomies and the relevance of thesaurus standards for taxonomies. Then we provide an overview of the Simple Knowledge Organization System known as SKOS and explain how the revised ISO 25964 Part 1—the Thesaurus standard—aligns and compares with SKOS. Date: April 15, …
Using Vocabularies to Provide Consistency Across Structured Content
Presentation Description 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 Watch this Presentation Download Presentation: MP4 | PDF [Slide 1] Application profiles provide a framework …
ISKO UK 2025 Conference: The Case for General Purpose Categorizers as Part of the AI Ecosystem
AI developers are simply not equipped to deal with the intricacies of assessing and selecting KOS and integrating them appropriately into general purpose applications. It has been left to consultants or researchers to develop custom applications for niche industries where the benefits of more precise retrieval outweigh the difficulties and costs of KOS integration and development. However, I think there …
Using Vocabularies to Provide Consistency Across Structured Content
Presentation Description This talk provides an accessible overview of how two vocabulary types – schema and value vocabularies – combine in application profiles in order to deliver consistency across structured content. Date: November 18, 2025 Venue: Taxonomy Bootcamp 2025 Location: Washington, D.C. Broad Topic: Taxonomy Presenter: Joseph Busch, Principal Analyst, Taxonomy Strategies Watch this Presentation Download Presentation: MP4 | PPTX …
Report on DCMI 2024 International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Application
DCMI 2024 was hosted by the University of Toronto Faculty of Information from October 19-23. The theme was “Metadata Innovation: Trust, Transformation, and Humanity.” I served on the Program Committee as the papers co-chair and was integrally involved in planning the program which included keynotes, invited panels, presentations, academic papers, tutorials, workshops, best practice showcases, a student forum, posters, and …
What We Learned about Taxonomy Working on the Railroad
Description: This presentation describes a project where we helped a regional transit authority digitize its paper records. The pandemic shifted the project’s focus from space-saving to enabling remote work. A unique, bottom-up approach was used to develop separate taxonomies for each department, emphasizing use cases and iterative validation. The project highlighted the importance of location as a key organizing principle …
Updating ISO 25964, the Standard for Thesauri and Interoperability (With Q&A)
Description: There are more than 800 ISO standards related to terminology. ISO 25964 Part 1, which focuses on thesauri for information retrieval, is being reviewed and revised by a working group. Since the last update of the standard in 2011, the scope has expanded to include terminology management and use, the semantic web, linked data, and AI (meaning NLP, machine …
Using Taxonomy to Move from Paper to Knowledge Graph
Description: This presentation will discuss a transit authority’s initiative to eliminate legacy paper records, to downsize their footprint, and relocate 3,000 office-based employees spread across 10 aging buildings. The metadata strategy and taxonomy framework that emerged from working with more than 60 business units from across the authority is described. The named entities (people, organizations, locations, events, things, etc.), classifications …
African Development Bank SANKOFA Program 2024
Description The African Development Bank (AfDB) is implementing SANKOFA, a new document and records management platform. To improve metadata accuracy and efficiency, SANKOFA integrates a business classification scheme that categorizes documents by function, activity, and type. This enables better document organization, retrieval, and information management, supporting the AfDB’s mission of sustainable development in Africa. Type: Presentation Venue: DCMI Date: October …
The African Development Bank SANKOFA Program: Business Classification that Enables Disclosure, Protects Sensitivity and Integrates Knowledge into the Business Process
Description: This presentation will discuss the overall goals of the African Development Bank SANKOFA Program to transform the current business practices where documents have been created and stored mostly on personal computers, reviewed and approved using email and hard copies, and shared as email attachments. The Bank-wide program is breaking down these silos and implementing common business processes among and …
African Development Bank SANKOFA Program
Description: This presentation discusses the metadata strategy of SANKOFA, the African Development Bank’s new document and records management platform for development project activities. The design and definition of metadata, and the strategies for automating its generation are briefly described. Best practices for file plan and metadata design, validation, implementation, and maintenance in a multilateral financial institution setting are discussed. The …
Modeling a Business Classification Scheme for Sustainable Economic Development Projects
This presentation discusses a project to iteratively develop a business classification scheme (BCS) for managing documentation throughout the lifecycle of African Development Bank (AfDB) sustainable development projects. The BCS is built by working with key users to model the business processes that result in standard documents such as strategy papers, project briefs, impact assessments, and appraisal, progress and completion reports. …
How a Project to Digitize Legacy Paper Records Can Be Used as the Basis for a Transit System Knowledge Graph
This talk describes how a major transit authority’s project to digitize paper records became the basis for a digital transformation. A metadata strategy and taxonomy framework that emerged from working with more than 60 business units from across the authority. The named entities (people, organizations, locations, events, things, etc.), classifications (incidents, document file plans, system maps, access control, etc.) and …
Taxonomy Assessment: Quantitative Analytics, Qualitative Best Practices and Heuristics
Description This is an extended version of the April IAC talk that adds a case study about a B2B medical supply website and live answers to questions from the audience. Presented by Joseph Busch, Taxonomy Strategies’ principal analyst at a “Taxonomy Talk” Discord Community webinar on June 4, 2024. Type: Webinar Venue: Taxonomy Talk Discord Community Date: June 4, 2024 Broad …
How a Project to Digitize Legacy Paper Records Can Be Used as the Basis for a Transit System Knowledge Graph
Description Type: Webinar Venue: TRB Annual Meeting Date: January 10, 2024 Broad Topic: Taxonomy Watch Presentation Download Presentation Video (MP4) Download PowerPoint (PPTX) Video Script Download Video Script Word (DOC) [Slide 1] How a Project to Digitize Legacy Paper Records Can Be Used as the Basis for a Transit System Knowledge Graph TRB Annual Meeting, January 10, 2024, Washington, DC Joseph …