2020 was a year like no other – a year of massive change forced upon as we collectively reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic. Much has been written about the way in which we adapted to our changing circumstances, in particular, the need to pivot our business models to...
In my next few posts I'm going to write about building classification schemes. So it's probably a good idea to explain the definitions I use upfront. Before you take me to task, bear in mind that my context is the information governance space, and while I make...
Everywhere I go people are creating classification schemes. All sorts of people are doing it: programmers, business and data analysts, information and enterprise architects. Mostly they are doing it because they are in the process of building an information system and...
Managing metadata and developing taxonomies is easy! And so it is – when you are working within a confined context. As Patrick Lambe suggests in his book Organising Knowledge, most people are confident in building taxonomies i.e. lists, lookup sets, hierarchies, file...
Take a look at any organisation and you will find thousands of taxonomies in every database and information system across the enterprise expressed in the form of lists, lookup sets, metadata, tags, taxonomies, file plans, classification facets etc… Who’s in control?...
The third article in a series of insights about metadata. We’ve talked a lot about language, but language is just one, albeit a big one, of the metadata elements we use to manage information objects. In fact there is a whole range of terms and Identifiers which make...
What exactly is the metadata challenge? As discussed in our insight the language of metadata, using precise and consistent language as a business tool is a vastly different concept to using it as an expression of social behaviour, as a means of differentiation between...
The first in a series of insights about metadata; the challenges, how to use it to your advantage manage it over time. Why do we all get so confused about metadata – after all it’s really just words, right? Right! But how many different ways are there to describe the...
Some of my favourite quotes about classification are from Organising Knowledge: Taxonomies, Knowledge and Organisational Effectiveness by Patrick Lambe. Taxonomies are at the same time deceptively simple and fiendishly complicated. They are simple because they are...
Aggregation: a collection: several things grouped together or considered as a whole. I’ve always considered aggregation a cornerstone of records management. Conceptually, aggregations make sense to me – records or “the record” of a particular transaction or event...
You may wonder why anyone would want to spend money on specialist software for building taxonomies or metadata when you could just use a spreadsheet. Here are 5 good reasons: Relationships and mapping There are many more relationships to a taxonomy/thesaurus than...