Faceted classification

Faceted classification

Metadata? Thesauri? Taxonomies? Topic Maps! – Making Sense of It All

Lars Garshol, Development Manager at Ontopia posted a fantastic article on the relationships between different classification tools – topic maps, ontologies, taxonomies, and more. Well worth the read, since it’s a clear explanation that separates similar concepts that too often get muddled.

William Denton has released a well written paper on faceted classification for the web, created for the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto. Here’s a bit about what you might expect to learn:

This paper will attempt to bridge the gap by giving procedures and advice on all the steps involved in making a faceted classification and putting it on the web. Web people will benefit by having a rigorous seven-step process to follow for creating faceted classifications, and librarians will benefit by understanding how to store such a classification on a computer and make it available on the web. The paper is meant for both webmasters and information architects who do not know a lot about library and information science, and librarians who do not know a lot about building databases and web sites. The classifications are meant for small or medium-sized sets of things, meant to go on public or private web sites, when there is a need to organize items for which no existing classification will do.

Very advisable to read Denton, William. “Putting Facets on the Web: An Annotated Bibliography” Oct. 2003.https://www.miskatonic.org/library/facet-biblio.html. He also wrote How to Make a Faceted Classification and Put It On the Web.