This session features case studies from two high-profile organisations with large, diverse audiences to serve. Thomas describes how user-centred research and testing were critical to CRUK’s taxonomy development and ensuring scalability for future projects. Sona and Ellie's challenge at GDS was to classify 300,000 content items in a project only a few months long. The team used performance frameworks, stakeholder reviews, tree testing and more to work towards a successful outcome.

One of the most heartening changes in the last few years has been the pushing of the boundaries of what innovative organisations want to do with their taxonomies. Anton and Michael's talks showcase this in depth with their respective case studies. Anton manages a large taxonomy that has outgrown its traditional uses, and is now available through multiple CABI products, through APIs, and has been enriched with ontological relationships. Michael describes how AI is being used to supplement the traditional application of taxonomies for search and findability.

The value of taxonomy is sometimes dismissed as just being about labels. But this session shows that the words themselves are absolutely critical to the success or failure of a project. Matt talks through the strategy for choosing the navigation and URL structure of the World Health Organization’s new website. Bob gives an overview of the ethics of naming things, especially when it has real-world impacts, in a talk that also features some light-hearted sandwich analogies.

Search applications benefit from the use of taxonomies to improve relevance, power the results interface, and so on. This session features two renowned search experts who draw on extensive experience. Sebastian’s case study focuses on a large, multinational organisation which needed multilingual taxonomy support within its content management system. Martin addresses the potentially tricky problem of how to implement a search application and taxonomy tool at the same time.

This session looks at two of the most important questions a taxonomist needs to address in their job or project – what to manage the taxonomy with, and researching what taxonomies might already exist in their field. Joyce takes a vendor-neutral approach to assessing the pros and cons of three main types of taxonomy management tool (spreadsheet, CMS and dedicated solution). Andreas is the creator and manager of Bartoc.org, one of the most comprehensive databases of taxonomies and vocabularies in the world.

SharePoint is one of the most popular choices for an enterprise information management solution. Its taxonomy management features have progressed with each successive release, therefore this session goes into depth about the possibilities and opportunities. Agnes gives an independent appraisal of Managed Metadata, with the options, decisions and design considerations you may need. Randy’s talk poses the question of whether automated metadata is truly possible within SharePoint (also Azure and Office 365). Andreas presents a SharePoint extension that adds a semantic layer above the content database, thus linking up unstructured documents with external databases.

These three talks show how taxonomists are adept at finding creative ways of working. Matt’s case study blends high-tech natural language processing with crowdsourced human knowledge, in a project to digitise public records from Indigenous schools in 1920’s New Mexico. Jonathan goes against conventional wisdom, and shows the many ways that the humble spreadsheet can be a great tool in the early stages of building a new taxonomy. Tatjana shares ninja tips on succeeding at taxonomy governance in an organisation of 75,000 engineers and scientists.

Day One concludes with four expert perspectives on cutting-edge applications for knowledge organisation. Rahel introduces ‘Information 4.0’ and shows the business possibilities for using content semantics. Ahren and Jim cover how taxonomies and ontologies are being used for far more than just categorisation and can be an integral component of core business processes. Ben’s case study involves a large publisher, which is using Linked Open Data and semantic content enrichment to drive better knowledge discovery and enhanced products. Irene describes how linking public taxonomies, ontologies and reference data in the health and pharmaceutical sectors, using automatically-generated ‘crosswalks’, can help companies achieve a higher standard of regulatory compliance.

All delegates are invited to join ISKO UK from 18.45 onwards for an informal networking evening at The Hand and Flower pub, 1 Hammersmith Road, London (opposite Olympia).

AIIP invites fellow independent information professionals (members and non-members) to snacks and socialising, immediately following Boot Camp’s conference reception, at The Cumberland Arms, 29 North End Road, Hammersmith, London W14 8SZ (3 minutes from Olympia).Sign up at the AIIP table