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The primary purpose of taxonomies is to support
consistent topical tagging (indexing) of content and full and accurate content retrieval
based on the tagged taxonomy concepts that the end-user selects. The unit of
content that is tagged makes a difference in the retrieval results and user
experience. Users want to find specific
content, such as a paragraph, a captioned image, a timestamp section within an
audio or video file. This is not always possible. The traditional method of tagging
is to tag the entire file, document, or web page, even if the specific topic
with the desired information is only part of the larger file, such as a few
sentences within a web page or document of multiple paragraphs. The user then
spends time (or wastes time) trying to find the desired information in the
larger file.
Content components
Fortunately, there are methods to tag and retrieve
content at smaller units, such as a text section identified with a heading,
within a longer document. These methods depend on having “structured” content, where
sections are marked off using a markup language, most commonly Extensible
Markup Language (XML). As XML is rather generic, there have emerged standards specifically
for XML-based component-based content management, including DITA (Darwin
Information Typing Architecture).www.dita-ot.orgStructuring content was not originally
developed for the purpose of detailed topical tagging/indexing and retrieval, though,
but rather for the purpose of creating (authoring) and publishing content,
especially to the web, more efficiently. Originally, the focus of structured
content was on marking up the document style and supporting keyword tags for
the entire document. The first content management systems (CMSs) were developed
shortly after the web in the 1990s to facilitate the publishing of web pages,
although later a distinction emerged be web content management systems and enterprise
content management systems.
By the early 2000s, component content
management systems (CCMSs) emerged, whereby content is managed in units
(components) smaller and more specific than an entire document. CCMSs enable content
publishing to be more modular and flexible, supporting content reuse, and
making it easier to update content, by updating only the relevant components,
instead of the entire document. CCMSs are especially used for creating technical
documentation, but they are not limited to that use. Examples of CCMSs include Adobe
FrameMaker, Documentum, Hereto, Kontent.ai, Quark, Paligo, Sanity, and Tridion
Docs. While more precise tagging was not the original goal of CCMSs, it is a
beneficial outcome.
Taxonomies and component content management
CCMSs, along with all CMSs, have come to support
taxonomies and tagging better over the years. This includes both support for more
taxonomy features, such as hierarchies and synonym (alternative labels), and
support for importing and exporting taxonomies in standard interoperable
formats. With respect to CCMSs, taxonomies can be built out to a greater level
of detail, with concepts specific to the component topics of CCMS. However, whoever
is creating the taxonomy should remember not to create concepts that are so
specific that a concept is applicable to only a single component topic. A
single taxonomy concept should retrieve multiple results.
CCMSs, along with all CMSs, can also connect
to or integrate with taxonomies managed in dedicated taxonomy management
systems, such as PoolParty. Since organizations tend to have multiple CMSs,
each for different kinds of content and purposes, they are likely to end up
creating multiple, separate (siloed) taxonomies with similar or overlapping
concepts. Therefore, the best strategy for enterprise taxonomy management is to
manage taxonomies centrally, either as a single master taxonomy or with
multiple taxonomies linked together in dedicated taxonomy management software,
which can connect to CMSs with APIs (application programming interfaces) to
push the taxonomy out to the CMSs, including CCMSs. Additionally, prebuilt
integrations of taxonomy management systems and CCMSs, such as PoolParty and Tridion Docs, are becoming more common.
There is also a growing interest in
taxonomies at conferences dealing with component content management. Last October
I attended the LavaCon conference for content strategy for the first time, where
my pre-conference workshop on taxonomies was well attended. Two weeks ago, I
participated in the ConVEx conference, where there is more focus on component
content management than at LavaCon. (ConVEx was formerly the DITA North America
conference.) In contrast to LavaCon’s two presentations on taxonomies, ConVEx
had a track with the “taxonomy” theme and five presentations focused on
taxonomies and another three presentations with topics related to taxonomies.
Component content management enables more targeted
topic tagging and opens up more possibilities for rich taxonomies. Thus, as a
taxonomist, I look forward to learning more about CCMSs and how they taxonomies
can best be applied in these systems.