What do you say when someone asks why the terms in the corporate taxonomy don't match those used on the Public Web site? For example, why use "learning activity" internally and "training" externally? Do organizations need both a "content" taxonomy and a "navigation" taxonomy?

The simple answer is that because a taxonomy is a working tool designed to support a specific business activity, it's inevitable that an organization will need more than one. But the question exposes fault lines in the way many organizations manage taxonomy development and deployment. Why should the question need to be asked in the first place? Why is there such a wide range of opinion about how taxonomies should be implemented in applications, especially search? Why is there still so much interest in taxonomy return on investment?

In this article we look once again at why organizations need multiple taxonomies, what are the major kinds of taxonomies needed, what tools should be used to manage taxonomies, and how they should be deployed in applications. The topic is worth revisiting now that many organizations are implementing new search engines and coming to grips with the "bottom up" search and navigation features of collaboration systems like Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS 2007).

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Created on December 23, 2007 l Updated on December 27, 2007