How do corporate taxonomists "sell" business unit managers, senior executives, and authors on the value of what they do? When we submitted this question to our contact list, we got two kinds of responses. Some people contributed anecdotes, personal experiences, and lists of taxonomy benefits. Others thought the question was either impossible to answer or shouldn't have been asked in the first place. What's going on here?

To explain the discrepancy, we look at the issue of taxonomy value from two perspectives — corporate IT and commercial publishing. From the IT perspective, taxonomies enhance the capabilities of intranets, search engines, and content management systems. From the commercial publishing perspective, taxonomies increase revenues by making information products more "user-friendly." By focusing on technology, the IT perspective makes it difficult to "sell" taxonomy benefits. By focusing on information products, the commercial publishing perspective makes it possible to assign a dollar value to the whole package, in which taxonomy plays a part. Neither perspective, however, gives enough emphasis to how people actually use information — the key to productivity and business value.

Part I of this article analyzes the issue from both perspectives. Part II summarizes the responses we received.

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