Quite early in my career, one of the interaction designers I was in a team with turned to me and the other taxonomists in the office and, mostly tongue-in-cheek, called us ‘list-makers’. The remark was intended to belittle the work we were doing on a complex content modelling project, where accurate tagging was crucial to the right content being delivered to the right place at the right time.

Even when I had only worked on a few taxonomy projects, instead of the dozens I have done since, I knew that characterising taxonomists as ‘list-makers’ was silly. Taxonomies are more important in the world of digital information than they have ever been. Hopefully, the fact that you are reading this text means, on some level, you agree.

First, to get the dictionary definition out of the way: a taxonomy is a list of words and phrases, most often organised into a hierarchy. It is used to classify, categorise or tag just about anything, but this book is concerned with digital content, data and information.

What elevates a mere list of words and phrases to being a live taxonomy is how it is used. I love the sheer versatility of taxonomies and how they have become a core component of so many types of digital products and services. Here are some examples:

• • content delivery

• • content classification

• • search relevancy

• • search facets and filters

• • recommender systems

• • digital asset management (DAM)

• • knowledge base systems

• • training machine learning

• • product information for e-commerce

• • process flow management

• • enhanced navigation

• • analytics and insights.

All of these, and more, are mentioned in the book. It is worth noting that the intended application for a taxonomy will likely shape how the taxonomy is structured. For example, a taxonomy for e-commerce search may have multiple facets because of the many ways a product can be described or searched for. In contrast, a taxonomy for tagging web documents may only have a few dozen terms, as only broad categories are needed and the set of terms needs to be manageable for taggers.

Who is this book for?

This book had its genesis in a snatched conversation with Pete Baker at the drinks reception at Taxonomy Boot Camp London.