Jone Garmendia, Head of Cataloguing

25 November 2011

The National Archives Taxonomy

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A taxonomy is a system for naming and organising things into groups that show similar characteristics.

Taxonomies in the Public Sector (TIPS) http://www.nglis.org.uk/tipsben.htm

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A taxonomy is a collection of terms that enable the classification and grouping of content in order to support:

• information organisation

• searching

• information discovery/browsing

• website usability

• content reuse / serendipity

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controlled vocabulary structured hierarchically using BT, NT, RT non-preferred terms to handle synonyms they support:

o Information retrieval in controlled bibliographic databaseso authority fileso expansion of search

Thesaurus:

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High level intellectual frameworks to organise information representing concepts, entities and their relationships used in information science to support:

o software engineeringo the semantic web

Ontologies

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PeoplePeople

Records/AssetsRecords/AssetsPlacesPlaces

EventsEvents

are active in create/own

Take part in

are located in

take place in are used in / can trigger

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A taxonomy is a system for naming and organising things into groups that show similar characteristics.

Taxonomies in the Public Sector (TIPS) http://www.nglis.org.uk/tipsben.htm

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http://labs.nationalarchives.gov.uk

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We have not catalogued entries manually Subject research: words lists Building Boolean Queries within the Search Engine

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Word Lists and ‘synonyms

marriagemarital“marry” “marries” “married”matrimonymatrimonialjactitationbetrothaldowryjointurealimonycurtesyweddingadultery, adulterous

nuptialspousewedlockconjugalcertificate of no impedimentre-marriage, remarriage…mainenance orderMaintenance Order Acts…bigamy, bigamous, polygam*common law wife/husbandhusband/wifedivorce, decree nisi, decree absolute

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taxonomist generates query

taxonomy management software

search engine index

categorisation engine

xmlexport

new index

tagging process

Data flow back(with tags)

xml tagged data

new index

Testing and tuning Beta release April 2011 Taxonomy testing Multiple tagging Precision and relevancy of subject tags Recall: working to provide subjects for the untagged

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