Taxonomies and metadata for digital asset management

Abstract

Taxonomies, which can aid in the retrieval of digital assets, are of various kinds, and different kinds (hierarchical, faceted and thesauri) are suited for different situations. Taxonomies may be implemented in a digital asset or content management system either for tagging assets or for categorising assets or for both, and there are different circumstances that favour tagging versus categorising. Standards for taxonomies include both guidelines of standards bodies for best practices in developing controlled vocabulary, and specifically thesauri, and various industry recommendations for metadata schema so that controlled vocabularies can be shared. Taxonomies typically form part of a larger metadata architecture. Therefore, taxonomy design and metadata design should go together.