I speak to many CIO’s who think taxonomy is an arcane piece of library science. Haven’t they heard of eTaxonomy? Well, of course not. While we labor to embed taxonomies into technology solutions, vendors take the credit for their “highly configurable solutions.” The good but unrecognized work we do needs a 21^st century name – hence eTaxonomy.

Etaxonomy is the art and science of integrating taxonomy into deployable IT solutions. Our professional community of taxonomy practitioners is getting sophisticated at this. The best web sites today achieve usability through dynamic content presentation enabled by taxonomy. New classes of solutions, such as Marketing Resource Management, get their power from hierarchical information models that integrate diverse information sources. And critical initiatives in healthcare, such as electronic patient records, leverage taxonomies for coding.

So taxonomy is not your father’s library science construct. It’s not a spreadsheet of terms. Rather, it’s about methodologies for enabling smart computing through the use of sophisticated semantic models. That’s what eTaxonomy is. So taxonomists of yore, start calling yourself eTaxonomists, and make sure your CIO knows about the secret sauce.

In future blogs, I will discusseTaxonomy in different solution settings. I look forward to getting feedback on this concept and whether it will help you make your case to management. Also, check out our Insight Webinar Series for a deep dive into eTaxonomy solutions and approaches.

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