System Developments

Taxonomy

The project has developed a community information taxonomy which is used to provide controlled subject keywords.

What is the taxonomy?

The taxonomy consists of approximately 2500 terms and shows relationships between preferred, non-preferred and related terms in 15 hierarchical sections.

Topics covered include: Arts, Crafts and Media, Beliefs and Faiths, Business and Employment, Children and Families, Disability, Education, Careers and Training, Environment and Transport, Ethnic Origin and Language, Government and Politics, Health, Law, Leisure, Science and Technology, Social Issues, Advice and Support, and Sport.

The vocabulary used in the Taxonomy reflects that used by the citizen, rather than professional jargon.

The taxonomy is maintained by Essex County Council Community Information team, on behalf of the seamlessUK project.

You can view the taxonomy (preferred terms only) by going to www.essexonline.gov.uk and clicking the subject button next to the search box.

How can it be used?

The seamlessUK Subject Taxonomy is a controlled vocabulary of terms which can be used for the indexing and retrieval of citizen’s information within community information systems or databases and content management systems.

Within a metadata schema, it can be used to populate the subject keyword field.

What standards does it meet?

The Taxonomy has been developed to be compliant with ISO 2788:1986, by staff from Essex County Council’s Community Information Network Team, working with an expert Taxonomy consultant and partners across seamlessUK and other areas of the public sector to produce the seamlessUK taxonomy Terms of Reference.

The taxonomy has now been accepted as an encoding scheme for the Subject Keyword element in the new Version 3 of the e-Government Metadata Standard.

By the end of 2003 the taxonomy will be mapped to the Government Category List. This mapping will allow subscribers to automatically generate GCL terms in the subject category metadata field when they index resources. (subject to system specification)

SeamlessUK and the LAWS Project are looking at how they might work together on a National Category List.

What format is it in?

The seamlessUK Taxonomy can be supplied electronically in Text, Word or XML formats.

A web interface is also available providing the facility to search for terms, view all the relationships between terms and all the synonyms and email suggestions for new terms to the editors.

Organisations who subscribe to the Taxonomy will receive two updates a year (first year - a full version plus one update).

How much does it cost?

The Taxonomy is now available for other organisations to use, subject to a small annual licence fee, to cover the maintenance and up dating and subject to agreement with the seamlessUK terms and conditions.

How do I find out more?

If you would like to receive further information please contact Fay.Bartlett@essexcc.gov.uk

You can view the licence agreement, terms and conditions and some sample pages.