Taxonomies or controlled vocabularies developed by various organizations, companies, and even individuals are available for licensing. However, there are many uncertainties surrounding these taxonomies. For instance, are they relevant, do the licensing agreement allow modifications, and is it worthwhile for the creators of the taxonomies to promote them?
Generally, a customized taxonomy is best, but occasionally licensing a taxonomy is an option worth considering. For instance, a licensed taxonomy can be considered as a starting point and it can be subsequently modified to serve as a single facet in a faceted taxonomy, or to index content from various external sources on a defined topic area for which a good taxonomy exists. In parallel, as indicated earlier, there are issues regarding the licensing of taxonomies.
To find out how users viewed the licensing of taxonomies, Heather Hedden created an online survey. In the 6 months, it was open; the survey garnered 60 responses to most questions. Although the responses were in the context of licensing controlled vocabularies, some of the questions and responses—about the taxonomy purpose, type or subject area of interest—reflected a general interest in taxonomies.
One of the significant insights was that slightly more than half of the respondents have considered licensing taxonomies, but most have not gone any further. One of the leading reasons given by the respondents for not identifying appropriate taxonomies to license was the difficulty in finding or the lack of a suitable taxonomy.
A majority of the respondents indicated that among the various types of controlled vocabularies, they preferred a hierarchical taxonomy first and controlled vocabulary for part of a faceted taxonomy, next. The subject areas of controlled vocabularies that respondents were most interested in licensing were business/management/enterprise functions followed by a preference for information technology/computing subject areas.
By a wide margin, the respondents of the online survey indicated a preference for licensing a controlled vocabulary for the purpose of internal content management and search and retrieval. Furthermore, the respondents indicated that they would license a controlled vocabulary for 1,000 and 5,000 concepts and prefer a controlled vocabulary that is in the Extensible Markup Language (XML) format.
In sum, the online survey revealed that most of the respondents shared similar concerns regarding the licensing of taxonomies and there was no single dominant concern.
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