Weighing in late ... with a few comments on taxonomies
In the eighties, Canadian governments developed taxonomies based primarily
on known subject areas, the federal GRDS was an example and the BC
ARCS/ORCS and Alberta ARDA were provincial examples. For the most part
these were simplistic but workable systems and they were focused on the hard
copy world.
In the nineties a trend towards function based taxonomies was seen. Even
the ISO15489 "suggests" that functional designs may be more durable and
effective. These systems satisfy archives and RM staff in that they can
easily be mapped to retentions, but in most of the "real world" ... these
function based systems have yet to be proven as effective and user-friendly
systems. (In Scottish law there can be 3 verdicts - Guilty - Not Proven -
Innocent.) Most of the anecdotal evidence that I have seen to date suggests
that users are not impressed with most of the functional designs with which
they are presented. And as audits continue in some jurisdictions, there is
mounting evidence that something is missing. Some work was done in Britain
regarding hybrid designs in the nineties ...., Malcolm Todd's article (UK
Archives) was particularly impressive. I did enjoy Carol Choksy's IMJ
article also, as it was very thorough and will help many organizations
develop better designs, but I remain unconvinced that the methodology
outlined therein is appropriate for the current business environment.
I believe there are three (3) reasons why our functional systems run into
problems. One is that in most commonly used methodologies, users are not
sufficiently consulted or engaged in the design process. The second reason
is that the records management world is now primarily electronic and that
ECMs and file server structures and needs (mapping, security, naming etc)
are not taken into consideration. A third reason is that the relationship
between developing business architectures and document architectures
(taxonomies) is not being defined and developed.
In the past 5 years, I have yet to encounter an organization that had less
than 70% of its unstructured information in electronic form in various
servers/domains. In designing systems, new methods of document inventory
and analysis of server structures is necessary. Even though the old
inventory methods are needed for hard copy and remain valid, most taxonomy
designers do not delve sufficiently into the depths of our file servers.
Also, when mapping function based or hybrid taxonomies to these structures,
serious adjustments have to be made to naming, abbreviating and identifying
documents or files. Considerable work remains in these areas before RM can
hope to be relevant in the electronic work environment.
On my web site www.cccrecords.com <http://www.cccrecords.com/> is a link to
a pdf of a seminar on taxonomies, I gave some 6 months ago in Calgary ...
some of the information may be useful to people working on taxonomy designs.
Also the link to Malcolm Todd's article is there as well. Finally I
apologize to John O'Brien in advance for not taking more space to delve into
the difference between ontologies, taxonomies and faceted classification
systems :-)
Regards
Jim
Jim Connelly, CRM
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