Taxonomy construction
Develop a taxonomy for BHP Billiton company website (www.bhpbilliton.com). Although BHP Billiton website has provided a site map (www.bhpbilliton.com/home/info/pages/sitemap.aspx), it has not been effective for indexing and search purposes. As this is a company website for various users, there are large amounts of indexed documents in different formats. Your task is to build out a taxonomy from existing resources, including a rudimentary taxonomy from site map and the documents linked to this website. The goal is to build up a taxonomy for a company website that could be used for effective navigation in a networked environment.
Procedure
1. Think about the distinctions between subject and non-subject vocabularies as discussed in Hider's (2012, pp. 170-175) textbook.
2. Browse through the BHP Billiton website as you normally do. You could also check out the documents by site map or other search tools available from this website.
3. Check out the exiting site map. You should decide if it's better to expand the taxonomy or build a new one.
4. You should decide which types of taxonomy (e.g., subject, organisational, functional or hybrid) you plan to construct for the website.
5. Locate the documents in the website. These documents should be searchable from www.bhpbilliton.com. You will analyse these documents to develop the word stock for your taxonomy (i.e., labels/vocabularies for a taxonomy).
6. Build up hierarchical structures of the taxonomy by considering the number and complexity of indexed documents within an organisational context for intended users (e.g., general users, job seekers and investors).
7. Write a summary report of the taxonomy development (no more than 750 words).
Additional:
1. To get an idea of what the end product would be like, you might want to consult other well-developed taxonomies for big organisations, such as ASCE (www.asce.org/sitemap.aspx), Breastcancer.org (www.breastcancer.org) and NASA (bit.ly/14B9cw7).
2. You may find it helpful to browse recent Taxonomies in Practice articles at www.asis.org/Bulletin/Dec-12/ while you construct your taxonomy.
3. You have the option of using tools for managing and oraganising the term relationships, or developing a taxonomy. A useful list can be found at American Society of Indexer's website at: bit.ly/YQcNH8
The completed thesaurus should be a word-processed document or a web document in HTML. It should contain:
• a summary report of taxonomy development (a maximum of two pages). It should include a brief introduction of the website and its contents, the types of taxonomy adopted, analysis and labeling of vocabularies, development of hierarchical structures, and potential usefulness of this taxonomy.
• the developed taxonomy hierarchically organised.
• a list of documents you used to develop the word stock for your taxonomy.
Notes
• You should aim at analysing at least 150 indexed documents related to the website.
• Your taxonomy must be your own piece of work.
• If you use any reference sources, make sure you cite them in your reference list.
Rationale
The aim of this assignment is to assess your ability to construct a taxonomy for a large-scale website