Labeling and Taxonomy Development Flashcards

Which relationship type in a thesaurus is denoted by 'RT'?

Answer: Related Term

RT (Related Term) denotes an associative relationship between two terms that are conceptually related but not hierarchically linked.

Card sorting is primarily used in taxonomy development to:

Answer: Understand how users mentally group and label content

Card sorting reveals users' mental models by having them organize topics into groups and name those groups, directly informing category labels and hierarchy.

What distinguishes an 'open' card sort from a 'closed' card sort?

Answer: In an open sort, participants create their own category names; in a closed sort, categories are predefined

Open card sorts let participants name their own categories, generating label ideas, while closed sorts ask participants to sort into pre-labeled buckets to validate existing structure.

A 'top-down' taxonomy design approach starts with:

Answer: Defining high-level categories first, then subdividing

Top-down taxonomy design begins with broad category definitions based on domain expertise or organizational strategy, then progressively adds narrower subcategories.

In SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System), which property links a concept to its preferred label?

Answer: skos:prefLabel

skos:prefLabel designates the primary human-readable label for a SKOS concept, with one preferred label per language.

Which principle states that taxonomy nodes at the same level should be mutually exclusive?

Answer: Mutual exclusivity

Mutual exclusivity ensures sibling categories do not overlap, so any given item can be unambiguously placed in exactly one category at each level.

The concept of 'literary warrant' in taxonomy construction means:

Answer: Only terms found in actual documents in the corpus should be included

Literary warrant justifies including a term in a controlled vocabulary based on its actual occurrence in the literature or content being indexed.