I listened to a great webcast this morning presented by Picturepark featuring David Riecks - photographer, metadata master and creator and owner of the Controlled Vocabulary site amongst other taxonomy related talents.
As I listened with one ear and actually edited metadata on my own DAM system with the other ear (or hand or brain), I was reminded about why I got into digital asset management in the first place and what I find fascinating and challenging about vocabulary.
David also reminded me of several awesome resources for those working with DAM and taxonomy. Certainly, his site has a resource page with all manner of CV marvels, but he also specifically mentioned Taxonomy Warehouse. This site has very useful information including many vocabularies, thesauri and taxonomies that offer suitable starting points for many DAM systems in all manner of industries.
David mentioned the Visual Thesaurus, a super cool tool which creates word trees when you type in a term. One of the audience questions had to do with deciding on categories or broad terms and David mentioned card sorting - an information architect trick using either old fashioned 3x5 index cards or a software application. I have used cards as well as Optimal Sort in the past to great success when deciding on website navigation.
I really enjoyed this webcast and I am pleased to have finally heard David Riecks speak after months reading his material and following his tweets. Bravo!
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