Building bridges: Linking diverse classification schemes as part of a technology change project

Abstract

Unifying diverse content silos requires not simply bringing together assets, but also the metadata used to manage those assets. Often, as part of technology change projects, different Knowledge Organization Systems (KOSs), such as taxonomies and ontologies, need to be related. This may involve brokering agreements between different organizational or departmental cultures. Much work on developing metadata crosswalks has been at the heading or label level, but semantic analysis also needs to be undertaken when mapping diverse KOSs and, in practice, often needs to balance preservation of local or specialized terminology with accessibility for general users. This article, based on a presentation given at the second biennial conference of the UK chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO UK), describes a BBC project to bring together Archive and Production workspaces in which various metadata and KOS integration issues were encountered.