What will our taxonomy look like as a finished product? Because the digital media industry did not grow as a singular entity, but rather as a plethora of roles and positions across a spectrum, there is not going to be consistency in the relationships between jobs, titles, and relationships. Hierarchical systems, like a biological taxonomy, are clean and easy to visualize, but they don’t make sense for this project. We want a faceted classification system, wherein elements can belong to more than one category within the system, and the system as a whole can be rearranged to reflect different possible relationships. Putting an “object” in two places is allowed in the digital world, but it makes for difficult at-a-glance visualization.
Right now, assuming we don’t have any programming help, we’re thinking about using MediaWiki with hyperlinks between layers, with the preferred terms and synonyms built right onto the pages so that they can be quickly searched. We’re also looking at the possibilities available through thebrain.com, a program that helps you map relationships in a matrix, rather than a hierarchy (as we’re all used to, since computer folders insist you do this).
We are finalizing the interview questions this week, and can’t wait to start the data collection!
