Weekly News Digest

Special Libraries Association (SLA; www.sla.org) announced the formation of a new professional interest division that will focus on issues related to planning, creating, maintaining, and using taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies, authority files, and other controlled vocabularies and information structures. The Taxonomy Division of SLA will provide information professionals interested in these topics a focused professional home base within SLA, cutting-edge learning opportunities, and access to a global network of colleagues.

SLA is organized into divisions representing subject interests, fields, or types of information-handling techniques. SLA Divisions conduct professional development, networking and knowledge programs during the association's annual conference and INFO-EXPO. The new Taxonomy Division will join the ranks of functional, cross-industry professional interest groups such as the Knowledge Management, Competitive Intelligence, and Information Technology Divisions. The Taxonomy Division is chaired by Marjorie M.K. Hlava, president of Access Innovations, Inc. (www.accessinn.com), a company specializing in document processing, database construction, content classification, and project management.

The Taxonomy Division will focus its professional development and networking activities around strategies to organize and structure information so that content is accessible and useful. The division's focus encompasses traditional and emerging approaches to organizing information and the full range of settings in which taxonomies are applied.

Source: Special Libraries Association