Michele Ann Jenkins: Taxonomy as the Foundation of Semantic Architecture – Episode 200

Content Strategy Insights

Michele Ann Jenkins Through her taxonomy and other information architecture work, Michele Ann Jenkins helps people across the organizations she works with align their mental models and terminology usage. This alignment of concerns and language forms the foundation of the semantic architecture that is so crucial to modern content systems. We talked about: her work as a consultant focusing on taxonomy but also working on information architecture, search, digital asset management, ontologies, knowledge graphs, and AI the focus at her consultancy on technology-agnostic frameworks and best practices, including governance the threshold at which to move from a CMS's built-in taxonomy tools to a dedicated taxonomy management tool her description of the semantic layer and how it can help span organizational silos the benefits of a technology-agnostic enterprise content model and how far most organizations are from having one how the practice of taxonomy can help stakeholders understand each others' mental models and terminology how the well-established idea of "concept-based indexing" can help bring semantic clarity to terminology work and take projects from taxonomy to ontology the baby steps an organization can take into ontology and an example of how an ontological representation of enterprise knowledge can help auto-tag content coming from different sources and infer levels of trust some interesting examples of rule-based classificiations going haywire her exposure to working with a "content graph" with a complex globally distributed product how to find the "creative edge" where the capabilities of computers end and only human judgement is necessary the enduring importance of governance, people, processes, consensus building, and using open standards that permit interoperability Michele's bio Michele And Jenkins, MLIS, is an information management consultant specializing in taxonomy-driven content strategy. She has more than 20 years’ experience working with organizations across various industries, including Harvard Business Publishing, EA Games, and the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR). Michele takes a holistic approach to information and content management, drawing from a multidisciplinary background in programming, IA/UX design, information science, and publishing. She is skilled at guiding clients through the entire content management process: from creating high-level strategic roadmaps through development, implementation, and migration to ongoing support and training. Prior to joining Dovecot Studio in 2012, Michele was an independent consultant focusing on web development projects including large scale migrations, platform integrations, and implementing taxonomy-driven IA designs. Michele has over 15 years of experience customizing, coding, and developing IA for Drupal CMS. Michele has contributed a chapter to “Taxonomies: Practical approaches to developing and managing vocabularies for digital information” (Facet Publishing, 2022). She is also a regular guest lecturer and occasional course instructor at McGill University, where she earned a Master’s in Library and Information Studies with a specialization in knowledge management. She frequently presents at conferences including DrupalCon and Taxonomy Bootcamp (part of KMWorld). Connect with Michele online Dovecot Studio maj at dovecotstudio dot com Video Here’s the video version of our conversation: https://youtu.be/LTfQrfOiIkk Podcast intro transcript This is the Content Strategy Insights podcast, episode number 200. The practice of taxonomy plays a crucial role in tying together the worlds of content management and semantic practice. Michele Ann Jenkins is an information management consultant who specializes in taxonomy. Her work helps stakeholders understand each others' mental models and terminology and ensconce them in technical content systems.