Supporting taxonomy management and evolution in a web-based knowledge management system

The internet surpassed the zettabyte order of magnitude of traffic in 2016. With the growth of the internet, information categorization becomes even more important than before. By matching information to existing categories, humans as well as machines are able to organize, manage, access and re-use information and knowledge resources in a more efficient and effective way. Categorization also helps to narrow the choices among content, information, and knowledge resources. Content, information, and knowledge resources can be browsed, searched, and accessed faster if they are appropriately categorized. In order to make categorization possible, a taxonomy is needed to organize content, information, and knowledge resources into a set of topical categories. In this paper, we target the need to support human computer interaction related to applying taxonomies including the challenges in taxonomy management, development, and evolution, as well as approaches to solve the related challenges. A Taxonomy Management System is introduced in this paper as a solution for supporting the human computer interaction in management, development as well as the evolution of taxonomies. The underlying architecture as well as the user interface of the Taxonomy Management System will also be explained. Finally, the implemented proof-of-concept system prototype is evaluated with real world users along real-world application use cases within the scope of a European funded Research and Innovation Action project.