Controlled Vocabularies
The primary purpose of Vocabulary Control is to achieve consistency in the description of content objects and to facilitate retrieval. A Controlled Vocabulary is a pre-defined, established and organized list of explicitly allowed words, phrases and terms used to index, categorize, tag, sort, and retrieve content through browsing and searching. A controlled vocabulary is necessary to systematically organize documents, records, and content. Vocabularies range in complexity from simple lists or pick lists, to the synonym rings or authority lists, to taxonomies, and, the most complex, thesauri and ontologies. An example of a controlled vocabulary is the Dublin Core, used to catalog publications.
Vocabulary Management is the function of defining, sourcing, importing, and maintaining any given vocabulary. Key Questions to enable vocabulary management focus on uses, consumers, standards, and maintenance:
- What information concepts will this vocabulary support?
- Who is the audience for this vocabulary? What processes do they support? What roles do they play?
- Why is the vocabulary necessary? Will it support an application, content management, or analytics?
- What decision-making body is responsible for designating preferred terms?
- What existing vocabularies do different groups use to classify this information? Where are they located? How were they created? Who are their subject matter experts? Are there any security or privacy concerns for any of them?
- Is there an existing standard that can fulfill this need? Are there concerns of using an external standard vs. internal?
- How frequently is the standard updated and what is the degree of change of each update? Are standards accessible in an easy to import / maintain format, in a cost-efficient manner?
Controlled Format
The term Controlled Format refers to rules concerning the allowable data types and formatting of information. Fields may have controlled format in addition to being linked to controlled vocabulary, or the controlled format may exist in the absence of any finite controlled list of acceptable values.
