Taxonomies and meta data are simply tools for organizing both tacit and explicit knowledge to make them more accessible.
A Rolodex represents a low-tech version of accessing tacit knowledge. An online example would be the Faculty Index at Stanford's School of Education. Research Interest has been used as one type of meta data, and all the different Research Interests make up the basic taxonomy. Because the Stanford faculty agreed on a common term for each Research Interest, anyone who wants to locate all the Stanford faculty associated with a specific interest can do so very easily given this knowledge organization method.
Examples of explicit knowledge organization abound. However, organizational approaches still remain rather simple. The GEM website uses basic metadata such as subject, type, level, and keywords. Clicking on Browse in the navigation box allows users to view the simple taxonomy associated with the meta data.
By establishing base metadata and taxonomies, organizations reap the benefits of managing knowledge. Internal employees can both share and locate relevant knowledge easily. Sharing across organizations, however, becomes more challenging as the knowledge organization tools are often defined differently from one to another. In the education sector, it is the definition of standards by organizations such as GEM, that will enable greater sharing of knowledge among educators, schools and districts.
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