How Does Search Work in a DAM Software Solution? Part 3

What is a Taxonomy?

In simple terms it is a way of grouping or classifying things that are part of a group within a hierarchal tree structure. A great example of this is what we learned in high school earth science with the hierarchy of an organism within a domain. Or what was known as KPCOFGS (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species) which starts with a broad classification of organisms down to the specific class and species.

How Does a Taxonomy Work Within a Digital Asset Management Solution?

In a digital asset management system, taxonomy is a form of metadata that is applied through pre-configured multi-level controlled vocabulary lists that are relevant to a user’s collection. Employing a taxonomy through a DAM is basically like organizing objects within a traditional folder directory which contains parent and child relationships. But better.

What are the Benefits of Taxonomy in a DAM?

The main benefit and difference between using a taxonomy vs a folder structure is, that with a taxonomy, the parent/child relationships are done with metadata, giving users the ability to search for objects within that organizational structure. A user can drill down from the broad category to more specific levels, searching broad to narrow terms or even narrow to broad and increasing the chance for an asset to be located within a digital asset storage system by a user unfamiliar with the collection.

As illustrated in the above diagram, applying a taxonomical metadata gives the object more search ability as well as classifying the object to what categories it belongs to in an organization structure.