Heather Hedden

Biography

Heather Hedden has been a knowledge engineer since 2020 with Semantic Web Company, vendor of PoolParty Semantic Suite software for taxonomy, ontology, and knowledge graph management. In addition to helping customers with their taxonomy/ontology projects and supporting sales, Heather has recently taken on the additional roles of Product Communications Representative – Americas, involving creating training and informational content about PoolParty, and Knowledge Manager of Semantic Web Company’s internal knowledge graph taxonomy and knowledge hub. Heather works for the US subsidiary of Semantic Web Company, based in Boston. 
Heather has been creating and editing taxonomies for over 25 years for various employers and as an independent consultant. Previously she worked as a taxonomist at Cengage Learning, Gale, Viziant, First Wind, and Project Performance Corporation. She gives workshops on taxonomy creation at conferences, as corporate training, and as an online course through Hedden Information Management. Heather is author of the book The Accidental Taxonomist, 3rd edition.

Talks and Events

2023 Tutorial: Taxonomy-Driven Ontology Design

Taxonomies and ontologies are often merged. Ontologists might look upon taxonomies as the component or extension of ontologies to include hierarchies of subclasses. But it also goes the other way. Taxonomies can be semantically enriched to become ontologies with the addition of a high-level ontology model. This bottom-up approach to ontology creation leverages existing taxonomies. While stakeholder input and analysis of data are standard inputs into ontology design, taxonomies can serve as an additional source of input into designing an ontology. This session also addresses the difference of taxonomies and ontologies, presents benefits of taxonomy-based ontology design, and shows how an example taxonomy excerpt can serve as the basis for classes, object properties (semantic relations), and datatype properties (attributes).

Track: Masterclass

2022 Tutorial: Foundation for a Knowledge Graph: Taxonomy Design Best Practices

Ontologies form the semantic framework for knowledge graphs, but to serve the purpose of linking data, ontologies need to be based on taxonomies or other controlled vocabularies, whose concepts are linked to data and tagged to content. There has also been a trend of greater integration of taxonomies and ontologies: ontologies are being adopted for wider business use, and taxonomies have been included in the W3C standards with widespread adoption of SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System). 

While taxonomies are easier to design and create than ontologies, too often they are created without any skill or training, and poorly designed taxonomies yield poor results. This tutorial will cover the basics and best practices in taxonomy design, including: types of controlled vocabularies, standards, sources for topical concepts, wording of labels, alternative labels, hierarchical and associative relationships, and governance. This tutorial also explains the approach of semantically enriching an existing taxonomy to become an ontology by adding a semantic layer of an ontology or custom scheme.

2022 Talk: Taxonomy-Driven Ontology Design

Taxonomies and ontologies are often merged. Ontologists might look upon taxonomies as the extension of ontologies to include hierarchies of subclasses and/or all instances of classes. But it also goes the other way. Taxonomies can be semantically enriched to become ontologies with the addition of a high-level ontology model. This bottom-up approach leverages existing taxonomies. While stakeholder input and analysis of data are standard inputs into ontology design, taxonomies can serve as an additional source of input into designing an ontology. In addition to addressing the benefits of taxonomy-based ontology design, this session will look at taxonomy excerpt examples and evaluate how they can serve as the basis for classes, object properties (semantic relations), and datatype properties (attributes).

2021 Tutorial: Foundation for a Knowledge Graph: Taxonomy Design Best Practices

Ontologies form the semantic framework for knowledge graphs, but to serve the purpose of linking data, ontologies need to be based on taxonomies or other controlled vocabularies, whose concepts are linked to data and tagged to content. There has also been a trend of greater integration of taxonomies and ontologies: ontologies are being adopted for wider business use, and taxonomies have been included in the W3C standards with widespread adoption of SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System).

While taxonomies are easier to design and create than ontologies, too often they are created without any skill or training, and poorly designed taxonomies yield poor results. This tutorial will cover the basics and best practices in taxonomy design, including: types of controlled vocabularies, standards, sources for topical concepts, wording of labels, alternative labels, hierarchical and associative relationships, and governance. This tutorial also explains the approach of semantically enriching an existing taxonomy to become an ontology by adding a semantic layer of an ontology or custom scheme.