

Local term sets are created within the context of a site collection, and are available for use (and visible) only to users of that site collection. Terms sets can have different scope, depending on where you create the term set. By using a folksonomy, content classification can evolve together with changing business needs and user interests. It creates a way to share the knowledge and expertise of site users. The following figure shows a tag cloud on a SharePoint site.Ī folksonomy-based approach to metadata can be useful. If you have ever seen a tag cloud on a website, then you have seen a visualization of a folksonomy. Originally, folksonomies developed from popular applications such as bookmarking. It evolves gradually as web site users collaborate on words, labels, and terms on a site. FolksonomyĪ folksonomy is an informal classification system. All these taxonomies are structured hierarchies of information formal classification systems that help people handle information. They create Chart of Accounts taxonomies to manage accounting systems, organization charts and job classifications to manage employees, product catalogs and so on. Organizations create taxonomies in too many ways to list. Together, the whole system is a taxonomy. Each of these major groups has many subdivisions. For example, biologists group living organisms into four major classifications: animal, plant, fungus, and microbe. People construct taxonomies for almost any kind of information, from biological systems to organizational structures. A taxonomy groups the words, labels, and terms that describe something, and then arranges the groups into a hierarchy. TaxonomyĪ taxonomy is a formal classification system. These terms and concepts appear frequently in articles about managed metadata. This section contains definitions of some key terminology.

This article describes some important terminology of managed metadata, and gives you a quick look at how you can use the tools in SharePoint to manage metadata. You can organize the metadata in a way that makes sense in your business and use the metadata to make it easier to find what you want. When you use SharePoint products, you can manage the metadata centrally. Metadata can be many kinds of information - a location, a date, or a catalog item number.

For example, a book's title and author is metadata. Metadata is information about information.
