Hello all,
BCcampus Open Education is looking for feedback and advice on revising the taxonomy of the B.C. Open Textbook Collection in order to make textbooks easier to find. Right now, the collection has 11 categories and multiple subcategories. However, the current taxonomy has a lot of flaws and no longer meets the needs of our growing textbook collection. I know that everyone is probably slowing down over the holiday season, but if any of you have the time and ability to send feedback, it would be great if that could be submitted by January 11, 2019.
Background
As some of you may remember, Lauri reached out a while ago looking for resources to help guide the development of categories for the collection. We received a number of great resources, but because of the characteristics of our collection (it's focused on textbooks, it's quite small, and the categories must be few enough to click through), nothing really worked as-is. For the most part, I worked from the ProQuest Categories, but I have made significant changes to fit the needs of the open textbook collection.
Taxonomy
The revised taxonomy will still function the same (e.g., categories can be expanded to display the subcategories, see the collection for an example), but the aim is to make it easier to find books by making the categories and subcategories more comprehensive, accurate, and intuitive. Note that this taxonomy was designed under the assumption that books that fit in multiple categories (e.g. Business and communication) can be cross-posted in both.
Here is the link to where you can see and comment on the draft version of Taxonomy [GoogleDocs].
Questions
Feel free to send whatever kind of feedback that you have, especially if you think we're way off the mark. You can comment directly on the document or email your comments. Here are some general questions that I have:
- Do the top-level categories make sense? Should any of them be split, combined, or renamed?
- Do the subcategories make sense? Should any of them be split, combined, or renamed?
- Are there any top-level categories missing?
- Are there any sub-categories miscategorized? (note that there are probably a lot of subcategories missing, but we can add them in the future as new textbooks are identified)
Here are some specific questions that we have:
- Does English Language Learning (e.g. ESL) deserve its own top-level category? Or does it make sense to put it under the Language Learning category as I have done.
- Does Economics better belong under Social Sciences or Business?
Let me know if you have any questions.
Best,
Josie
Josie Gray, BA (Hons.) Coordinator of Collection Quality, Open Education |
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Cell: 250-588-2141 • Pronouns: She/her Email: jgray@bccampus.ca Twitter: @josiea_g • Skype: jgray@bccampus.ca |
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