Let’s start with taxonomies. On 8 October 2025, the final Bite-sized Taxonomy Boot Camp of the year occurs, with four superb presentations during the half day event. It starts with Lauren Clark Hill, Expert Solutions Engineer at Synaptica, provided a primer on the language of AI. Following her is Martin White, a renowned information professional, giving his perspective on taxonomies then and now. He traces the development of taxonomy technologies from early information retrieval up to the present day’s applications of content, taxonomies and knowledge graphs. Ian Piper, Director, Tellura, add a description of a project to integrate content and metadata from disparate sources using a CMS and semantic repositories into a functioning content graph.
Rounding out the event is Ahren Lehnert, who talks about the best ways to show information from semantic models without overwhelming users with too much detail, and Jane Frazier, concentrating on tried and trusted methods to support non-taxonomist colleagues on digital projects. Tickets for Bite-sized Taxonomy Boot Camp can be purchased here.
Searchers Academy
For those of you who may have attended our day-long preconference session about web search in London at Internet Librarian International in years past, we’re getting the band back together on 27 October 2025 for Searchers Academy: Evolving, Adapting & Connecting. Arthur Weiss, Marydee Ojala, Phil Bradley and Gary Price look at all the stunning new developments in the search world as they affect information professionals. Working from the assumption that our search techniques, sources of information, and communication skills must be re-examined in a GenAI-driven environment, the workshop focusses on practical tips and techniques to unlock the "black box" of search.
The four search experts cover what’s new in web search, resources to turbocharge research, savvy search strategies, effective search prompts using chatbots and AI assistants, what to do with retrieved search results, and best practices about connecting with communities.
Searchers Academy precedes the full, totally virtual, 3-day Internet Librarian Connect conference. Full details and registration information is here.