Bend, Don’t Break: Change and Resilience in Knowledge Models

Knowledge models are always a work in progress. Ontologies modeling knowledge domains and the controlled vocabularies describing specific instances within those domains change and evolve over time. Language is fluid, and new terms and concepts are surfacing to reflect change just as old terminology is retired from use. Disruptions in an organization, such as a merger and acquisition or a global pandemic, have repercussions in an organization’s information landscape. When designing information systems, it is only possible to work in the current moment and try to address the future in the known/unknown matrix. Knowledge models representing an organization’s information landscape must be able to bend without breaking, adapting to change while maintaining their resiliency. In this session, hear how to weather change and build resiliency into knowledge organization systems including ontology models and controlled vocabularies using well-established best practices and current technology paradigms.