Classification otherwise know as Taxonomy, is the grouping or ranking or grading of things that have similar qualities or characteristics. But why is classification important? First, I believe that classification is important, thus to support my answer I refer to the chapter by Wright. According to Wright, “Taxonomies are reflections of the human thought; they express our most fundamental concepts about the objects of our universe.” He further went on to say that “our predisposition to classify at all is an ancient trait and clearly has an adaptive advantage.” I was amazed as to how much we are affected by this “classification thing”. Dye’s article on the subject stem from a different angle, she uses the word “Folksonomy” in relation to classification of metadata. She states “the process is simple enough: Users assign a name or tag to any image, article, blog, bookmark or Url. Later when they want to recall the content, they search for its tag and find exactly what they are looking for.” Hence I believe it is safe to say that without classification which in essence is term as taxonomy and folksonomy one would have a very hard time gathering data. The length of time taken for a given research would be twice as much if classification was not applicable. Finally, as Badke says “Any database is only as useful as its retrieval capacity.”
