Canada Heritage Information Network Awards Contract to Cogniva

Information Architecture & Taxonomy Development. Artefacts Canada Humanities, a database of approximately 3.5 million records representing the collections of Canadian museums, is at the core of Canada Heritage Information Network’s (CHIN) work to make Canada’s heritage accessible to all. It is central to the operation of the Virtual Museum of Canada (VMC) Image Gallery.

With the re-development of Artefacts Canada, CHIN needed to provide users with a new visual representation of the content of Artefacts Canada, as well as a means for users to browse the content of the Artefacts Canada database. This new functionality required the creation of an “Artefacts Canada Taxonomy” to represent the Artefacts Canada data.

The taxonomy developed in this project provided CHIN with the vocabulary that they need to index or “tag” all Artefacts Canada records (current and future). The taxonomy will also be implemented in the new Artefacts Canada interface, allowing users to browse the hierarchical structure of the different facets to access the content of the database in a more meaningful way.

Cogniva was responsible of creating a multi-faceted, bilingual (English/French) taxonomy based on the ISIS Methodology for Artefacts Canada, which will be used as a browser interface and as a visual representation of the Artefacts Canada database contents.

The project also included user testing and reports on the tools and methodology used for the development of the taxonomy, informing CHIN on all impacts those can have on future implementation, maintenance and use of the taxonomy.