Ontologies power a myriad of digital and online experiences that we interact with every day - from product categories on ecommerce sites, to occupation and skills taxonomies in job advertising, to autocomplete features when searching online.  

Ontologies are structured representations of concepts and relationships in a domain which can be consumed by computers, but they are designed and maintained by humans - ontology and taxonomy practitioners who work across a range of businesses and subject areas. 

Ontology is a young and evolving discipline, and practitioners may come from very diverse backgrounds, but library science professionals have a range of skills which are very compatible with this field. Developing and working with thesauri, controlled vocabularies, classification schemes and metadata schema is a valuable background to ontology work, as is a focus on customer needs and outcomes, and equality of service. 

Join us to hear two library professionals who have made the switch to ontology on what it's like, what it is and what librarians have to offer to this small but growing niche of the tech industry.