This paper is an expression about historical background, current trends and applications of taxonomies. It is based on the published literature discussing various aspects of taxonomies. The survey is based on free text search for the terms: Taxonomy, Knowledge organisation, Knowledge organisation systems, and Knowledge organisation tools in various online databases (Emerald, Taylor & Francis, Wilson web, Science Direct, Wiley online), and Google. Besides online databases some articles were identified from conventional journals and books. A number of periodicals across disciplines cover the subject. After analysis the relevant articles coinciding with the scope of the paper are presented under three categories: need, description, and benefits. The review reveals that the use of taxonomies is being highly advocated by the scholars for the efficient knowledge organization and retrieval of information in the digital environment due to the expeditious and compounded growth of information on the web and the failure of search engines to retrieve the relevant information. The ability of the taxonomies to retrieve the digital information with high precision and recall is unanimously accepted and established beyond doubt. It is also revealed that taxonomies are being implemented in various organizations/web portals across the globe
