The Directory includes many talents under MEDICINE but excludes the diseases and disorders to which they are applied (cancer, coronary heart disease, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, depression, etc).  By no means should this suggest that specific applications are irrelevant. Without doubt an electrical engineer who works mostly on missile guidance systems will gain important expertise not shared by a comparable engineer who works primarily on aircraft communications systems. Our approach has been to catalog applications  ( or content elements )  separately and to develop efficient methods for matching skills and applications in any combination. This simplifies the skills lexicon.  At the same time this approach increases the flexibility and precision of the skills inventorying process.

We’d like to offer a few words about the two frames that set the size extremes. Why does ACADEMIA have 26 clusters and contain over 53% of the skill descriptors whereas RELIGION has few clusters and just over 1% of the skill descriptors?  This imbalance may expose analytical deficiencies which could be corrected in future Directory editions.  Be this as it may, we have intended that RELIGION remain sparse in order to preclude any possibility of suggesting a narrow or biased interpretation of what should be included. The sparseness of the frame hopefully will encourage many diverse interpretations of what is relevant to the human spirit and to the religious institutions and practices of mankind.