Abstract: A method for automatically constructing a taxonomy for a collection of documents. For a given collection of documents, a method in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention creates document clusters, assigns taxons (titles) to the clusters, and organizes the clusters in a hierarchy. The clusters in the hierarchy are ordered from general to specific in the depth of the hierarchy, and from most similar to least similar in the breadth of the hierarchy. This method is capable of producing meaningful classifications in a short time.