Goals and expectations in teachi

The goal of teaching knowledge organization (KO) is, of course, that students should be given competencies in doing KO in different contexts, whether by "by manual", "automated" or combined methods.

This is an academic course intended to help you to examine problems in KO and write well-argued papers about those problems, as opposed to a practical course in learning a piece of software or some cataloging or classification rules. The kinds of questions students should be qualified to write about are exemplified here: Ideas for writing term papers.

When LIS professionals have to organize knowledge, they need more qualifications, than those taught in courses of KO, e.g. subject knowledge, linguistic knowledge and knowledge about specific environments and tools, including computer skills.

Courses of knowledge organization will always reflect a view of what is the best way to organize knowledge, based on some view of what is meant by the word "best" (highest quality? what is meant by quality? most cost-efficient?). Teachers should relate to different views of KO and defend why they emphasizes the things they do. They should have some visions of what jobs needs to be done in a time when technologies, such as Google, have revolutionized access to information.

A colleague (Mai 2007), for example, describe the purpose of his course the following way:

After years, even decades, of focus on automating the storage, organization, and retrieval of documents, information, knowledge there is now a growing demand for people who know how to design and build controlled vocabularies and manually index documents using such controlled vocabularies. The aim of this course is to prepare you to lead a team that can construct a controlled vocabulary and develop policies and practices for representing information. The course will provide you with knowledge about the fundamental theories and principles for representation of information and design of controlled vocabularies.

Perhaps is Jens Erik underestimating automatic retrieval and overestimating "controlled vocabularies"? His students have formerly constructed thesauri, so this is probably something he recommends. The good thing about it is that there is something by doing something concrete, rather than just learn about theoretical and conceptual issues. To construe a controlled vocabulary is not the goal in my own teaching, although I believe that it would be desirable to include this and establish this background knowledge. It is however, very time consuming to construe a thesaurus, even a prototype, and still we may ask: How do we decide if a given thesaurus is of a high quality? This last question is far more in the front of what I try to teach.

My view is that library and information specialists is an important profession that have to find its identity between two poles: On the one side information technology (or computer science), on the other hand subject specialists. Computer science have produced technologies that in important ways challenge what librarians and information specialists use to do (e.g. Google). I believe that LIS professionals may provide value added services in representing documents for retrieval, which can justify our existence. LIS-professionals may, for example, be educated in a way that make them able to index fiction (or any other domain) in a valuable way. I believe that LIS professionals have to know about the domain (e.g. fiction), but that this knowledge is not the same knowledge ordinarily taught in subject disciplines. One example from Art is provided by Ørom (2003). I believe, that LIS professionals, that have read and understood this article, do have some important qualifications that make them better qualified for organizing knowledge about arts, compared to people, who do not have this knowledge. Ørom's paper is thus an important model for the kind of knowledge, I try to teach. (I also believe that this kind of knowledge is important when trying to improve algorithmic methods to KO).

Concerning expectations on preparation for the lessons, I strongly agree with what Jens E. Mai (2007) writes:

The outcome of this course depends to a large degree on your active participation. This means that it is important that you have read and understood the assigned texts for each class. You need to read the texts in such a manner that you can ask and answer questions about them. In other words, you control the outcome of this course. It is your responsibility to do what is necessary to understand the texts, e.g. read the texts multiple times, write an abstract or outline of the texts, participate in study groups.

First, the kind of questions you should put to the texts is related to the theme of the lesson (and the whole course). If, for example, the lesson is about a specific approach to KO, you should be able to answer what is specific about this approach? How precisely is KO carried out according to the literature about it? Have specific systems been designed based on it? Is there correspondence between what is claimed and what is done? What are the good things in this approach (if any)? What are the problematic things things?

Second, Lifeboat for KO (and the other lifeboats) has been developed to support your reading. It is designed in order to support you in answering just those questions. It collects a lot of material, which is believed to be necessary to answer such questions. It provides links to other concepts, examples etc. which may be necessary to understand the texts and answer the questions. For example, it is very difficult to find high quality critiques of Ranganathan's approach to KO. He has a lot of followers, but the few critics are so scattered and hidden in the literature, that it is very difficult to locate without the lifeboats. It is important to start your reading in the lifeboats, and also to look up during reading papers.

Thirdly, it may not be important to understand all details in every paper. Sometimes technical details are important. It is, for example, important that you develop an ability to evaluate the empirical evidence by considering how a study has been done. The most important thing is, however to read the literature in order to answer overall theoretical issues, such as: "if some researchers is influenced by a particular theory, what difference does it make for the way KO is carried on? (And in the end: What difference does it make for the quality of KO and for the users?).

Always remember to ask and answer the most important question when facing scientific and scholarly literature: SO WHAT? This is a simple way to evaluate whether the text makes a difference to you, and whether it brings the field a step further.

Fourth, a part of the reading is also an evaluation of the texts read. You may disagree with them, or find them unclear. You can get angry, but you can also choose to use this as an opportunity and provide a critique in your term paper. By doing that you contribute to the field: A contribution is a better argument for a point of view, this is all science and scholarship is about!

Ørom, A. (2003). Knowledge Organization in the domain of Art Studies - History, Transition and Conceptual Changes. Knowledge Organization, 30(3/4), 128-143.