Units in knowledge organization

If we look at an introductory paper on knowledge organization such as Anderson (2003) many different suggestions to what is organized in KO is given.

“The description (indexing) and organization (classification) for retrieval of messages representing knowledge, texts by which knowledge is recorded and documents in which texts are embedded. Knowledge itself resides in minds and brains of living creatures.

Its organization for retrieval via short- and long-term memory is a principal topic of cognitive science. Library and information science deals with the description and organization of the artifacts (messages, texts, documents) by which knowledge (including feelings, emotions, desires) is represented and shared with others. These knowledge resources are often called information resources as well. Thus ‘knowledge organization’ in the context of library and information science is a short form of ‘knowledge resources organization’. This is often called ‘information organization’“. (Anderson, 2003, p. 471; underlining added).

This quotation provided six different terms (the underlined) to consider as candidate terms for the units in KO. Other views may be found scattered in different literatures. For example, in the sociology of science, Barnes writes:

"Let us remind ourselves of the basics of the small view of Kuhn. His crucial insight, on this view, is that solved problems are the fundamental units of scientific knowledge. Particular problem solutions are accepted within a collective as valid achievements on the basis of which future work should proceed; these paradigms diffuse through the collective and are passed on down the generations as the elementary components of the scientific culture" (Barnes, 2002, p. 127).

Garshol (2004) writes:

"It is generally assumed when organizing information that it consists of discrete pieces, though the terms used for these vary. The pieces are sometimes referred to as "documents", at other times as "objects". We will use the term object here for the entities being organized, as it does not seem appropriate to assume that they will all be documents in the traditional sense of the word. "

R. Stichweh writes about disciplines as units:

"One can still find the same understandings of doctrina and disciplina in the literature of the eighteenth century. But what changed since the Renaissance is that these two terms no longer refer to very small particles of knowledge. They point instead to entire systems of knowledge (Ong 1958). This goes along with the ever more extensive use by early modern Europe of classifications of knowledge and encyclopedic compilations of knowledge in which disciplines function as unit divisions of knowledge. The background to this is the growth of knowledge related to developments such as the invention of printing, the intensified contacts with other world regions, economic growth and its correlates such as mining and building activities. But in these early modern developments there still dominates the archival function of disciplines. The discipline is a place where one deposits knowledge after having found it out, but it is not an active system for the production of knowledge." (Stichweh, 2001, 13728)

(Dogan, 2001) puts forward the view that disciplines are no longer the most important units in scientific communication. He finds that no person in disciplines like sociology today can master the knowledge of the whole discipline and contribute to many of them. Each formal discipline gradually becomes unknown in its entirety. “There is more communication between specialties belonging to different disciplines than between specialties within the same discipline” (Dogan, 2001, p. 14852)

Based on the quoted papers and other papers, one can easily construe a long list of candidates claiming the role of basic units in KO:

•Artifacts

Books on shelves

•Concepts

Disciplines

•Documents

Genres

•Ideas

•Information

•Information resources

Knowledge

•Knowledge claims

•Knowledge representations

•Knowledge resources

•Literatures

•Media

•Messages representing knowledge

•Objects (three-dimensional)

•Recorded knowledge

•Signs (semiotic KO)

Solved problems

Specialties

•Subjects (Fields of knowledge, disciplines, professions)

•Terms

•Texts

Utterances

Words

•Works

Among these units are, for example, "concepts" or "ideas" often regarded as units in the "intellectual organization of knowledge" while, for example, disciplines or specialties are regarded as units in the "Social organization of knowledge". There is not today proposed any theory of how all these candidates for units in knowledge are interrelated. Different theoretical outlooks tend to focus on just some of those concepts. A comprehensive theory of KO has to relate all these concepts to each other.

Below are some of the suggestions for units in KO shortly introduced:

The term "Knowledge Organization" is historically related to the works of Cutter, Sayers & Richardson, who all recommended that book classification followed scientific classification. Among the classic books in the tradition of Knowledge Organization is Bliss' (1929) "The organization of knowledge and the system of the sciences". These persons knew the problem of fallibilism, but considered it possible for LIS to base bibliographical classification on scientific classification. (Bliss tried to interpret a consensus). The best way to organize books in libraries (and document representations in bibliographies) was to make the library classification reflect a scientific classification which, in turn, was supposed to reflect the nature of reality:

Today is "knowledge" often regarded as more relative to theories and perspectives, why it would probably be more correct to talk about "knowledge claims". Ways of ordering knowledge is also to a higher degree seen as pragmatic, as supporting different human activities, why the organization is not "objective" and "neutral" but purposeful and more or less fruitful in relation to different goals and activities. One could say that the tendency have been to move from a more "positivist" view of knowledge towards a more "pragmatic" epistemology.

In 1968 suggested Gerard Salton a change of terminology from “Knowledge organization” to “Information Organization”. It has subsequently been adopted by others (e.g. Svenonius, 2000; Taylor, 1999). Does this term represent another theoretical perspective compared to "knowledge organization" or does it just represent a fad in terminology? A deeper understanding of this issue implies an investigation of the meaning of "information". Among the critics of this concept is Furner (2004), who find it unnecessary for information studies!

1. Traditional approaches to knowledge organization.	Concretely are documents the units organized, but the term “knowledge organization” implies a more abstract ambition to base classification on scientific and scholarly knowledge.
2. The facet-analytic approach	“Ideas”. This approach removes itself somewhat from the empirical basis of documents and introduces logical principles for KO which are mainly based on rational intuition.
3. Information retrieval tradition	Concretely are words, co-word relations and word-document-relations the units. However, “information” is the claimed unit.
4. User oriented views	Individual, cognitive structures
5. Bibliometric approaches	Documents and citation patterns between documents.
6. The domain Analytic approach	“Knowledge” is replaced with “documented knowledge claims” or works. (What is being organized are not eternal truths, but works with claims that are substantiated from one or another epistemological perspective).