Knowledge Organisation and Classification in International Information Retrieval

Citation

Batley, S. (2005), "Knowledge Organisation and Classification in International Information Retrieval", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 39 No. 2, pp. 169-170. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330330510595751

This book was simultaneously published as Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, Vol. 37 Nos 1/2, and actually makes much more sense as a series of journal articles than as a coherent text. Of the 14 papers collected here, some are pitched at a very basic level while others are highly specialised. In essence therefore, individual readers may be interested in some, but not all, of the content.

The editors bring together a series of papers broadly concerned with classification, by authors from the USA, Canada, France, India, Portugal and Romania. This would appear to provide a truly international perspective, but on closer inspection ten of the 14 papers have authors based in the USA and Canada.

Certainly, the subject coverage is very wide‐ranging, with sections on general bibliographic systems; information organisation in knowledge resources; linguistics, terminology, and natural language processing; and knowledge in the world and the world of knowledge. Very wide‐ranging and very ambitious.

The first paper on the future of general classification helpfully reminds us that general classification schemes cover everything and special classification schemes do not, and then discusses Brian Vickery's (1960) book on faceted classification schemes. At least this does acknowledge UK writers on the topic, something lacking in other papers. This level of treatment did, however, make me question what readership the book is aimed at. Reading of the earlier papers led me to assume that this was a text that may provide supplementary reading for undergraduates. This assumption was dashed when, in Kent's paper about ontological knowledge I was confronted by “(L₁^@C+_log(T)L₂^@C) … ”.

I've used two extreme examples here, but they do occur in the same text and the comparison is valid. The general impression is that this book lacks coherence of purpose and consistency of style – perfectly acceptable in conference proceedings, less acceptable in an issue of a journal, and unacceptable in a book.

On a positive note, some of the papers represent well‐written accounts of research on exploring ways to improve global access to information. I found the papers on linguistics and terminology particularly interesting and informative. Individual papers can be purchased via the Haworth Document Delivery Service, a useful alternative to actually buying the book.

A rather obvious point to make, given the above, is that the book focuses on organising information not knowledge. This may seem to be a trivial point, hinging on how one defines terms, but “knowledge” and “information” are not synonymous. There has been an increasing trend towards introducing the K word into anything pertaining to information management, a trend I had hoped was on the decline. That this book is not about managing knowledge is amply demonstrated by the fact that the penultimate chapter is a well‐written but very basic introduction to concepts of knowledge management.

Overall I feel that my negative review of the text as a whole should not reflect on the quality of individual papers. Each paper in an appropriate context would have merit. The problem is that they do not sit well together in a single text. The blame has to lie with the editors, who could have taken a more proactive approach to their task. There is no evidence of an attempt to enforce any form of editorial policy, all that is provided is a brief and rather superficial introduction.