This presentation was made at the 30th Anniversary Celebrations of the Dept. of Management Information Science, Eller College, University of Arizona, held at the Hilton El Conquistador, Tucson, AZ, Nov. 3-5, 2004. Knowledge organization (KO), knowledge representation (KR) and knowledge management (KM) are described and methods used in the models classsification research project from these disciplines are described.

In this dissertation I analyze the relationship between social organization and knowledge organization. This analysis is carried out on two levels. The first level consists of three chapters each examining particular perspectives of the relationship. First, in terms of an examination of how communication technologies have shaped forms of social organization. I argue how knowledge organization is constituted by social organization. Second, I further situate knowledge organization in light of Jurgen Habermas theory of the public sphere and argue that his theory can be viewed as a fundamental model of knowledge organization. Third, by drawing on various theories of genre and activity systems, I underpin the connection between social organization in scholarly communication by means of how indexing reflects and responds to the rhetorical activities of scholarly articles. I consider this as how knowledge organization can ascribe cognitive authority to documents. The texts are considered to constitute the mediating link between social organization and knowledge organization. I conclude that this relationship between social organization and knowledge organization must be understood and examined in order to fully account for the role knowledge organization in human activities based on document production and use such as scholarly communication.

This presentation is based on the refereed paper published in the ISKO 8 proceedings (see References for citation). It describes a study of the language used by undergraduate engineering students engaged in a civil engineering laboratory. Learnerâ s concepts and relationships in the area of soil consolidation were elicited in order to provide an understanding of the structural knowledge of novices and compare it with the knowledge structures of a human expert and a thesaurus tool. Concept maps and pathfinder networks were used to visualize and analyze the resultant knowledge structures of novice learners, expert, and tool. Results show that there is little similarity between the knowledge structures of the novice, the expert, and the tool. There is preliminary evidence that students with complex knowledge structures earn better grades thereby, encouraging collaborative research between instructional evaluation and knowledge organization in order to measure the educational impact of digital libraries (DL); for example, cause-effect relationships could be studied between the vocabularies used in browsing and other navigational systems in a DL and the educational outcomes achieved.

Presentations and discussions of different approaches to Knowledge Organization from Melvil Dewey to Internet enginees: 1. â Traditional approachesâ 2. Management oriented approaches 3. Logical and facet-analytic approaches 4. Computer based approaches 5. Bibliometric approaches 6. User oriented and cognitive approaches 7. Domain analytic approaches

"Bias" is normally understood as a negatively loaded word, as something to be avoided or minimized, for example, in statistics or in knowledge organization. Recently Melanie Feinberg suggested, however, that "if we cannot eliminate bias, then we should instead attempt to be more responsible about it and explicitly decide on and defend the perspectives represented in information systems". This view is linked to related views: That knowledge organization is too much concerned with information retrieval and too much described in the mode of scientific discovery, as opposed to the mode of artifact design: "From the literary warrant of Hulme to the terminological warrant of the Classification Research Group (CRG), to Hjørland’s domain analysis, the classificationist seems like one who documents and compiles, and not one who actively shapes design." This paper examines these claims, which may be understood as questions about subjectivity and objectivity in classification and about positivism versus pragmatism in research. Is KO an objective and neutral activity? Can it be? Should it be? A dominant view has been that knowledge and KO should be understood as a passive reflection of an external order. This has been termed the mirror metaphor of knowledge and is related to empiricism and positivism. The opposite view - which is in accordance with both Feinberg and Hjørland - states that knowledge organization should be functional and thus reflecting given goals, purposes and values. It is related to pragmatism in philosophy.

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Contents: Introduction: The importance of semantics for information science (IS) The status of semantic research in information science. Semantics and the philosophy of science. Semantics and subject knowledge Semantics and its â warrantâ a) Query/situation specific or idiosyncratic b) Universal, Platonic entities/relations c) â Deep semanticsâ common to all languages (or inherent in cognitive structures) d) Specific to specific empirical languages (e.g. Swedish) e) Domain or discourse specific f) Other (e.g. determined by a company or by a workgroup, â user orientedâ ) Semantic relations The 'intellectual' versus the social organization of knowledge Conclusion

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / Our research attempted to identify the nature and causes of information management indeterminism in an online research environment and to propose solutions for alleviating this indeterminism. We conducted two empirical studies of information management activities. The first study identified the types and nature of information management indeterminism by evaluating archived texts. The second study focused on four sources of indeterminism: subject area knowledge, classification knowledge, system knowledge, and collaboration knowledge. A knowledge-based design for alleviating indeterminism, which contains a system-generated thesaurus and an inferencing engine, is also proposed in this article.

This is one example of concepts introduced in the free source: The Epistemological Lifeboat. Epistemology and Philosophy of Science for Information Scientists. Birger Hjørland & Jeppe Nicolaisen (eds.) - Web design: Pernille Brandt. / Present the concept of knowledge representation from an epistemological point of view. A given knowledge representation is always reflecting the object being represented as well as the subject doing the representation. Any given knowledge representation is always biased and perspectival. Knowledge representation in Media Studies, Psychology, Linguistics,Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence is briefly overviewed. The article is intended as an introduction to this concept for library and Information Scientists.

Very useful for those looking for biotechnology related digital resources available online. / Information is a dynamic and inexhaustible source that affects all disciplines and Animal Biotechnology is no exception. The application of scientific and engineering principles to the processing and production of materials by animals or aquatic species to provide goods and services, has yielded new and improved medicines for animals that help lower production costs and improve animal well being by fighting various diseases caused by bacteria and parasites. New and enhanced animal vaccines have also been developed through modern animal biotechnology techniques. For all these things, Animal biotechnologists require latest, authenticated and scholarly information. In this regard, the exponential growth of the Internet expands the wealth of knowledge resources available in all disciplines including animal biotechnology and the amount of biotechnology knowledge available on the web is staggering. The Internet connects them to organizations such as universities, colleges, research institutes and companies who are dealing with animal biotechnology and facilitates access to informal organizations such as special interest groups, email lists, news groups, blogs, etc. Databases such as Entrez Nucleotides, GenBank, RefSeq, CCDSD, TPAD, dbEST, dbGSS, dbMHC, dbSNP, dbSTS, UniVec, CDD, Entrez Proteins, MMDB, 3DDD are made available by NCBI across the cyberspace which facilitates 24/7 access to all those concerned with animal biotechnology. Gateway sites like AgBiotechNet, APHIS of USDA, ISB of Virginia Tech University opens the door of online documents and searchable databases pertaining to the development, testing and regulatory review of genetically modified plants, animals and other microorganisms. A number of factual databases, electronic journals, electronic books and other electronic documents are freely available across the Internet. It connects students, research scholars, academics, librarians, scientists and other category of professionals dealing with animal biotechnology. The opportunities provided by the Internet for interactive learning, up-to-date science news, scholarly contents, project funding guidance, audio-visual contents in the area of biotechnology are laudable.