This paper discusses and analyzes the conceptual basis for classification work in the 21st century; it provides an account of classification that lays out the boundaries within which classification operate. The methodological and practical effects of the boundaries are discussed. The main point of the paper is to demonstrate that classifications are bound by particular contexts and conceptual frameworks.

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / In this article, we report our implementation and comparison of two text clustering techniques. One is based on Wardâ s clustering and the other on Kohonenâ s Self-organizing Maps. We have evaluated how closely clusters produced by a computer resemble those created by human experts. We have also measured the time that it takes for an expert to â â clean upâ â the automatically produced clusters. The technique based on Wardâ s clustering was found to be more precise. Both techniques have worked equally well in detecting associations between text documents. We used text messages obtained from group brainstorming meetings.

This presentation will address the difficult task of representing complex concepts in a text in a way that reflects their contextual meaning. The preservation of context enables the disambiguation of a termiÌ s possible multiple senses, and also shows how the term is being used. In developing these ideas we revisit an indexing system called PRECIS, which was developed by Derek Austin in the early 1970s for subject indexing for the British National Bibliography, and subsequently developed by him with the assistance of Mary Dykstra into a adaptable method of linking both the semantics and syntax of indexing terms.

This is a preliminary digitization of S.R. Ranganathan's Classification and Communication. Published by the University of Delhi in 1951. First Edition. Copyright permissions granted from the copyright holder: © Sarada Ranganathan Endowment for Library Science (SRELS). To purchase reprints of this work, please visit Ess Ess Publications at http://www.essessreference.com/. Table of Contents: Chapter 11: First sense--Primitive use; Chapter 12: Second sense--Common use; Chapter 13: Third sense--Library classification; Chapter 14: Field of knowledge; Chapter 15: Enumerative classification; Chapter 16: Analytico-synthetic classification; Chapter 17: Uses of analytico-synthetic classification; Chapter 18: Depth-classification--Confession of faith; Part 2--Communication; Chapter 21: Co-operative living; Chapter 22: Communication and language; Chapter 23: Commercial contact; Chapter 24: Political understanding; Chapter 25: Literary exchange; Chapter 26: Spiritual communion; Chapter 27: Cultural concord; Chapter 28: Intellectual team-work; Part 3--Classification and Its Future; Chapter 31: Domains in communication; Chapter 32: Domain of classification; Chapter 33: Time-and-Space-Facets; Chapter 34: Preliminary schedules; Chapter 35: Energy-Facet; Chapter 36: Matter-Facet; Chapter 38: Research and Organisation; Index.

This is an abbreviated version of the original article. / This is an English translation of the article published in Vjesnik bibliotekara Hrvatske (Croatian Library Journal). The paper reports on a pilot study observing the level to which library classification, Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) specifically, is exploited in searching and browsing library OPACs. The study was conducted in 2004-2005. A selection of 30 Web OPACs using UDC from 22 countries were observed. The OPACs were representative of 5 in-house and 10 vendor library systems. Interface areas examined were: UDC access points, searching, browsing and display. In total, 23 designated interface functionalities were identified. From these observations, it transpires that there is a great discrepancy in the number of functions available, ranging from two to sixteen. The majority (87%) of OPACs have between seven and sixteen UDC related access points and functions enabled. Only four out of thirty catalogues offer top/down systematic browsing (i.e. knowledge area browsing), and only fourteen catalogues have a classification number in the bibliographic description hyperlinked to allow access to other titles in the same class. The study shows that Web OPACs offer different selections and a different number of functions in supporting searching or browsing UDC - even if libraries use the same vendor system. This study is only a pilot and does not analyse the differences between interface options in relation to the 'strength' of library systems and does not rank them according to their importance in IR. However, the study provides an insight into this, usually neglected, segment of library OPACs and establishes a framework for further research. At this stage the research does not include analysis of classification authority data on which the searching and browsing is based. Further research is planned to shed more light on IR specific functions and their relation to authority control and library systems.

Herb Simon, the pioneer cognitive scientist, computer scientist, economist, and Nobel prize winner, wrote that design is the core of all professional activity (Simon, 1996). The natural sciences are concerned with how things are; the science of design is concerned with how things ought to be â with devising artifacts to attain goalsâ (Schon, 1990, p. 110). In other words, according to Simon, what professionals do is to â transform an existing state of affairs, a problem, into a preferred state, a solution â (Schon, p. 111). A key area of professional design in library and information science is the creation of systems for the organization of knowledge. The purpose of this research project is to examine the design process in knowledge organization using design theory which originated in other fields. There is a rich literature based on research in the fields of architecture, engineering, software design, clinical psychology, city planning, and other professions. I used the themes originating in this literature to explore design in LIS. In LIS, design work related to knowledge organization is carried out simultaneously at multiple levels in the devising of national standards for design such as the NISO Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Thesauri, in the maintenance of major vocabularies such as the Library of Congressâ s Thesaurus for Graphic Materials, in the design of vocabularies intended to be diffused widely such as the Art & Architecture Thesaurus, and at the local level in the creation of descriptors and classification systems for individual collections of materials. The specific focus of this research project is design of vocabularies â in which I include subject headings, descriptors, keywords, captions, and classification systems -- for local collections of images.

Warrant, in classification, is encompassed in the Oxford English DictionaryiÌ s definition: "justifying reason or ground for an action, belief, or feeling." Classifications may be deemed good or bad on the basis of any number of characteristics, but the justification for their choice and order of classes or concepts is one of the most fundamental. This paper will introduce the notion of warrant used by Francis Bacon in his classification of knowledge, discuss its uniqueness within the panoply of classificatory history, and suggest that Bacon still has a radical idea to suggest to todayiÌ s classificationists.

Teaching classification extends beyond teaching any one classification system, but involves a variety of thinking approaches to the possibilities of how to organize. Teaching classification in the 21st century involves recognizing that the traditional parking of materials co-exists with more flexible ways of classifying new formats, objects, digital files, etc. Involving students in the logical and systematic underpinnings of various classification systems along with the technological advancements that offer new ways to organize and sort launches the thinking process. Classroom simulations serve to introduce students to a range of classification problems, including organization of objects and images along with discussions of user perspectives and anticipation of future use of the item. The group simulations and discussions surface new issues while presenting basic concepts through active participation.

The collections of art museums have been assembled over hundreds of years and described, organized and classified according to traditions of art historical research and discourse. Art museums, in their role as curators and interpreters of the cultural record, have developed standards for the description of works of art (such as the Categories for the Description of Works of Art, CDWA) that emphasize the physical nature of art as artefact, the authorial role of the creator, the temporal and cultural context of creation and ownership, and the scholarly significance of the work over time. Collections managers have recorded conservation, exhibition, loan and publication history, along with significant volumes of internal documentation of acquisition and storage, that support the custody and care of artefacts of significant cultural value. But the systems of documentation and classification that support the professional discourse of art history and the management of museum collections have failed to represent the interests, perspectives or passions of those who visit [use?] museum collections, both on-site and online. As museums move to reflect the breadth of their audiences and the diversity of their perspectives, so must museum documentation change to reflect concerns other than the traditionally art historical and museological. Social tagging offers a direct way for museums to learn what museum-goers see in works of art, what they judge as significant and where they find or make meaning. Wi thin the steve collaboration(http://www.steve.museum), a group of art museums is collectively exploring the role of social tagging and studying the resulting folksonomy (Bearman & Trant, 2005; Chun, Cherry, Hiwiller, Trant, & Wyman, 2006; Trant & Wyman, 2006). Analysis of terms collected in the prototype steve tagger suggests that social tagging of art museum objects can in fact augment museum documentation with unique access points not found in traditional cataloguing. Terms collected through social tagging tools are being compared to museum documentation, to establish the actual contributions made by naïve users to the accessibility of art museum collections and to see if social classification provides a way to bridge the semantic gap between art historians and art museumsâ publics.

Artificial Intelligence Lab, Department of MIS, University of Arizona / A major problem that decision makers are facing in an information-rich society is how to absorb, filter and make effective use of available data. The problem caused by information overflow could lead to the losses of competitiveness. This paper presents a knowledge-based approach to building an issues identifier to help investors overcome information overflow problems when dealing with very large on-line financial databases. The proposed software system is able to extract critical issues from the on-line financial databases. The system was developed based on a number of techniques: automatic indexing, concept space genemtion, and neural network classification. In this paper, we describe how these techniques are used to extract subject descriptors, their semantic relationships, and the related texts (documents or paragraphs) to each descriptor. The proposed system has been tested with the annual reports from thirteen of the largest international banks.