TOPIC 1 : SYSTEMATIC KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION SYSTEMS (KOS)

1. Concept of (digital) Knowledge Organization Systems.

2. Main (digital) Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS).

1. CONCEPT OF (DIGITAL) KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION SYSTEMS

-Knowledge organization (KO) is one of the oldest concepts that human being has ever lived with.

-The classi cation of knowledge and scienti c knowledge emerged from the need of human being
to systematize all knowledge about the surrounding world and about the process of knowledge
itself.

-There is no universal or perpetual classi cation of knowledge, since the creation of knowledge
organization systems such as classi cations is based on the worldview of their creators and their
way of ordering and structuring knowledge.

-Anyway, organizing is such a common activity that we often do it without thinking much about it.
Organization is part of our routines and daily activities.

o We organize physical objects: clothes in closets, books in shelves…

o We organize information about physical objects: labels on a box, notes on a book…
o We organize digital objects: websites, PDF les…
o We organize information about digital objects: website links, PDF metadata…

CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION

- BARITÉ (2015): Area of knowledge [...] that studies the laws, principles and procedures by which
specialized knowledge in any discipline is structured, with the aim of thematically representing
and retrieving the information contained in documents of any nature, by e cient means that
provide a rapid response to the needs of users.

- HJORLAND (2008): “Knowledge Organization is about describing, representing, ling and

organizing documents and document representations as well as subjects and concepts both by
humans and by computer programs”. The two main aspects of KO are:
1. Knowledge organization processes (KOP): cataloging, subject analysis, indexing,
tagging and classi cation.
2. Knowledge organization systems (KOS): selection of concepts with an indication of
selected semantic relations, like in classi cation systems, lists of subject headings,
thesauri, ontologies and other systems of metadata.

CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION (KO)

Terminology problems (quasi-synonyms and/or semantically close terms):
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 HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION (KO)

- Knowledge Organization (KO) is a eld of research, teaching and practice, which is mostly
a liated with Library and Information Sciences (LIS). Among the di erent aspects of the history of
KO are:

1. History of library classi cation systems: Melvil Dewey, Paul Otlet…

2. History of the classi cations of the sciences: Aristoteles, Francis Bacon…
3. History of scienti c taxonomies (classi cation in the sciences): Carl Linnaeus, Dmitri
Mendeleev…
4. History of knowledge organization as a discipline:
o Charles A. Cutter or W. C. Berwick established the “knowledge organization” as an
academic eld around 1900.
o The book The organization of knowledge and the system of the sciences by Henry Bliss
(1929) is one of the main intellectual contributions establishing the eld.
o Ingetraut Dahlberg, created the journal International Classi cation (1974) (from 1993
renamed Knowledge Organization) and the establishing of the International Society for Knowledge
Organization (ISKO) in 1989.

CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION SYSTEMS (KOS)

- BARIT… (2015): A system of concepts whose main purpose is to provide unambiguous

designations for the thematic representation of the content of documents, data and other
information resources, in any medium or structure, by means of codi ed symbols or linguistic
expressions, in order to facilitate thematic search and retrieval, in an e cient, relevant and
pertinent way.

- HODGE (2000): The term knowledge organization systems is intended to encompass all types of
schemes for organizing information and promoting knowledge management.

- KOS are used to organize materials for the purpose of retrieval and to manage a collection. A
KOS serves as a bridge between the user’s information need and the material in the collection.

Knowledge organization systems should permit users:

o Identifying an object of interest without prior knowledge of its existence.
o Guide users through a discovery process, by browsing, direct searching, ltering...
o Answers questions about the collection and its context.
o Supports e cient retrieval.
o Be applicable by automatic or human catalogers.
o Be meaningful to its users.

COMMON CHARACTERISTICS OF KOS:

- Category structure.
- Language re ected.
- No single knowledge classi cation is universal (multiple, variant ways to organize knowledge).
- Imposes a particular view of the world on a collection.
- A same entity can be characterized in di erent ways depending on the KOS used.
- There must be su cient commonality between the concept expressed in a KOS and the real-
world so the system can be used with reasonable reliability.
- A person seeking relevant material must be able to connect his/her concept with its
representation in the system
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 2. MAIN (DIGITAL) KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION SYSTEMS (KOS)

TERM LISTS: enumerate expressions often with de nitions

-Authority Files: lists of terms that are used to control the variant names for an entity or the
domain value for a particular eld. Examples include names for countries, individuals, and
organizations. Nonpreferred terms may be linked to the preferred versions. This type of KOS
generally does not include a deep organization or complex structure. The presentation may be
alphabetical or organized by a shallow classi cation scheme.

-Glossaries: a list of terms, usually with de nitions. The terms may be from a speci c subject eld
or from a particular work. The terms are de ned within a speci c environment and rarely include
variant meanings.

-Dictionaries: are alphabetical lists of words and their de nitions (with a more general scope than
glossaries). They may also provide information about the origin of a word, variants (by spelling
and morphology), and multiple meanings across disciplines. They may also provide synonyms
and related words.

-Gazetteers: a list of place names where each entry may be identi ed by feature type, such as
river, city, etc.

CLASSIFICATIONS AND CATEGORIES: create subject sets

-Subject Headings: an scheme type providing a set of controlled terms to represent the subjects
of items in a collection. They can be extensive but with a shallow and limited hierarchical
structure. Tend to be coordinated, with rules explaining how they can be joined to provide
concepts that are more speci c. Examples: Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and the Library of
Congress Subject Headings (LCSH).

-Classi cation Schemes, Taxonomies, or Categorization Schemes: organized structure of terms

corresponding to one or all areas of knowledge, represented by numeric or alphabetic notations,
which aims to assign symbols to documents, according to their subject matter, in order to group,
separate, organize or reference them in a logical way. They are increasingly used in object-
oriented design and knowledge management systems to indicate grouping of objects based on a
particular characteristic. Examples: Dewey Decimal Classi cation, Bliss Bibliographic
Classi cation, etc.

RELATIONSHIP LISTS

-Thesauri: based on concepts and the relationships among terms. Relationships commonly
expressed in a thesaurus include hierarchy, equivalence (synonymy), and association or
relatedness. These relationships are generally represented by the notation BT (broader term), NT
(narrower term), SY (synonym), and RT (associative or related term). Standard for the monolingual
thesauri (NISO 1998; ISO 1986) and multilingual thesauri (ISO 1985). Examples: UNESO
Thesaurus, EuroVoc, etc.

-Semantic networks: They structure concepts and terms not as hierarchies but as a network or a
web. Concepts are thought of as nodes, and relationships branch out from them. The
relationships may include speci c whole-part, cause-e ect, or parent-child relationships.

-Ontologies: a data system that de nes the relationships between concepts in a domain or area of
knowledge. They can represent complex relationships among objects, including rules, axioms or
restrictions missing from semantic networks.
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