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The Feasibility of Developing Such Knowledge Organization Systems

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Interdisciplinary Knowledge Organization

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Abstract

Existing classification systems such as the Library of Congress (LCC) or Dewey Decimal (DDC) benefit from over a century of refinement. It is thus no simple task to develop a novel classification that might supersede (or simply complement) these. Knapp (2012) is one scholar who applauds the sort of classification being urged in this book, but worries about the feasibility of developing an entirely new classification. Yet the argument of this chapter is that it is indeed possible to do so. We will first make some general remarks regarding feasibility, and then proceed to a discussion of each of the elements of a new system that were proposed in the preceding chapters.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    López-Huertas (2013) has studied cross-cultural understandings more generally, and found that there are shared understandings of some terms but not others.

  2. 2.

    Khoo and Na (2006) proceed to discuss different sorts of semantic relationship (such as conjunction versus disjunction) and note that there is no scholarly consensus on a classification of these. But we have not identified that sort of distinction in our inventory of classificatory needs.

  3. 3.

    Condorcet had said that systems of classification that imposed a uniform view of nature were a great obstacle to science. He proposed a faceted approach that would include objects of study, methods, perspectives, uses of the knowledge, and ways of knowing ( Glushko 2013, 299).

  4. 4.

    The General Formal Ontology developed by Heinrich Herre and others considers levels of reality as one structuring principle, under influence of continental philosophy. Dependence between levels as a promising additional feature in ontologies has been discussed in a formal meeting between one of the authors (Gnoli) and ontologists at the University of Trento (Fumagalli, Maltese, Farazi and others).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    Rick Szostak

  2. Università di Pavia, Pavia, Italy

    Claudio Gnoli

  3. University of Granada, Granada, Granada, Spain

    María López-Huertas

Authors
  1. Rick Szostak
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  2. Claudio Gnoli
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  3. María López-Huertas
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Szostak, R., Gnoli, C., López-Huertas, M. (2016). The Feasibility of Developing Such Knowledge Organization Systems. In: Interdisciplinary Knowledge Organization. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30148-8_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30148-8_5

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