The Taxobook: History, Theories, and Concepts of Knowledge Organization, Part 1 of a Part-3 Series

Marjorie Hlava

Oct 2014 · Morgan & Claypool Publishers

About this ebook

This is the first volume in a series about creating and maintaining taxonomies and their practical applications, especially in search functions. In Book 1 (The Taxobook: History, Theories, and Concepts of Knowledge Organization), the author introduces the very foundations of classification, starting with the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, as well as Theophrastus and the Roman Pliny the Elder. They were first in a line of distinguished thinkers and philosophers to ponder the organization of the world around them and attempt to apply a structure or framework to that world. The author continues by discussing the works and theories of several other philosophers from Medieval and Renaissance times, including Saints Aquinas and Augustine, William of Occam, Andrea Cesalpino, Carl Linnaeus, and René Descartes. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, James Frederick Ferrier, Charles Ammi Cutter, and Melvil Dewey contributed greatly to the theories of classification systems and knowledge organization. Cutter and Dewey, especially, created systems that are still in use today. Chapter 8 covers the contributions of Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan, who is considered by many to be the “father of modern library science.” He created the concept of faceted vocabularies, which are widely used—even if they are not well understood—on many e-commerce websites. Following the discussions and historical review, the author has included a glossary that covers all three books of this series so that it can be referenced as you work your way through the second and third volumes. The author believes that it is important to understand the history of knowledge organization and the differing viewpoints of various philosophers—even if that understanding is only that the differing viewpoints simply exist. Knowing the differing viewpoints will help answer the fundamental questions: Why do we want to build taxonomies? How do we build them to serve multiple points of view? Table of Contents: List of Figures / Preface / Acknowledgments / Origins of Knowledge Organization Theory: Early Philosophy of Knowledge / Saints and Traits: Realism and Nominalism / Arranging the glowers... and the Birds, and the Insects, and Everything Else: Early Naturalists and Taxonomies / The Age of Enlightenment Impacts Knowledge Theory / 18th-Century Developments: Knowledge Theory Coming to the Foreground / High Resolution: Classification Sharpens in the 19th and 20th Centuries / Outlining the World and Its Parts / Facets: An Indian Mathematician and Children’s Toys at Selfridge’s / Points of Knowledge / Glossary / End Notes / Author Biography

About the author

Marjorie M.K. Hlava and her team have worked with or built over 600 controlled vocabularies. Their experience is shared with you in this book. Margie is well known internationally for her work in the implementation of information science principles and the ever-evolving technology that supports them. She and the team at Access Innovations have provided the "back room" operations for many information-related organizations over the last 40 years. Margie is very active in the main organizations concerned with those areas. She has served as president of NFAIS (the National Federation of Advanced Information Services); that organization awarded her the Anne Marie Cunningham Memorial Award for Exemplary Volunteer Service to the Federation in 2012, as well as the Miles Conrad lectureship in 2014. She has also served as president of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), which has awarded her the prestigious Watson Davis Award and their top honor, the ASIS&T Award of Merit. She has served two terms on the Board of Directors of the Special Libraries Association (SLA); SLA has honored her with their President's Award for her work in standards and has made her a Fellow of the SLA for her many other services within the organization. More recently, she served as the founding chair of SLA's Taxonomy Division.

For five years, Margie was on the Board of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), and she continues to serve on the Content and Collaboration Standards Topic Committee for NISO. She has also held numerous committee positions in these and other organizations. She convened the workshop leading to the ANSI/NISO thesaurus standard NISO Z39.19-2005, and was a member of the standards committee for its writing. She also acted as liaison to the British Standards Institute controlled vocabulary standards group to ensure that the U.S. and British standards would be compatible.

Margie is the founder and president of Access Innovations, Inc., which has been honored with many awards, including recognition several times by KMWorld Magazine as one of 100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management and as a Trend-Setting Product Company, as well as by EContent Magazine as one of 100 Companies That Matter Most in the Digital Content Industry. The company's information management services include thesaurus and taxonomy creation. Under Margie's guidance, Access Innovations has developed the Data Harmony® line of software for content creation, taxonomy management, and automated categorization for portals and data collections. The Data Harmony Suite is protected by two patents, numbers 6898586 and 8046212, and 21 patent claims. Her recognition of the value of automatic code suggestion forthe medical industry led to the founding of Access Integrity and its Medical Claims Compliance system.

Margie's primary areas of research include automated indexing, thesaurus development, taxonomy creation, natural language processing, machine translations, and computer aided indexing. She has authored more than 200 published articles on these subjects. At industry and association meetings, she has given numerous workshops and presentations on thesaurus and taxonomy creation and maintenance.