The Elements of Knowledge Organization

Book excerpt: The Elements of Knowledge Organization is a unique and original work introducing the fundamental concepts related to the field of Knowledge Organization (KO). There is no other book like it currently available. The author begins the book with a comprehensive discussion of “knowledge” and its associated theories. He then presents a thorough discussion of the philosophical underpinnings of knowledge organization. The author walks the reader through the Knowledge Organization domain expanding the core topics of ontologies, taxonomies, classification, metadata, thesauri and domain analysis. The author also presents the compelling challenges associated with the organization of knowledge. This is the first book focused on the concepts and theories associated with KO domain. Prior to this book, individuals wishing to study Knowledge Organization in its broadest sense would generally collocate their own resources, navigating the various methods and models and perhaps inadvertently excluding relevant materials. This text cohesively links key and related KO material and provides a deeper understanding of the domain in its broadest sense and with enough detail to truly investigate its many facets. This book will be useful to both graduate and undergraduate students in the computer science and information science domains both as a text and as a reference book. It will also be valuable to researchers and practitioners in the industry who are working on website development, database administration, data mining, data warehousing and data for search engines. The book is also beneficial to anyone interested in the concepts and theories associated with the organization of knowledge. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia is a world-renowned author who is well published in the Knowledge Organization domain. Dr. Smiraglia is editor-in-chief of the journal Knowledge Organization, published by Ergon-Verlag of Würzburg. He is a professor and member of the Information Organization Research Group at the School of Information Studies at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.