Knowledge taxonomies: what's the role for information professionals?

Information Outlook, June, 2005 by Jo Anne Cote

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Advantages of LIS Profile

In the knowledge map in figure 5, it is evident that there are many advantages to having an LIS profile in the field of taxonomies. Many of the competencies cross over easily to taxonomy. Librarians and information professionals are trained to think in terms of bibliographic control that renders information readily identifiable and retrievable. Descriptive cataloguing, subject headings, classification, authority work, and MARC tagging are traditional information tools, and the underlying philosophy of coherently organizing information to provide logical access points remains applicable today.

Library and information professionals are accustomed to deciding what something is, how it is useful, and to whom--precisely what taxonomy development requires. LIS professionals already know about hierarchical classification according to broad or narrow terms; in fact, faceted classification (currently a buzzword for taxonomists) was invented by S. R. Ranganathan in 1927 as part of the Colon Classification scheme, although it has never been popular and is only for print documents.

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Indexing, also part of the LIS profile, is an information retrieval tool that is applicable to the world of taxonomy. According to Hawkins, Larson and Caton (2003), an abstracter or indexer uses taxonomy to choose where to classify articles in a database.

The fact that indexing does not require authority control prepares the LIS professional for the ambiguity that is common in the open information systems where taxonomies live. Library and information professionals are already very familiar with the notion of controlled vocabulary and the problems created by language: connotation, synonyms, homophones, and so on. They are already working with metadata and are traditionally trained to analyze, identify, and organize information. Adapting these competencies to an evolved information environment is a matter of being open to complex knowledge structures, notions of context, and the adaptation of old methods to better fill the needs of the new information user.

Disadvantages of Traditional Methods

While many traditional information organization methods map to taxonomies, it is often not without some adjustment. For instance, analysis becomes semantic analysis in taxonomy. Cataloguing no longer means just describing the concrete physicality of something and giving it a call number but also refers to more intangible concepts, such as mapping the relationships among pieces of information and making the information and the relationships accessible online. This process connects directly to the notion of the surrogate record; in fact, it becomes more authentic in this process, but traditional classification schemes typically do not provide the extra levels of information.

A major change to conventional methods of organization relates to the acceptance of non-standardized classification schemes and the creation of one's own authority control. If Library of Congress or Dewey no longer sufficiently describe information, what can be used in their stead? Who has authority control? Where are the rules? The biggest change of all is the shift from perceiving information as one-dimensional, tangible items located in physical structures that must be accessed in person, with little thought to the relationships that make the information meaningful. Contemporary views of and demands for information are not well served by traditional ways of structuring knowledge. Traditionally, organized knowledge creates obstacles to the best way of representing it by not being able to provide as true a surrogate as possible.