Conceptions of knowledge organization: a metatheoretical investigation in the LIS field

• Grant number: 11/10223-1
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Visiting Researcher Grant - International
• Start date: August 28, 2011
• End date: September 21, 2011
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Information Science - Library and Information Science
• Principal Investigator: José Augusto Chaves Guimarães
• Grantee: José Augusto Chaves Guimarães
• Visiting researcher: Joseph T. Tennis
• Visiting researcher institution: University of Washington, United States
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências (FFC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Marília. Marília , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Knowledge Organization in the Library and Information Science (LIS) field is usually conceived as a branch of studies which is concerned to the specificity in representing information in a certain area. Neverthless, the scientific literature of such area presents a terminological diversity to name its specific concepts, what could be a sign that there is a diversity of theoretical conceptions and influences. On the other side, the International Society for Knowledge Organization - ISKO, which is worldwide and specifically devoted to study those matters, can not be considered the only scientific forum do diffuse knowledge on KO all over the world. Considering those questions, it aims to a) verify what is the presence of the concepts related to KO in the ISKO literature in comparison with other tradition LIS journals devoted to information organization; b) identify what is the conceptual framework for that (by identifying the different concepts used to characterize the KO field); c) point out the scientific networks (author´s communities) that support those different conceptions; d) identifying what is the role performed by ISKO in conceptual matters of KO in LIS field. For that it will analyze 2 groups of scientific documents: ISKO proceedings and Knowledge Organization Journal, in one side, and Library resources and technical services, Journal of Documentation, JASIST, Journal of Information Science, Cataloguing and Classification Quarterly, in other side, during the period of one decade (1990-2010). It will be selected a group of articles/communications in which it is possible to observe the presence of the terms "knowledge organization", "knowledge representation", "information organization" and "information representation" in the following areas: title, sub-title, keywords, abstract. In the selected corpus it apply the following procedures: collect the definitions proposed or used by the author; collect the cited authors to support those definitions; content analysis of the definitions; construction of social networks of the cited authors (including co-citation analysis) by means of PAJEK software, comparison of the obtained results between the 1st and the 2nd group of periodicals in such a way to propose a preliminary framework of conceptual approaches of KO in the LIS literature. (AU)