Ethical aspects in Knowledge Organization and Representation (KOR): a preliminary analysis of values and problems found in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST) and of the Journal of Documentation (1995-2004)

• Grant number: 05/02122-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: October 01, 2005
• End date: September 30, 2007
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Information Science - Library and Information Science
• Principal Investigator: José Augusto Chaves Guimarães
• Grantee: Suellen Oliveira Milani
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências (FFC). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Marília. Marília , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The significant social changes and more specifically in the informational context (globalization, new technologies, more demanding clients etc.) have risen questionings on the ethic information’s professional performance. Nevertheless, such reflections have been focused on information’s access and dissemination aspects, there is practically no issues existing literature about ethical aspects of Knowledge Organization and Representation (K.O.R.) field, except for the preliminary reflections by Dahlberg (1992), Fernández-Molina and Guimarães (2002), Begthol (2002) and Olson (2002). This takes the necessity to check out the existence of ethic’s values and problems away which causes impact on this field, because it is supposed that those aren’t assumed as that, but are revealed in everyday’s practice. Therefore and trying to contribute to a further reflection on the lack of literature on ethics in K.O.R. the present investigation aims an analysis of the literature of the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology - JASIST and Journal of Documentation, in the period between 1995 and 2004, which traditionally was dedicated to questions on this field, aiming to identify the articles that approach ethical questions. Therefore, and based on Fernandez Molina et al (2005) and Guimarães et al (2005)’s methodological parameters, the results shall be analyzed in terms of ethical values and problems, and then compared with Dahlberg`s Classification Scheme for Knowledge Organization Literature (1993) structure. (AU)