Novas perspectivas para a classificação

This critical review talks about Jens-Erik Mai’s article The modernity of classification. The article discusses modern practices related to classification, upholding mainly to a post-modern conception of classification. Within this conception, the human experience of diversity is centralized, thus, it is accepted that any fact can have multiple interpretations. In this sense, Mai defends that is necessary to rethink conceptual basis of the classification theory and its practices, so it can be developed some grounding that begins with a pluralist interpretative supposition. The article’s conclusion is based on the possibility of adopting the postmodern classification theory, indicating that one must make plenty more than just providing methods and recipes about how to develop schemes and systems, as well as also critically involving the theoretical base and suppositions that constitutes the classification practice.Resenha do artigo The modernity of classification, de Jens-Erik Mai. O tema central do artigo é a discussão das práticas modernas relacionadas à classificação, direcionando a reflexão ao que o autor chama de concepção pósmoderna de classificação. Nessa concepção, ganha espaço a diversidade da experiência humana, sendo, portanto, aceito que qualquer fato pode ter múltiplas interpretações. É nesse sentido que Mai defende que é necessário repensar a base conceitual do trabalho e da teoria de classificação e construir uma fundamentação que comece a partir de uma suposição interpretativa pluralista. A conclusão do artigo baseia-se na possibilidade de adoção da teoria pós-moderna da classificação, devendo-se fazer muito mais do que simplesmente fornecer receitas e métodos de como desenvolver esquemas e sistemas, mas também envolver criticamente a base teórica e a suposição que constitui o trabalho de classificação

A Review of Boundary Objects in Classification Research

To extend our understanding of conceptual frameworks and epistemological assumptions in classification research. I survey recent reviews and empirical inquiry that features the concept of boundary objects, and discuss their implications for classification research. Further, I discuss the problems posed when predominant discourses concerning classification research inhibit gaining an understanding of classification practices as socially, historically and culturally constructed. I propose a line of inquiry into classification practices in large scale infrastructure that considers locating and describing the particular, situated, socio-material relationships where a standard classification is used in practice

Knowledge organization: some trends in an emergent domain

The organization knowledge concept is defined as the domain where scientific research interacts with its application to systems development. Disciplines that embraces, as information science; and its products, such as classification systems, are cited. Some recent trends and current activities are presented. The article concludes presenting briefly the ISKO society and its activities

Cultural Pervasiveness or Objective Violence?: Three Questions about KOS as Cultural Arbiters

Knowledge organization and knowledge organization systems are pervasive in human experience, yet the effect of this pervasiveness is overlooked and little analyzed. Several authors have called for a theory of knowledge organization that embraces cultural and social realities alongside domain-centric ontologies. Examples of leading studies point to pervasive and occasionally oppressive discourses embracing race, sex and gender and economics. Three research questions are presented about how to study knowledge organization systems as cultural arbiters and how to incorporate temporality and atemporality into the methodology of subject ontogeny

Mapping knowledge orders in local museums: an example from Horodnic de Jos, Romania

Local museums in Romania are privately-owned, amateur presentations of identity and heritage that aim to preserve the past within the living spaces of their owners. This study identifies and maps several knowledge orders that emerged in one local museum visited in May 2014. Visual analysis and the gendered narratives of museum proprietors are used to reconstruct pathways through the museum in order to reveal orders of knowledge. The poster focuses on space-time arrangements, identifying the symbolic classifications of old/new and inside/outside. The study and interpretation rely on the literature of cultural motion (Greg Urban), and social classifications (Eviatar Zerubavel and Jens-Erik Mai). In Horodnic de Jos, the local museum emerges as an arena for knowledge production, where aggregation, bricolage and classificatory activities renegotiate the connections between past, present and future. This study exposes the local museum as a site of living memory that mediates local/national memory

Ethics for Contingent Classifications: Rorty’s Pragmatic Ethics and Postmodern Knowledge Organization

There is potential disconnect between a view of classification as historically and culturally contingent and the ethics of KO. For instance, Mai (2011) urges a shift away from the ‘modernity’ of received classification theory, towards a more pluralistic view that acknowledges the social, political, and historical contingency of classification as a practice. While this is a view shared by many, it is not evident how such an approach can support an ethics which prioritizes a commitment to truth, fairness, democracy, and the common good. A view of such values as merely contingent factors in classification activities would seem to undermine their use as ethical ideals, posing a choice between abandoning modernist tendencies and a workable ethics of KO. An ethics that is consonant with core methodological commitments is critical if we seek to preserve both disciplinary rigor and claim to serve the common good. Rorty's thought is presented as an ethics compatible with a view of classification as contingent. His suggestion of an ironic ethics is presented and distinguished from cynicism, which is a common misinterpretation of this aspect of his thought. Finally, his ethical principle of solidarity is shown to be broadly compatible with the traditional values of the field of LIS, while approaching it from a philosophical standpoint that doesn’t demand or encourage the universalizing tendencies which Mai and others have exhorted us to abandon. In short, this paper attempts to preserve the baby of a workable ethics while discarding the bathwater of universalism in knowledge organization

Conceptualizing a Future for Library Classification

This paper traces the roots of the positivist epistemology of librarianship; its ideals of neutrality and access as they intersect in the classification and assignment of library subject headings; and the notion of the author as it relates to the creation of library authority files. By legitimizing their own professional neutrality, librarians have wielded tremendous power over what libraries collect as well as how those works are represented, but have done so with little self-reflection. The act of classifying works and assigning subject headings is not a neutral process. It is time for librarians to use new tools such as the RDA standards to hold academic libraries accountable for assessing their collections to ensure they represent the diversity of voices that comprise the full record and collective history of our culture

The classification of Harris: Influences of Bacon and Hegel in the universe of library classification

The studies of library classifications generally interact with a historical approach that contextualizes the research and with the ideas related to classification that are typical of Philosophy. In the 19th century, the North-American philosopher and educator William Torrey Harris developed a book classification at the St. Louis Public School, based on Francis Bacon and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The objective of the present study is to analyze Harris’s classification, reflecting upon his theoretical and philosophical backgrounds in order to understand Harris’s contribution to Knowledge Organization (KO). To achieve such objective, this study adopts a critical-descriptive approach for the analysis. The results show some influences of Bacon and Hegel in Harris’s classification