The Importance of Factors that are not Document Attributes in the Organization of Personal Documents.

The authors describe the difficulties of translating classifications from a source language and culture to another language and culture. To demonstrate these problems, kinship terms and concepts from native speakers of fourteen languages were collected and analyzed to find differences between their terms and structures and those used in English. Using the representations of kinship terms in the Library of Congress Classification (LCC) and the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) as examples, the authors identified the source of possible lack of mapping between the domain of kinship in the fourteen languages studied and the LCC and DDC. Finally, some preliminary suggestions for how to make translated classifications more linguistically and culturally hospitable are offered

How a Personal Document\u27s Intended use or Purpose Affects its Classification in an Office.

This paper reports on the findings of a larger case study that attempts to describe how people organize documents in their own offices. In that study, several dimensions along which people make classificatory decisions were identified. Of these, the use of to which a document is put emerged as a strong determiner of that document’s classification. The method of analysis is reviewed, and examples of the different kinds of uses are presented, demonstrating that it is possible to describe a wide variety of specific instances using a closed set of descriptors. The suggestion is made that, in designing systems for organizing materials, it might be advantageous to incorporate information about contextual variables, such as use, since these seem to be particularly important in classification decisions made within personal environments

The Role of Classification in Knowledge Represantation and Discovery

The link between classification and knowledge is explored. Classification schemes have properties that enable the representation of entities and relationships in structures that reflect knowledge of the domain being classified. The strengths and limitations of four classificatory approaches are described in terms of their ability to reflect, discover, and create new knowledge. These approaches are hierarchies, trees, paradigms, and faceted analysis. Examples are provided of the way in which knowledge and the classification process affect each other

The Role of Classification Structures in Reflecting and Building Theory

In general, we can say that the role of a classification scheme is to provide a descriptive and explanatory framework for ideas and a structure for the relationships among the ideas. We create classificatory schemes to organize our knowledge of the world in such a way as to be useful in communicating and using this knowledge. It follows then, that a felicitous classification scheme has embedded within its content and structure a great deal of information - not only about the entities themselves (representing individual phenomena and concepts) but also about the relationships among these phenomena and concepts, that is, how these things go with respect to each other. As such, classifications are really very much like theories. Like theories, classification schemes can provide an explanatory shell for looking at the world from a contextually determined perspective. Classification schemes not only reflect knowledge by being based on theory and displaying it in a useful way (as, for example, in the phylogenetic tree based on Darwinian theory), but also classifications in themselves function as theories do and serve a similar role in inquiry: that is, the role of explanation, parsimonious and elegant description, and the generation of new knowledge. In this paper I examine the strong relationship of theories and 'classification schemes. Two classification schemes: The DSM Classification (for mental disorders) and the Periodic Table of Elements are offered as two examples of this relationship. Next, I examine three classification structures and their properties: hierarchies, trees, and faceted classifications as examples of how classificatory structure and theory interact

A Descriptive Study of the Functional Components of Browsing.

The paper describes a descriptive study of the functional components of browsing, which is viewed as the strategic and adaptive technique that people use to search, scan, navigate through, skim, sample, and explore information systems. Data on browsing is collected from thirty participants -- ten each in three browsing formats: print, command-driven computer version, and hypertext window-environment version. Data collection is by means of several techniques: the collection of thinking-out-loud, task-concurrent protocols; open-question interviews during the task; observation; and video and sound recording. The aim of analysis is to describe functions of browsing such as: orientation, place-marking, transition, comparison, identification, and resolution of anomalies, and the relationships among these functions

Commercial Websites and the Use of Classification Schemes: The Case of Amazon.com. In Lopez-Huertas, Maria J. Challenges in Knowledge Represantation an Organization for the 21st Century: Intergration of Knowledge Across Boundaries.

The structure and use of the classification for books on the Amazon.com website are described and analyzed. The contents of this large website are changing constantly and the access mechanisms have the main purpose of enabling searchers to find books for purchase. This includes finding books the searcher knows about at the start of the research, as well as those that might present themselves in the course of searching and that are related in some way. Underlying the many access paths to books is a classification scheme comprising a rich network of terms in an enumerative and multihierarchical structure

An Analysis by Means of Naturalistic Approaches of Two Complex Behaviors. In Gilbert, Nigel (Ed.) Proceedings of the Workshop on Complex Systems, Ethnomethodology and Interaction Analysis.

This paper describes two studies I which naturalistic approaches were used to investigate complex human behaviors. The first study is a description of the way in which people organize their documents in their own offices; the second study aims for a functional description of the behavior known as “browsing”. Both studies use thinking-out-loud protocols, observation, and interviews in the setting in which behaviors take place. The rationale for the choice of techniques is presented along with a discussion of advantages and difficulties

Classification Structures in the Changing Environment of Active Commercial Websites: the Case of eBay.com . In Beeghtol, Clare, Howarth Lynne C., and Williamson, Nancy J. (eds.) Dynamism and Stability in Knowledge Organization.

This paper reports on a portion of a larger ongoing project. We address the issues of information organization and retrieval in large, active commercial websites. More specifically, we address the use of classification for providing access to the contents of such sites. We approach this analysis by describing the functionality and structure of the classification scheme of one such representative, large, active, commercial websites: eBay.com, a web-based auction site for millions of users and items. We compare eBay’s classification scheme with the Art & Architecture thesaurus, which is a tool for describing and providing access to material culture

The Exploration by Means of Repertory Grids of Semantic Differences Among Names for Office Documents.

We used repertory grids to investigate the differences in names assigned to a selected list of 11 frequently mentioned office documents. The assumption is that naming reflects a classificatory decision and is based on a complex set of perceived aspects (which we call constructs) of the documents being named. We describe repertory grids as used in this application and summarize the resulting analysis