A graphical interface for faceted thesaurus design

This paper develops a formalization of faceted thesauri that is based on formal concept analysis. The formalization facilitates graphical displays of thesauri as line diagrams of mathematical lattices. Resulting strategies that can be employed to design a thesaurus in an , alternating top-down and bottom-up approach are described and demonstrated through an example

Ethological classification: A model for ordering the commercial workplace that draws on collective practice.

We would like to present a novel classification approach to the Idea mart, and receive feedback from colleagues. In certain circumstances an approach to classification may be useful that is based on repertoires of recurring activities and their associated documentation ('genre repertoires'); we label this 'ethological classification' (Davenport and Rosenbaum 2000). The approach offers an alternative to the search for 'deep structure' that organizes knowledge in a working group: as genres embody the practical understanding of such groups, they offer a 'surface' representation of knowledge that may be sufficient for some organizational purposes: finding groups to share activities, for example. As autogenic forms, genres may be taken as valid representations of the practical knowledge of the communities in which they emerge. The 'ethological' approach may solve some ofthe problems associated with recent attempts to design 'ecological work-based classification' schemes (Pejtersen and Albrechtsen, 2000) where the search for 'invariant structures' and their validation can be extremely resource intensive. The 'ethological' approach, a form of bricolage, which draws on knowledge that is to hand, offers a thrifty alternative

The world of Pokemon: A dynamic ecological classification system.

The stimulus for this paper was the recent ISKO 2000 conference in Toronto where papers were presented on exotic classification systems (Olson 2000), ecological work-based classification schemes (Albrechtsen 2000; Pejtersen and Albrechtsen 2000) and self-organizing environments (Dron et al. 2000). The world of Pokermon combines all three ofthese approaches to understanding classification. Because the Pokemon trading game is heavily merchandised and widely played, it has generated a global cohort of young players who have been introduced to classificatory principles through their participation in the game. We propose that their understanding of classification should be explored further, as it may provide insight into the appropriation of mediated worlds in other modalities like the web

Modelling lexical databases with formal concept analysis.

This paper provides guidelines and examples for visualising lexical relations using Formal Concept Analysis. Relations in lexical databases often form trees, imperfect trees or poly-hierarchies which can be embedded into concept lattices. Many-to-many relations can be represented as concept lattices where the values from one domain are used as the formal objects and the values of the other domain as formal attributes. This paper further discusses algorithms for selecting meaningful subsets of lexical databases, the representation of complex relational structures in lexical databases and the use of lattices as basemaps for other lexical relations

The world of Pokemon: A dynamic ecological classification system.

The stimulus for this paper was the recent ISKO 2000 conference in Toronto where papers were presented on exotic classification systems (Olson 2000), ecological work-based classification schemes (Albrechtsen 2000; Pejtersen and Albrechtsen 2000) and self-organizing environments (Dron et al. 2000). The world of Pokermon combines all three ofthese approaches to understanding classification. Because the Pokemon trading game is heavily merchandised and widely played, it has generated a global cohort of young players who have been introduced to classificatory principles through their participation in the game. We propose that their understanding of classification should be explored further, as it may provide insight into the appropriation of mediated worlds in other modalities like the web