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Abstract

This article presents and discusses the concept "subject" or subject matter (of documents) as it has been examined in library and information science (LIS) for more than 100 years. Different theoretical positions are outlined and it is found that the most important distinction is between document-oriented views versus request-oriented views. The document-oriented view conceive subject as something inherent in documents, whereas the request-oriented view (or the policy based view) understand subject as an attribution made to documents in order to facilitate certain uses of them. Related concepts such as concepts, aboutness, topic, isness and ofness are also briefly presented. The conclusion is that the most fruitful way of defining "subject" (of a document) is the documents informative or epistemological potentials, that is, the documents potentials of informing users and advance the development of knowledge.

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Abstract

Aboutness ranks amongst our field's greatest bugbears. What is a work about? How can this be known? This mirrors debates within the philosophy of language, where the concept of representation has similarly evaded satisfactory definition. This paper proposes that we abandon the strong sense of the word aboutness, which seems to promise some inherent relationship between work and subject, or, in philosophical terms, between word and world. Instead, we seek an etymological reset to the older sense of aboutness as "in the vicinity, nearby; in some place or various places nearby; all over a surface." To distinguish this sense in the context of information studies, we introduce the term episemantics. The authors have each independently applied this term in slightly different contexts and scales (Hauser 2018a; Tennis 2016), and this article presents a unified definition of the term and guidelines for applying it at the scale of both words and works. The resulting weak concept of aboutness is pragmatic, in Star's sense of a focus on consequences over antecedents, while reserving space for the critique and improvement of aboutness determinations within various contexts and research programs. The paper finishes with a discussion of the implication of the concept of episemantics and methodological possibilities it offers for knowledge organization research and practice. We draw inspiration from Melvil Dewey's use of physical aroundness in his first classification system and ask how aroundness might be more effectively operationalized in digital environments.