National Seminar on Classification in the Digital Environment : Papers contributed to the National Seminar an Classification in the Digital Environment, Bangalore, 9-11 August 2001 (2001)
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- Date
- 2. 1.2004 10:35:22
- Footnote
- AHUJA and SATIJA (Relevance of Ranganathan's Classification Theory in the Age of Digital Libraries) note that traditional bibliographic classification systems have been applied in the digital environment with only limited success. They find that the "inherent flexibility of electronic manipulation of documents or their surrogates should allow a more organic approach to allocation of new subjects and appropriate linkages between subject hierarchies." (p. 18). Ahija and Satija also suggest that it is necessary to shift from a "subject" focus to a "need" focus when applying classification theory in the digital environment. They find Ranganathan's framework applicable in the digital environment. Although Ranganathan's focus is "subject oriented and hence emphasise the hierarchical and linear relationships" (p. 26), his framework "can be successfully adopted with certain modifications ... in the digital environment." (p. 26). SHAH and KUMAR (Model for System Unification of Geographical Schedules (Space Isolates)) report an a plan to develop a single schedule for geographical Subdivision that could be used across all classification systems. The authors argue that this is needed in order to facilitate interoperability in the digital environment. SAN SEGUNDO MANUEL (The Representation of Knowledge as a Symbolization of Productive Electronic Information) distills different approaches and definitions of the term "representation" as it relates to representation of knowledge in the library and information science literature and field. SHARADA (Linguistic and Document Classification: Paradigmatic Merger Possibilities) suggests the development of a universal indexing language. The foundation for the universal indexing language is Chomsky's Minimalist Program and Ranganathan's analytico-synthetic classification theory; Acording to the author, based an these approaches, it "should not be a problem" (p. 62) to develop a universal indexing language.
Discussion The proceedings of the National Seminar an Classification in the Digital Environment give some insights. However, the depth of analysis and discussion is very uneven across the papers. Some of the papers have substantive research content while others appear to be notes used in the oral presentation. The treatments of the topics are very general in nature. Some papers have a very limited list of references while others have no bibliography. No index has been provided. The transfer of bibliographic knowledge organization theory to the digital environment is an important topic. However, as the papers at this conference have shown, it is also a difficult task. Of the 18 papers presented at this seminar an classification in the digital environment, only 4-5 papers actually deal directly with this important topic. The remaining papers deal with issues that are more or less relevant to classification in the digital environment without explicitly discussing the relation. The reason could be that the authors take up issues in knowledge organization that still need to be investigated and clarified before their application in the digital environment can be considered. Nonetheless, one wishes that the knowledge organization community would discuss the application of classification theory in the digital environment in greater detail. It is obvious from the comparisons of the classificatory structures of bibliographic classification systems and Web directories that these are different and that they probably should be different, since they serve different purposes. Interesting questions in the transformation of bibliographic classification theories to the digital environment are: "Given the existing principles in bibliographic knowledge organization, what are the optimum principles for organization of information, irrespectively of context?" and "What are the fundamental theoretical and practical principles for the construction of Web directories?" Unfortunately, the papers presented at this seminar do not attempt to answer or discuss these questions."
