Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1
KO KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION
Official Journal of the International Society for Knowledge Organization ISSN 0943 – 7444 International Journal devoted to Concept Theory, Classification, Indexing and Knowledge Representation
Contents
Peer Review in 2019 ...... 3 Reviews of Concepts in Knowledge Organization
Editorial Deborah Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Richard P. Smiraglia. Instruments ...... 72 Referencing as Evidentiary: An Editorial ...... 4 Letters to the Editor Articles Claudio Gnoli and Edoardo Manelli. Hyerim Cho, Thomas Disher, Wan-Chen Lee, Popularity of entries in ISKO Encyclopedia of Stephen A. Keating, and Jin Ha Lee. Knowledge Organization...... 92 Facet Analysis of Anime Genres: The Challenges of Defining Genre Information for Popular Guangyue Wei. Cultural Objects ...... 13 Databases should Keep Pace with the Needs of scientific Exploration: “Nationality” should be Shiv Shakti Ghosh, Subhashis Das, and added to scientific Research Databases...... 93 Sunil Kumar Chatterjee. Human-centric Faceted Approach for Books Recently Published ...... 95 Ontology Construction ...... 31 Index to Volume 46 ...... 96 Andrew MacFarlane, Sondess Missaoui, and Sylwia Frankowska-Takhari. On Machine Learning and Knowledge Organization in Multimedia Information Retrieval ...... 45
Bartłomiej Włodarczyk . KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory of Historiographical Metaphors and Different Historiographical Traditions ...... 56
Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1
KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION KO
Official Journal of the International Society for Knowledge Organization ISSN 0943 – 7444 International Journal devoted to Concept Theory, Classification, Indexing and Knowledge Representation
KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION José Augusto Chaves GUIMARÃES, Departamento de Ciência da Informacão, Universidade Estadual Paulista–UNESP, Av. Hygino Muzzi This journal is the organ of the INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR Filho 737, 17525-900 Marília SP Brazil. E-mail: [email protected] KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION (General Secretariat: Amos DA- VID, Université de Lorraine, 3 place Godefroy de Bouillon, BP 3397, Michael KLEINEBERG, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den 54015 Nancy Cedex, France. E-mail: [email protected]. Linden 6, D-10099 Berlin. E-mail: [email protected]
Editors Kathryn LA BARRE, School of Information Sciences, University of Illi- nois at Urbana-Champaign, 501 E. Daniel Street, MC-493, Champaign, IL Richard P. SMIRAGLIA (Editor-in-Chief), Institute for Knowledge Or- 61820-6211 USA. E-mail: [email protected] ganization and Structure, Lake Oswego OR USA 97035. E-mail: [email protected] Devika P. MADALLI, Documentation Research and Training Centre (DRTC) Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Bangalore 560 059, India. Joshua HENRY, Institute for Knowledge Organization and Structure, E-mail: [email protected] Lake Oswego OR USA 97035. Daniel MARTÍNEZ-ÁVILA, Departamento de Ciência da Informação, Peter TURNER, Institute for Knowledge Organization and Culture, Universidade Estadual Paulista–UNESP, Av. Hygino Muzzi Filho 737, Lake Oswego OR USA 97035. 17525-900 Marília SP Brazil. E-mail: [email protected]
J. Bradford YOUNG (Bibliographic Consultant), Institute for Knowledge Widad MUSTAFA el HADI, Université Charles de Gaulle Lille 3, URF Organization and Structure, Lake Oswego OR USA 97035. IDIST, Domaine du Pont de Bois, Villeneuve d’Ascq 59653, France. E-mail: [email protected] Editor Emerita H. Peter OHLY, Prinzenstr. 179, D-53175 Bonn, Germany. Hope A. OLSON, School of Information Studies, University of Wiscon- E-mail: [email protected] sin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Northwest Quad Building B, 2025 E New- port St., Milwaukee, WI 53211 USA. E-mail: [email protected] M. Cristina PATTUELLI, School of Information, Pratt Institute, 144 W. 14th Street, New York, New York 10011, USA. Series Editors E-mail: [email protected]
Birger HJØRLAND (Reviews of Concepts in Knowledge Organization), K. S. RAGHAVAN, Member-Secretary, Sarada Ranganathan Endowment Department of Information Studies, University of Copenhagen. E-Mail: for Library Science, PES Institute of Technology, 100 Feet Ring Road, [email protected] BSK 3rd Stage, Bangalore 560085, India. E-mail: [email protected].
María J. LÓPEZ-HUERTAS (Research Trajectories in Knowledge Heather Moulaison SANDY, The iSchool at the University of Missouri, Organization), Universidad de Granada, Facultad de Biblioteconomía y 303 Townsend Hall, Columbia, MO 65211, USA. Documentación, Campus Universitario de Cartuja, Biblioteca del Colegio E-mail: [email protected] Máximo de Cartuja, 18071 Granada, Spain. E-mail: [email protected] M. P. SATIJA, Guru Nanak Dev University, School of Library and Infor- Editorial Board mation Science, Amritsar-143 005, India. E-mail: [email protected] Thomas DOUSA, The University of Chicago Libraries, 1100 E 57th St, Chicago, IL 60637 USA. E-mail: [email protected] Aida SLAVIC, UDC Consortium, PO Box 90407, 2509 LK The Hague, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected] Melodie J. FOX, Institute for Knowledge Organization and Structure, Lake Oswego OR USA 97035. E-mail: [email protected]. Renato R. SOUZA, Applied Mathematics School, Getulio Vargas Foundation, Praia de Botafogo, 190, 3o andar, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, 22250- Jonathan FURNER, Graduate School of Education & Information Stud- 900, Brazil. E-mail: [email protected] ies, University of California, Los Angeles, 300 Young Dr. N, Mailbox 951520, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1520, USA. Rick SZOSTAK, University of Alberta, Department of Economics, 4 E-mail: [email protected] Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6G 2H4. E-mail: [email protected]
Claudio GNOLI, University of Pavia, Science and Technology Library, Joseph T. TENNIS, The Information School of the University of Wash- via Ferrata 1, I-27100 Pavia, Italy. E-mail: [email protected] ington, Box 352840, Mary Gates Hall Ste 370, Seattle WA 98195-2840 USA. E-mail: [email protected] Ann M. GRAF, School of Library and Information Science, Simmons University, 300 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115 USA. Yejun WU, School of Library and Information Science, Louisiana State E-mail: [email protected] University, 267 Coates Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803 USA. E-mail: [email protected] Jane GREENBERG, College of Computing & Informatics, Drexel University, 3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA, E-mail: Maja ŽUMER, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Askerceva 2, [email protected] Ljubljana 1000 Slovenia. E-mail: [email protected]
Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 3 Peer Review in 2019
Peer Review in 2019
DOI:10.5771/0943-7444-2020-1-3
Knowledge Organization, like all scientific journals, relies on extensive peer review of manuscript submissions to ensure the originality and quality of research published in our pages. On behalf of the KO Editorial Board we would like to express our unqualified gratitude to the scholars listed below who provided peer review during 2019.
Alkim Akdag Salah Niels D. Lund Danielle Allard Devika Madalli Frederik Åström Fulvio Mazzocchi Greg Bak Carlos Marcondes Betty Beunk Daniel Martínez-Ávila Thiago Bragato Barros Shawne Miksa Vanda Broughton Elizabeth Milonas John Budd Robert Montoya Andrew Buxton Hyoungjoo Park Shu-Jiun Chen Daniel Parrochia Hans Dam Christensen Christina Pattuelli Paul Cleverley Emma Quinlan Gerard Coen Pauline Rafferty Sangeeta Deokattey Richard A. Richards Stella G. Dextre Clarke Maja Rudloff Thomas Dousa Laura Ridenour Melodie Fox Riccardo Ridi Martin Frické Steven Robertson Alon Friedman Renato Rocha Souza Jonathan Furner Mohinder P. Satija Isidoro Gil-Leiva Andrea Scharnhorst Melissa Gill Arthur Smith Claudio Gnoli Rosale Souza Koraljka Golub Louise Spiteri Ann Graf Rick Szostak Jane Greenberg Joseph T. Tennis Richard Griscom Martin Thellefsen José Augusto Chaves Guimarães Natalia Tognoli Renata Gutierres Castanha Garry Trompf Isto Huvila Douglas Tudhope Gregory H. Leazer Hannah Turner Fidelia Ibekwe-SanJuan Herbert van de Sompel David Jank Kim Veltman Nattapong Kaewboonma Judi Vernau Ulrika Kjellman Howard D. White Michael Kleineberg Yejun Wu Kathryn La Barre Marcia Zeng María J. López-Huertas Alesia Ann Zuccala Robert Losee Maja Žumer Kun Lu 4 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 R. P. Smiraglia. “Referencing as Evidentiary: An Editorial
Referencing as Evidentiary: An Editorial
Richard P. Smiraglia
Institute for Knowledge Organization and Structure, Lake Oswego OR 97035 USA,
Richard P. Smiraglia holds a PhD in information from the University of Chicago. He is Senior Fellow and Ex- ecutive Director of the Institute for Knowledge Organization and Structure, Inc. and is Editor-in-Chief of this journal. He also is Professor Emeritus of the iSchool at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He was 2017- 2018 KNAW Visiting Professor at DANS (Data Archiving and Networked Services division of the Royal Netherlands Academy of the Arts and Sciences), The Hague, The Netherlands, where he remains visiting fel- low and was the 2018 recipient of the 2018 Frederick G. Kilgour Award for Research in Library and Infor- mation Technology.
Smiraglia, Richard P. 2020. “Referencing as Evidentiary: An Editorial.” Knowledge Organization 47(1): 4-12. 9 ref- erences. DOI:10.5771/0943-7444-2020-1-4.
Abstract: The referencing habits of scholars, having abandoned physical bibliography for harvesting of digital resources, are in crisis, endangering the bibliographical infrastructure supporting the domain of knowledge organization. Research must be carefully managed and its circumstances controlled. Bibliographical replicability is one important part of the social role of scholarship. References in Knowledge Organization volume 45 (2018) were compiled and analyzed to help visualize the state of referencing in the KO domain. The dependence of science on the ability to replicate is even more critical in a global distributed digital environment. There is great richness in KO that make it even more critical that our scholarly community tend to the relationship between bibliographical verity and the very replicability that is allowing the field to grow theoretically over time.
Keywords: ISKO international conference, knowledge organization, citations, references
1.0 Referencing versus harvesting If we are seriously concerned with obtaining evi- dence that can substantiate our beliefs about some That there is a crisis—looming or already upon us—in subject area, then we must develop approaches that the referencing habits of scholars is obvious from a quick yield information that is as valid and persuasive as glance at any reference list in any article in any scientific possible. To the extent that the evidence we pro- journal. The once noble chore of jotting down the ap- duce is compatible with our beliefs, and to the ex- propriate bibliographical characteristics of any work con- tent that alternative explanations for the evidence sulted in scholarship—a practice that guaranteed a sort seem implausible, to that extent our research effort of replicability—has given way to the harvesting of cita- is productive. By subjecting our beliefs to a range tions from online resources. The notion that a scholar of careful tests, we are able to expose ideas that are must cite a source that other scholars also can consult has faulty and to gain confidence in those that are valid. given way to various forms of ritual citation. The danger In this way our comprehension of a substantive ar- in ritual citation goes far beyond the obvious inaccuracy ea is built up. of references or the time wasted by scholars chasing dead ends looking to read a particularly interestingly cited Bookstein’s two points intermingle. The first is that re- piece of prior work. The danger lies in the collapse of search is self-conscious inquiry, which means the scholar the bibliographical infrastructure that supports all schol- manages every aspect of the research question and every arship. aspect of evidence that can be applied to the answer. The My mentor at the University of Chicago, Abraham second and related point is that research is premeditated, Bookstein, famously opened his research methods course planned to control the circumstances by which evidence with the statement that all research is consciously pre- is gathered, analyzed and synthesized.1 meditated inquiry (1982):
Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 5 R. P. Smiraglia. “Referencing as Evidentiary: An Editorial
2.0 The social role of bibliographical replicability like the one that is not available, for all practical purposes does not exist.” Another mentor, D. Kathryn Weintraub, was my cataloging As it happens, even in the twenty-first century biblio- professor at Indiana University in 1973-74. We had a pretty graphical accuracy is more than a matter of cutting and good rapport, and one day when I visited her office to dis- pasting from the “cite as” link on a website. Krummel cuss a paper I was writing about Brown’s classification (e.g., describes the act of bibliographical description as the see Beghtol 2004) she took the opportunity to show me capturing of Platonic realities (25): how to work with research resources. I had brought a stack of things from the library with me. Dr. Weintraub put Any item appropriate to a list will by its nature have some paper in her typewriter, opened my first source, and two Platonic realities. It occupies space, and will typed out a perfect Chicago/Turabian reference based on continue to do so through forseeable time, thus as- what she could see by looking at the resource. Then she suming a physical form. It also consists of con- skipped a couple of spaces and typed a page number and tent—that is, a message, verbal, intellectual, artistic, started typing out passages I had highlighted—a practice I or spiritual (however such terms may be defined), still follow today, albeit using a computer. It means, of sent by an original creator, modified by intermedi- course, that there is perfect replicability so long as the quo- ary producers, and eventually perceived by an audi- tation is accurate and the resource citation is precise. There ence of readers … The title, for instance, describes was no internet, there was only the actual evidence itself in the content and at the same time names the physi- printed form in peer-reviewed journals. It was a perfect cal object; the imprint, by identifying the producer system, but vulnerable, as we have learned subsequently, to of the physical object, also tells where both the inefficiencies of scale. Still, the lesson she taught me that content and the physical object can, or at one time day was that as a scholar I was part of a community that could, be obtained. shared responsibility for the growth of knowledge. There was a clear social dimension. Thus, in the accurate reproduction of bibliographic data, That there is a social dimension to consciously premedi- scholarship has the opportunity to demonstrate the evi- tated inquiry almost goes without saying. Obviously, evi- dentiary role of a specific text in space and time, on the dence must be acceptable across social boundaries, which one hand, and to provide a direct pathway to its retrieval, means that phenomenological philosophical prerogatives and thus to its usefulness in replication, on the other. apply to the interpretation of data, as well as to any con- In 2017 I wrote in this journal about the need for clusions from any particular act of consciously premeditat- greater replication in knowledge organization research. It ed inquiry and stretch on into the extension of theoretical is a tenet of science that the organization and classifica- conclusions demonstrated by repeated hypothesis testing. tion of discoveries is at the basis of any theory. Theory Nagel (1979, 495 emphasis original) reminds us that “val- cannot grow from single isolated observations, but rather ue-free social science is impossible, because value com- is always the result of the synthesis of accumulated ob- mitments enter into the very assessment of evidence.” One servations undertaken across scholarly domains over hopes we all learned these tenets as beginning researchers time. I concluded (317): “science relies not on spiritual and we all bring conscious premeditation to the statement warrant, not even on common human sense, but rather of hypotheses derived from prior research, to the design on replicated and replicable and therefore empirically ver- of research methods, especially experiments, and to the ifiable controlled observation, the results of which are construction of analytical tools and procedures. But what classified.” To get to that halcyon place in the evolution of the bibliographical parameters of research? of the domain requires replicable evidence, and the de- An important point to stress repeatedly in today’s mand for replicable evidence requires bibliographical wired scholarly world is the importance of the notion precision. References are evidence, and evidence must be that evidence must be replicable, and that bibliographic both precise and replicable. infrastructure is essential evidence. Incorrect references obfuscate replication by preventing any future scholar 2.1 What is a scholar to do? from following the tracks of a predecessor. References must be discoverable. Bibliographic replicability demands Our editorial policy includes verification of every refer- precision and accuracy—a form of scholarship once no- ence in every manuscript published in our journal. The bly known as “bibliography.” As Krummel (1984, 9) re- scientific position we take with that policy is that we must minded us “any text that is significant and substantial verify the veracity of the cited evidence as it enters enough to be published ought to be known about so that through our journal into the published science of it can be consulted,” and “a text that is not discoverable, knowledge organization (KO). Our journal is the bench- 6 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 R. P. Smiraglia. “Referencing as Evidentiary: An Editorial mark for the domain of KO and we take our gatekeeping providing recent content to participants in digital form. function seriously. We verify every citation—not just the But the “published” proceedings then frequently lack even formatting, but the facts (the Platonic realities as title pages, the title of the conference might vary from Krummel might have said). We are not alone in this—I place to place in the digital resource, and details of publica- recall having a very red metaphorical face in my earliest tion (i.e., such niceties as place of publication and publish- career as a scholar when a journal copy editor sent me er name) often are missing altogether. The venerable Asso- two of my own citations that could not be verified and ciation for Computing Machinery (ACM) has a massive asked me to either correct them or provide evidence to digital library containing many sets of proceedings, and support their veracity. Of course, I had made an error (in they thus provide (responsibly, I might add) detailed refer- the dates of publication as I recall). With chagrin but also ence data. Here is an example: relief I made the corrections. Not all that long ago it happened again, in a joint submission for which I had left Zubiaga, Arkaitz, Christian Körner and Markus the references to a collaborator and the journal editors Strohmaier. 2011. “Tags vs Shelves: from Social Tag- easily identified several errant references. Thus, it is a ging to Social Classification.” In HT'11:Proceedings of regular part of the responsibility of scientific publishing the 22nd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia; to maintain a high level of accuracy in references to work June 6-9, 2011, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. New York, cited. The references are the direct routes to the authors’ NY: Association for Computing Machinery, 93-102. evidence, after all, as I hope I demonstrated earlier. doi:10.1145/1995966.1995981 The majority of references by the majority of authors are accurate or require only slight emendation. That is the But there also is the problem that many papers presented good news. Problematic references fall easily into two cat- at conferences are not actually published in online pro- egories: 1) those for which it becomes clear the author has ceedings, and thus should be identified not as “In Proceed- not actually consulted the source and has instead copied a ings ….” but rather as “Unpublished paper presented at reference from some other paper; and 2) conference pa- ….” As Krummel reminded us, to generate a reference for pers in online proceedings. Obviously, these categories dif- “Proceedings ….” is to create a sort of bibliographic ghost— fer substantively. As for the first group, it is our editorial a reference to a physical or digital resource that actually policy to inquire of authors, when necessary, exactly which never existed and therefore cannot be consulted. text of the work cited has been consulted, and then we help to build or correct the reference from that document. 3.0 One year of KO references: some data, some Conference papers are another matter altogether. The comments model for a reference for a conference paper derives from the once common practice of publishing print volumes of A few observations about the role of bibliographical ref- proceedings for all conference participants. Such volumes erences in our journal can be garnered from a brief over- constitute anthologies, and the papers in them can be cit- view of the references in a recent volume. All references ed thus: in the journal in volume 45 from 2018 were compiled for this purpose. Let us state for the record that our journal Schallier, Wouter. 2004. “On the Razor’s Edge: Be- uses the author-date referencing system, so each “work” tween Local and Overall Needs in Knowledge Organi- only occurs in a reference list once per article, no matter zation.” In Knowledge Organization and the Global Infor- how many times it might be “referenced” from within mation Society: Proceedings of the Eighth International ISKO that article’s text. As this is not a domain analysis, but ra- Conference 13-16 July 2004 London, UK, ed. Ia C. McIl- ther simply some descriptive research to help illuminate waine. Advances in Knowledge Organization 9. Würz- the state of referencing in our journal, only a few param- burg: Ergon Verlag, 269-74. eters are reported. In addition to the commentary pro- vided here, good readers are invited—welcomed even— Note the elegant detail: author, date, article title, complete ti- to consider the references in the examples below to be tle proper of proceedings volume in which it occurs, state- standard and reusable for the core literature cited. ments of responsibility for the proceedings, series statement, There were 2,525 references in 44 articles, of which 32 place, publisher and exact page numbers. All of the principal were regularly contributed articles and 12 were review ar- personalities identified and their relationships for the physi- ticles contributed by the online ISKO Encyclopedia of cal artifact clarified all in one succinct statement. Knowledge Organization (https://www.isko.org/cyclo/). The Alas, scholarly societies increasingly are abandoning the mean number of references per article was 60.56; the expensive production of printed volumes in lieu of online median and mode were both 43. However, the articles proceedings, which are more than adequate for the task of from IEKO are review articles, with much more detailed Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 7 R. P. Smiraglia. “Referencing as Evidentiary: An Editorial reference lists. The mean number of references per re- works by authors that were cited only once. A small body view article was 127, the median was 81 and the mode of works by authors cited more than once (23.3%) might was 120.5. The range of dates of publication stretched point to the presence of a theoretical core. In fact, there from 1635 to 2018. The mean age of citation was 19 were 590 references to authors’ whose names appear more years; the median was 11 years; and the mode was 2 years. than once. 179 authors appeared twice, 42 appeared three Thus, most of the references were to very recent re- times, and 28 appeared 4 times. Table 1 shows those 75 au- search, but a large component also referenced core theo- thors whose names appear 5 times or more. retical material. Another way of looking at this is to con- It is difficult to know where to draw a line across seg- sider that most of the citations are not to classical texts ments of this frequency distribution. Obviously, those for which standard bibliographic details are well-known. named with the highest frequencies are the most influen- Rather, most of the citations were to recent publications tial, at least in this particular volume year of the journal. in online journals and conference proceedings—perilous We might also hazard a guess that the group of authors at territory for bibliographic veracity. the top of the distribution, at least in 2018, were defining Further evidence of this trend arises from the fact that the domain of KO. But the whole list itself is also very in- there are 1,935 singleton references—works by authors formative, including names of classical (and ritually-cited) who are not cited again in the corpus. We recognize, of authors from the history of the related field of infor- course, the outlines of a standard Bradford-like power dis- mation science. tribution—most contributions are singletons, a very few Greater insight comes from analysis of the works rep- represent works from the members of a more oft-cited re- resented. Of the 75 oft-cited authors in Table 1, only a search community. Three quarters of the references few represent specific works that are cited 3 or more (76.6%) in this single volume of our journal, then, were to times. These are shown in Table 2.
Cited Author Frequency Hjørland, Birger 83 Smiraglia, Richard P 34 Gnoli, Claudio 26 Buckland, Michael K 21 Mai, Jens Erik 19 Dahlberg, Ingetraut 18 Olson, Hope A 17 Shera, Jesse H 14 Frohmann, Bernd; Mazzocchi, Fulvio 13 Beghtol, Clare; Guimarães, José Augusto Chaves; Otlet, Paul; Ranganathan, S; Vickery, B 12 Lancaster, Frederick Wilfrid 11 Furner, Jonathan; Lund, Niels Windfeld; Soergel, Dagobert; Zeng, Marcia Lei 10 Floridi, Luciano; Rafferty, Pauline 9 Andersen, Jack; Berners-Lee, Tim; Briet, Suzanne; Broughton, Vanda; Chan, Lois Mai; Fox, Melodie J; Frické, Martin 8 2009; Fugmann, Robert; IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Bates, Marcia J; Berman, Sanford; Bliss, Henry Evelyn; Eco, Umberto; Foskett, Douglas John; Golub, Koraljka; Miksa, 7 Francis; Oh, Dong-Geun; Rayward, W; Svenonius, Elaine; Wilson, Patrick Anderson, James D; Barité, Mario; Bawden, David; Chen, Chaomei; Cleverdon, Ciryl W; Ibekwe-SanJuan, Fidelia; In- ternational Organization for Standardization (ISO); Kuhn, Thomas S; Library of Congress; Peters, Isabella; Satija, 6 Mohinder Partap Borgman, Christine L; Ellis, David; Farradane, Jason; Fouillée, Alfred; Fuller, Steve W; García Gutiérrez, Antonio 2002; Grolier, Éric de; Gross, Tina; Kipp, Margaret E; Leonelli, Sabina; Munk, Timme Bisgaard; Nelson, Theodor 5 Holm; Ørom, Anders; Rowley, Jennifer; Slavic, Aida; Small, Henry G; Swanson, Don R; Van Rijsbergen, C; Weinberg, Bella Hass; White, Howard D; Zhao, Dangzhi; Žumer, Maja
Table 1. Authors cited 5 or more times.
8 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 R. P. Smiraglia. “Referencing as Evidentiary: An Editorial
Cited work Frequency Briet, Suzanne. 1951. Qu’est-ce que la documentation? Collection de documentologie 1. Paris: Éditions documentaires, indus- 7 trielles et techniques. – [includes 2 translations] Hjørland, Birger 2017a. “Classification.” Knowledge Organization 44: 97-128. 6 Hjørland, Birger. 2008. “What is Knowledge Organization (KO)?” Knowledge Organization 35: 86-100. 6 Beghtol, Clare. 2002. “A Proposed Ethical Warrant for Global Knowledge Representation and Organization Sys- 6 tems.” Journal of Documentation 58: 507-32. Bliss, Henry E. 1929. The Organization of Knowledge and the System of the Sciences. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company. 6 Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. 6 Lancaster, F. W. 2003. Indexing and Abstracting in Theory and Practice. London: Facet Publishing. – [includes 3 eds.] 5 Shera, Jesse H. 1951. “Classification as the Basis of Bibliographic Organization.” In Bibliographic Organization: Papers Presented Before the Fifteenth Annual Conference of the Graduate Library School July 24-29, 1950, ed. Jesse H. Shera 5 and Margaret E. Egan. The University of Chicago Studies in Library Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 72- 93. Otlet, Paul. 1934. Traité de documentation: Le livre sur le livre, theeorie ́ et pratique. Bruxelles: Editiones Mundaneum. 5 Ranganathan, S. R. 1967. Prolegomena to Library Classification, 3rd ed. Ranganathan Series in Library Science 20. Bombay: 5 Asia Publishing House. Vickery, Brian C. 1956. “Notational Symbols in Classification. Part 2: Notation as an Ordering Device.” Journal of Docu- 5 mentation 12: 73-87. Zeng, Marcia Lei. 2008. “Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS).” Knowledge Organization 35, no 2: 160–82. 5 Olson, Hope A. 2002. The Power to Name: Locating the Limits of Subject Representation in Libraries. Dordrecht, The Nether- 4 lands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Mazzocchi, Fulvio. 2018. “Knowledge Organization System (KOS): An Introductory Critical Account.” Knowledge Organ- 4 ization 45: 54-78. Frické, Martin 2009. “The Knowledge Pyramid: A Critique of the DIKW Hierarchy.” Journal of Information Science 35: 131- 4 42. Wilson, Patrick. 1983. Second-hand Knowledge: An Inquiry into Cognitive Authority. Contributions in Librarianship and Infor- 4 mation Science 44. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Ibekwe-SanJuan, Fidelia and Geoffrey C. Bowker. 2017. "Implications of Big Data for Knowledge Organization.” 4 Knowledge Organization 44: 187-98. Smiraglia, Richard P. 2015. Domain Analysis for Knowledge Organization: Tools for Ontology Extraction. Chandos Information 4 Professional Series. Waltham, MA: Chandos Publishing. Mai, Jens-Erik. 2011. “Folksonomies and the New Order: Authority in the Digital Disorder.” Knowledge Organization 38: 4 114-22. Mai, Jens-Erik. 2013. “Ethics, Values and Morality in Contemporary Library Classifications.” Knowledge Organization 4 40: 242-53. Mai, Jens-Erik. 2011. “The Modernity of Classification.” Journal of Documentation 67: 710-30. 4 Hjørland, Birger and Albrechtsen, Hannah. 1995. “Toward a New Horizon in Information Science: Domain Analysis.” 3 Journal of the American Society for Information Science 46: 400-25. Hjørland, Birger. 2012. “Is Classification Necessary after Google?” Journal of Documentation 68, 3: 299-317. 3 Hjørland, Birger. 2015. “Theories are Knowledge Organizing Systems (KOS).” Knowledge Organization 42: 113-28. 3 Hjørland, Birger. 2015a. “Classical Databases and Knowledge Organization: A Case for Boolean Human Decision- 3 making During Searches.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 66: 1559-75. Hjørland, Birger. 2016. “Informetrics Needs a Foundation in the Theory of Science.” In Theories of Informetrics and Scholar- 3 ly Communication: A Festschrift in Honor of Blaise Cronin, ed. Cassidy R. Sugimoto. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 20-46 Dahlberg, Ingetraut. 1995. “Current Trends in Knowledge Organization.” In Organización del conocimiento en siste- mas de información y documentación : actas del II Encuentro de ISKO-España, Getafe, 16 y 17 de noviembre de 1995, 3 ed. Francisco J. Garcia Marco. Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza, 7-26. Frohmann, Bernd. 1990. “Rules of Indexing: A Critique of Mentalism in Information Retrieval Theory.” Journal of Docu- 3 mentation 46, no. 2: 81-101.
Table 2. Works cited 3 or more times. (continued on next page)
Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 9 R. P. Smiraglia. “Referencing as Evidentiary: An Editorial
Cited work Frequency Frohmann, Bernd. 1990. “Rules of Indexing: A Critique of Mentalism in Information Retrieval Theory.” Journal of Docu- 3 mentation 46, no. 2: 81-101. Mazzocchi, Fulvio. 2013. “Images of Thought and their Relation to Classification: The Tree and the Net.” Knowledge Or- 3 ganization 40: 366-74. Guimaräes, José Augusto Chaves. 2017. “Slanted Knowledge Organization as a New Ethical Perspective.” In The Organ- 3 ization of Knowledge: Caught Between Global Structures and Local Meaning, ed. Jack Andersen and Laura Skouvig. Studies in Information 12. Bingley, UK: Emerald, 87-102. Vickery, Brian C. 1953. “The Significance of John Wilkins in the History of Bibliographical Classification.” Libri 2: 326- 3 343. Lund, Niels Windfeld. 2004. “Documentation in a Complementary Perspective.” In Aware and Responsible: Papers of the 3 2001 Nordic-International Colloquium on Social and Cultural Awareness and Responsibility in Library, Information and Documentation Studies (SCARLID), ed. W. Boyd Rayward. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 93-102. Rafferty, Pauline and Rob Hidderley. 2007. “Filckr and Democratic Indexing: Dialogic Approaches to Indexing.” Aslib 3 Proceedings 59: 397-410. doi:10.1108/00012530710817591 Broughton, Vanda. 2004. Essential Classification. New York: Neal Schuman. 3 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 1996. Climate Change 1995: Impacts, Adaptations and Mitigation of 3 Climate Change; Scientific-Technical Analyses; Contribution of Working Group II to the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ed. Robert T. Watson, Marufu C. Zinyowera, and Richard H. Moss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Webster, Peter J., Greg Holland, Judith Curry, and H.R. Chang. 2005. “Changes in Tropical Cyclone Number, Duration, and Intensity in a Warming Environment.” Science 309: 1844-6. Berman, Sanford. 1971. Prejudices and Antipathies: A Tract on the LC Subject Heads Concerning People. Metuchen, N.J.: Scare- 3 crow Press Miksa, Francis. 1998. The DDC, the Universe of Knowledge, and the Post-Modern Library. Albany, NY: Forest Press. 3 Rayward, W. Boyd. 1994. “Visions of Xanadu: Paul Otlet (1868-1944) and Hypertext.” Journal of the American Society for In- 3 formation Science 45: 235-50. Svenonius, Elaine 2000. The Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization. Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing. 3 Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wilson, Patrick. 1968. Two Kinds of Power: An Essay on Bibliographical Control. University of California Publications: Librari- 3 anship 5. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bawden, David and Lyn Robinson. 2012. Introduction to Information Science. London: Facet. 3 Peters, Isabella and Katrin Weller. 2008. “Tag Gardening for Folksonomy Enrichment and Maintenance.” Webology 5, no 3 3: 1-18. Munk, Timme Bisgaard and Kristian Mørk. 2007. “Folksonomy, the Power Law & the Significance of the Least Effort.” 3 Knowledge Organization 34: 16–33. Rowley, Jennifer and John Farrow. 2016. Organizing Knowledge: An Introduction to Managing Access to Information, 4th ed. Lon- 3 don: Routledge. White, Howard D. and Kate W. McCain. 1998. "Visualizing a Discipline: An Author Co-Citation Analysis of Information 3 Science, 1972-1995." Journal of the American Society for Information Science 49: 327-55. Žumer, Maja. 2017. “IFLA Library Reference Model (LRM): Harmonization of the FRBR Family.” ISKO Encyclopedia 3 of Knowledge Organization. Available at http://www.isko.org/cyclo/lrm Smiraglia, Richard P. 2015. “Domain Analysis of Domain Analysis for Knowledge Organization: Observations on an 3 Emergent Methodological Cluster.” Knowledge Organization 42: 602-11. Buckland, Michael K. 1997. “What is a ‘Document’?” Journal of the American Society for Information Science 48: 804-9. 3 Buckland, Michael. 2018. “Document Theory.” Knowledge Organization 45: 425-36. 3
Table 2. Works cited 3 or more times. (continued from previous page)
Here we have fifty-one “core” articles. (And, we might more common than clustering. For example, of 83 cita- note also, here we have fifty-one properly formatted and tions to work by Hjørland, 27 are to 8 specific works cited verified references for those core works.) That is, in the 3 to 6 times. volume year 2018, these fifty-one papers are considered to Figures 1 and 2 provide visualizations of the works that are be influential, and their influence is demonstrated by the cited the most. citation frequency. But, on the other hand, dispersion is 10 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 R. P. Smiraglia. “Referencing as Evidentiary: An Editorial
Figure 1. Briet to Kuhn: the most cited works in 2018.
4.0 On bibliographical verity, replicability, and have not even raised the issue of instantiation here (Smi- referencing in KO raglia 2018) but it is relevant always to ask a scholar ex- actly which “version” of that paper were you reading As scholarship changes so must its technicalities shift and when you made the synthetic leap that caused you to cite that means the task of embracing the amazing body of it? The question certainly extends from to the matter of digitally-available cited scholarly literature must somehow editions of printed texts to the now commonplace prac- be adapted to the task of bibliographical verity. The de- tice of producing texts on demand. The Platonic realities pendence of science on the ability to replicate is even of space and physicality notwithstanding, it is incumbent more critical in a global distributed digital environment. I on the KO community to corral the practices of refer- Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 11 R. P. Smiraglia. “Referencing as Evidentiary: An Editorial
Figure 2. Lancaster to Vickery: the second tier of most cited works in 2018.
12 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 R. P. Smiraglia. “Referencing as Evidentiary: An Editorial encing that create the theoretical bibliographical infra- portance of conscious premeditation on the problems structure of the science of KO. It is worth noting that a of generalizing from samples of informetric objects to large bibliography of KO related texts is maintained by large populations. He carefully guided me in designing ISKO on its website (“KO Literature” https://www. the procedure for sampling works from a population isko.org/lit.html) but that there is little coherence across of carriers, for example (see Smiraglia 2001, 155-64 that database in the format of references. “Sampling Works”). We see from this brief glimpse of one year of refer- ences that our science is sufficiently complex to yield in a References single volume of a journal a long tail of 1,935 singleton references, and that even those works cited with higher- Beghtol, Clare. 2004. “James Duff Brown's Subject Clas- frequency constitute more of a diverse cluster than a crit- sification and Evaluation Methods for Classification ical core. These are signs of great richness in KO that Systems.” Library Trends 25 no. 4: 702-18. make it even more critical that our scholarly community Bookstein, Abraham. 1974. “How to Sample Badly.” Li- tend to the relationship between citation practice (or ref- brary Quarterly 44: 124-32. erencing as I have called it here), bibliographical verity Bookstein, Abraham. 1982. Unpublished statistics course and the very replicability that is allowing the field to grow notes recorded by R.P. Smiraglia. theoretically over time. This theoretical growth, demon- Bookstein, Abraham. 1983. “Sampling from Card Files.” strated very clearly in the growth of the ISKO Encyclopedia Library Quarterly 53: 307-12. of Knowledge Organization is dependent on continued atten- Krummel, D. W. 1984. Bibliographies: Their Aims and Meth- tion to the bibliographical infrastructure of our domain. ods. New York: Mansell Publishing Ltd. Nagel, Ernest. 1979. The Structure of Science: Problems in the Note Logic of Scientific Explanation. Indianapolis: Hackett. Smiraglia, Richard P. 2001. The Nature of a Work: Implications 1. Abraham Bookstein’s commitment to empirical re- for the Organization of Knowledge. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow search, and indeed, to “consciously premeditated in- Press. quiry,” was most influential in my own work in the ex- Smiraglia, Richard P. 2017. “Replication and Accumulation tension of his application of probabilities of selection in Knowledge Organization—An Editorial.” Knowledge in sampling. Famously, his exemplary articles “How to Organization 44: 315-17. Sample Badly” (1974) and “Sampling from Card Files” Smiraglia, Richard P. 2019. “Work.” Knowledge Organization (1983) are simple and direct presentations of the im- 46: 308-19.
Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 13 H. Cho, Th. Disher, W.-C. Lee, S. A. Keating and J. H. Lee. Facet Analysis of Anime Genres
Facet Analysis of Anime Genres: The Challenges of Defining Genre Information for Popular Cultural Objects† Hyerim Cho*, Thomas Disher**, Wan-Chen Lee***, Stephen A. Keating**** and Jin Ha Lee***** *University of Missouri, 303 Townsend Hall, 221K, Columbia, MO 65211, USA,
Hyerim Cho earned her PhD in information science from the University of Washing- ton. Focusing on users, her research investigates diverse multimedia and pop-cultural information based on information science and media studies to provide enhanced rec- ommendation and retrieval services. Her research interests include information needs and behavior, metadata, qualitative studies and mixed methods, and visual narrative materials such as graphic novels, anime, and video games.
Thomas Disher is a writer and stay-at-home-father. He holds a BA in English creative writing, with a linguistics minor from Seattle Pacific University and a MLIS from the University of Washington. Since earning his MLIS he has assisted Jin Ha Lee and the GAMER group with some of their research at the University of Washington. His re- search interests include metadata, classification systems, video games, anime, folklore, and linguistics. He also writes poetry and fiction.
Wan-Chen Lee is a PhD candidate at the Information School of the University of Washington, where she received her MLIS degree in 2014. She holds a BA in LIS from National Taiwan University. Her research interests include knowledge organization, classification theory, culture and classification, globalization and localization of cata- loging and classification standards, and metadata.
Stephen Keating is a Senior User Researcher with Dell, with a master’s in information science from the University of Washington, and a master’s in media studies from The New School. Research interests include information organization, metadata, and se- mantic analysis, as well as a particular focus on the preservation of digital ephemera.
Jin Ha Lee is Associate Professor at the University of Washington’s Information School and the director of the GAMER (GAME Research) Group. Her research interests include music, anime, game and multimedia infor- mation seeking and retrieval, information organization and access, and knowledge representation. The GAMER Group explores new ideas and approaches for organizing and providing access to video games and other multi- media, understanding user behavior related to these media, and using them for informal learning. She holds an MS (2002) and a PhD (2008) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Cho, Hyerim, Thomas Disher, Wan-Chen Lee, Stephen A. Keating and Jin Ha Lee. 2020. “Facet Analysis of Anime Genres: The Challenges of Defining Genre Information for Popular Cultural Objects.” Knowledge Organ- ization 47(1): 13-30. 50 references. DOI:10.5771/0943-7444-2020-1-13.
Abstract: Anime, as a growing form of multimedia, needs a better and more thorough organization for its myriad unique terminologies. Existing studies show patrons’ desire to search and get recommendations for anime. However, due to inadequate indexing and often con- fusing or inaccurate usage of terms, searching and acquiring recommendations remain challenging. Our research seeks to close the gap and 14 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 H. Cho, Th. Disher, W.-C. Lee, S. A. Keating and J. H. Lee. Facet Analysis of Anime Genres make discovery and recommendations more viable. In this study, we conducted a facet analysis of anime genre terms that are currently used in thirty-six anime-related English-language databases and websites. Using a card sorting method with an inductive approach to the 1,597 terms collected, we identified and defined nine facets and 153 foci terms that describe different genres of anime. Identified terms can be implemented within different organizational systems including library catalogs, recommendation systems, and online databases to improve genre definitions and search experiences.
Received: 28 December 2017; Revised: 16 July 2018; Accepted: 2 August 2018
Keywords: anime, genre terms, facet analysis, foci terms, Japanese
† This article was originally published in Knowledge Organization v. 45, no. 6 (2018) on pages 484-99 DOI:10.5771/0943-7444-2018-6-484. Inexplicably most of the references were omitted at that time, and the appendix was incorrectly type-set. We apologize most profusely for our error and gratefully republish the article in toto with updated author biographical and contact information.—Editor-in-Chief.
1.0 Introduction media,” and “part of a range of (trans)national media cul- tures” (Denison, 22). Interest in anime, a relatively recent multimedia medium in Although recently it is becoming more difficult to draw libraries, continues to increase artistically, commercially, a line between what is anime and what is not, in general, and academically (Exner 2012; Fennell et al. 2013; Ressler anime has several unique characteristics that are distin- 2016). The anime industry has been growing for the last guishable from Western animation. Levi (2013) states that five years (AJA 2016), and the total market value of the sadness, environmentalism, and terror are unique themes anime industry in 2015 was 18.1 billion US dollars, a 12% found in anime, and Davis (2016) provides an interview year on year increase from 2014 (Ressler 2016). with Robert Napton, a graphic novel writer and former Anime is commonly defined as Japanese animation, or an- employee at Bandai Entertainment, who states that plot imation produced in Japan, although to Japanese, “anime and narrative style are anime’s main appeals to its audience, covers all animation regardless of provenance” (Rich- an audience that includes female adults, who were often mond 2009, 2). Davis (2016, 35) defines it as “Japanese excluded in Western comics and animation culture. limited-animation, which is a form of animation that uti- Despite the growing prevalence of and demand for lizes fewer frames than the classic Disney animation and a anime, current organizational systems for anime are lack- variety of other cost-saving techniques,” focusing on eco- ing, especially when describing genre information. A sur- nomic and technical aspects. Brenner (2007, 29) more vey conducted by Exner (2012, 34) showed this clearly, as broadly defines it as: the majority of library patron respondents expressed “the desire for a greater quantity or variety of support” for ac- Animated films produced in Japan for a Japanese au- cessing anime or “more robust genre cataloguing,” alt- dience. The word itself comes from the word hough some respondents also indicated that they were animeshon, a translation of the English word “anima- “categorically not interested in anime or manga through tion.” This term encompasses all animated titles in- the library.” Strengthening the organizational access points cluding feature films, television shows, and original for and information about anime titles would help address video animation (OVA) released to the home enter- such user experience requests and facilitate access to exist- tainment market. ing collections. As with other narrative and visual narrative materials, Brenner’s definition, particularly “animated films pro- an important access point for anime is genre information. duced in Japan for a Japanese audience,” is debatable due Sardar and Van Loon (2015, 49) define genre as “catego- to the fact that it is difficult to draw a clear conclusion ries of media products; specific types of books, film, tele- about where anime is produced, and, especially today, vision and radio programs. Genres are identified by their anime is not only for a Japanese audience but an interna- conventions, which the audience recognizes through regu- tional one as well. lar contact. The term originated in literary criticism but Denison (2015, 2 emphasis original) argues that “anime was adopted by cinema studies. Television is exclusively is not just a genre any more than it is simply a kind of ani- genre-led.” In a previous study on investigating anime us- mation or a product of only Japanese culture.” Denison ex- ers’ information needs for recommendations (Cho et al. pands these limited definitions by saying that “anime needs 2017), genre was one of the most frequently mentioned to be understood more broadly as a cultural phenomenon features used to get recommendations (ranked third whose meanings are dependent on context.” This ex- among nineteen features identified). Lee, Shim, and Jett panded concept of anime views it as a “medium,” “multi- (2015) also had similar findings: genre was the second Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 15 H. Cho, Th. Disher, W.-C. Lee, S. A. Keating and J. H. Lee. Facet Analysis of Anime Genres most mentioned feature when Korean anime users sought Due to definitional ambiguity, it is now common for recommendations. English-speaking anime users to directly adopt Japanese However, despite such common usage, genre in anime terms to describe anime genres, such as bishōjo (beautiful remains highly ambiguous. Even some anime fans may not girls) and iyashikei. Considering user warrant, literary war- be familiar with some of the genre terms in the information rant, and scholarly usage (Svenonius 1989), information systems, such as sekai-kei (world-type) and iyashikei (healing). systems may continue to utilize Japanese-originated genre In addition, whether an anime belongs to genre A or B is terms. However, using foreign language terms as index often unclear. As an example, in a previous study (Cho et al. terms risks confusing users who do not understand the 2017), we defined genre as “categories of anime character- language and could be problematic for both knowledge or- ized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter, including ganization and information retrieval in the long run. typical genre labels that are universally used by anime users,” Additionally, while genre terms are often used across but how real users interpreted genre varied. What some us- different multimedia, such as comic books, video games, ers called genre was considered a theme or trope by other and films, they are not readily usable in anime. Poitras users. Even when users used the same genre term, the ele- (2002, 34) states that “genre in anime is a tricky subject. ments they expected were often different. Japanese and American animation genres don't exactly par- In a similar vein, current information systems have allel one another; nor are the expressions of genre in Japan shown several limitations in providing anime’s genre infor- quite like those found elsewhere in the world.” Since anime mation. While there are a considerable number of user- originated in Japan, different cultural notions are interwo- generated tags about anime genres online, the tags are of- ven in its expressions, including characters, plots, and set- ten confusing and ambiguous, with little consensus for the tings of anime. Considering the confusing interpretations, definitions of many anime genres. Anime and manga tend ambiguous meanings, and cultural elements, a more to use genre terms to indicate the target audience, such as agreed-upon, clearer method for organizing anime genre seinen (young men/youth). Some users use the seinen label information is required. to describe anime generally made for mature audiences, Having agreed-upon definitions of anime genre infor- others use it for anime with complex plots or serious issues mation is a vital first step in creating a reliable taxonomy. regarding life or society, and still others use the term to To fully understand the uses of current anime genre terms describe anime with more violent or sexual content. Due and to provide a more robust and clearer way to describe to different understandings and ambiguous definitions of diverse anime genre information, this study explores the the same term, various anime databases commonly show following research questions: conflicting results when searching for the same genre term. Crunchyroll (http://www.crunchyroll.com/vid- – RQ1: What are the genre terms of anime that are cur- eos/anime/genres) mostly shows anime with mature con- rently used, and what kinds of information features are tent under the genre filter “Seinen/Mature” (as the genre represented in these labels? term itself already indicates), but Anime-Planet (2017) and – RQ2: What are the facets and foci that describe diverse MyAnimeList (https://myanimelist.net/anime.php) yield layers of anime information features currently embed- results including Mushi-shi (2005) and Haven’t you heard? I’m ded in anime genre terms? Sakamoto (2016), which are both listed in Crunchyroll but not classified as seinen.
Figure 1. Screenshots of Mushi-shi (2005) and Haven’t you heard? I’m Sakamoto (2016), from left to right. 16 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 H. Cho, Th. Disher, W.-C. Lee, S. A. Keating and J. H. Lee. Facet Analysis of Anime Genres
2.0 Previous studies and practices brought on by war. Gundam 0080 is no more just a giant robot anime than War and Peace is just a war The current organization of anime genres reveals how in- novel. dividual anime frequently fit into multiple genre terms. Both Poitras (2002) and Richmond (2009) point out that Poitras illustrates the limitations of single identifiers inher- anime itself is not a genre as it is sometimes called. Poitras ent in a hierarchical taxonomy. Similarly, Richmond (2009) (2002, 7 emphasis original) states that anime “is in reality details genres with some subgenres and indicates a hierar- an art form that includes all the genres found in cinema, chical organization. For instance, Richmond includes gen- from heroic epics and romances to science fiction and res like “science fiction” (200), “fantasy and fables” (203), comedy,” while Richmond (2009, v) says that “anime is a “historical dramas” (217), and “sports, martial arts and medium, not a genre: the cute antics of Hello Kitty and contests” (230); some genres are further subdivided, such Pokémon, and complex psychological thrillers such as Perfect as “fantasy and fables” into “oriental-influenced,” “Japa- Blue are all part of the anime universe.” Robbins (2014) nese folk tales,” “western-influenced,” and “magical girl.” and Halsall (2004) also discuss anime as a medium that Moreover, there is a wide variety of disparate labeling spans multiple genres. systems used by commercial websites. The diversity of Poitras (2002) dedicates a chapter to anime genres, dis- browsing systems illustrates a lack of uniform methods of cussing several genres and subgenres. The genre/subgenre reference for anime and suggests patterns for structuring ordering of the chapter suggests a hierarchical organiza- coherent genre identification (Table 1). Of the five sample tion. However, Poitras (2002, 34) points out the problem websites, four of them use some sort of Boolean opera- with assigning only one genre term to an anime: tion to allow users to search by multiple genre terms, alt- hough only two, IMDb (http://www.imdb.com) and Gundam 0080 (1989) can be described as a giant ro- Crunchyroll, enable a Boolean “and” operation which bot anime. But such a description does not do justice acknowledges that a single title can encompass multiple to the story’s many layers of complexity dealing with genres. IMDb also includes the greatest number of genre family problems, civilians caught up in war, and terms (twenty-seven), while Amazon lists the fewest (six). friendship between a child and soldier, not to men- Each sampled site provides additional filters to allow users tion the sheer tragedy of death and destruction to sort and search by other elements, such as popularity,
Funimation VIZ Media (https://www. Amazon IMDb Crunchyroll (https://www.viz. funimation.com/ com/watch) genre/) Boolean OR AND AND OR None Operators Comedy; Action; Sci-fi; Adventure; Action-Adventure; Action/Adventure; Horror; Comedy; Comedy; Comedy; Romance; Drama; Drama; Drama; Action; Ecchi; Family; Action; Fan Service; Thriller; Fantasy; Fanasy; Children’s; Fantasy; Drama; Historical; Horror; Genre Comedy; Horror; Mystery; Mecha; Martial Arts; Terms Fantasy; Live-Action; Crime; Romance; Mystery; Horror; Psychological; Animation; Science Fiction; Romance; Science Fiction Sci-Fi; Adventure; Seinen/Mature; Science Fiction; Shoujo; Fantasy; Shoujo; Sports; Shounen; Comedy-Romance; Shounen; Supernatural; Slice of Life Action-Comedy; Slice of Life; Thriller Superhero Sports Popularity; Format; Alphabetical; Alphabetical; Rating; Release date; Addi- IMDb rating; Popularity; Version; Dubbed; Franchise; tional IMDb votes; Updated; Date added; Subtitles; Actor; Filters US box office; Silmulcasts; Alphabetical; Series Director; Runtime; Seasons Popularity Customer rating Release date Table 1. Examples of current anime information systems. Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 17 H. Cho, Th. Disher, W.-C. Lee, S. A. Keating and J. H. Lee. Facet Analysis of Anime Genres customer ratings, or release date. Each website includes (Hjørland 2013). For indexers, the faceted schema pro- different search terms and structures its search system dif- vides a structure for describing anime. By following the ferently, creating unnecessary obstacles for users attempt- structure, an indexer is less likely to miss important facets. ing to locate anime. These search methods acknowledge For users, the list of facets presents possible access points the multitude of information types that users find desira- of an information system and helps them formulate que- ble when either browsing or seeking specific titles. A sys- ries. In addition, as Green (2017) points out, the main ad- tem able to efficiently and completely represent a broad vantages of facet analysis are its strong link to a field’s lit- variety of information about anime titles in a collection erature and its ability to address organizational needs. Be- might prove useful to both distributors and users. cause our data sources are information systems that em- The debate on the notion of genre has continued for a phasize anime retrieval and discovery, and because the pri- long time (Rafferty 2012; Frow 2006; Cobley 2005). Frow mary objective of this study is to contribute to the im- (2006) and Cobley (2005) trace the theoretical basis of provement of both anime description and retrieval, we be- genre to Aristotle and Plato. Discussing fiction librarian- lieve that the facet analysis approach is appropriate. ship, Rafferty (2012, 557) states that genre “has pragmatic Following the basic steps for facet analysis (La Barre and operative power, but it is a concept that as a categoriz- 2010), we explore multiple components of anime genre. ing principle has been subject to debate from within liter- Starting from collecting genre terms from information sys- ary and cultural theory.” Rafferty (564) also suggests that tems for anime, we develop facets and sub-facets after data the social semantic web and user generated tags can be a cleaning and organizing the foci, and all the concepts de- future solution for developing genres of fiction, arguing rived from the analysis were mutually exclusive (Slavic and that “even within the discourse of literary theory there has Davies 2017). Definitions of all facets and some of the been a shift from the idea that genre is based entirely on foci terms are described in section 4. Findings and Discus- literary warrant, a viewpoint that underpinned many early sion. approaches to genre theory, to a viewpoint that sees the interaction between the work and the interpreting reader 3.0 Research method as the basis for meaning-making.” Scholarly tradition has thus begun to lean toward allowing user preferences to As emphasized in the literature review, anime genre is shape genre terms and related metadata. complex and multifaceted. There is no consensus for its Considering the ambiguous nature of genre, this study definition. Further, genre is often used interchangeably applies facet analysis, an analytic approach rooted in the with terms like theme and plot. The distinctions between knowledge organization domain (Vickery 1960), to more these terms are ambiguous. The study’s purpose is to ex- clearly and rigorously classify anime’s genre information. amine the concept of genre in anime and identify promi- Facet analysis technique has been used to develop various nent aspects. Hence, we applied facet analysis to anime knowledge organization systems, including classification genre terms collected from 36 English websites (3 addi- systems, thesauri, and taxonomies, as well as website archi- tional Japanese websites were observed to see if there is tectures and visual/navigational information structures any important information missing from English websites, (Shiri 2014). It identifies top-level characteristics of divi- but they were not part of the analysis). Applying an induc- sion (i.e., facets) and allows combination of values (i.e., tive approach, we identified nine major facets from 1,597 foci) from within these characteristics of division (Green terms using a card-sort method. 2017). As Shiri (2014, 358) noted, facet analysis has proved to be useful to describe the “various characteristics, attrib- 3.1 Data collection utes and aspects of complex, compound and multi-faceted topics.” Since genre has long been understood as both The data collection process is visualized in Figure 2. complex and ambiguous, we used a facet analysis approach We collected anime genre terms from popular websites for this study to explore and collect the different aspects and blogs. Sources include information systems providing of genre. Without having a comprehensive grasp of all anime information, such as Anime-Planet. These systems possible aspects of genre, we cannot propose an enumer- allow users to browse and search anime by genre. Other ative classification of it. From this perspective, facet anal- sources list or define anime genre terms, such as Wikipedia ysis provides a lens to view genre as a set of facets, which and Senpai Knows. are “semantically cohesive categories” (Svenonius 2000, The criteria for source selection are language and term 143) and “component parts or ‘the faces’ of a phenome- variety. To understand anime genre terms in the context of non” (Smiraglia and Henry 2016, 155). English-speaking audiences, the language criterion set the Further, we adopt facet analysis for its ability to identify focus of this study at sources which provide English-lan- different aspects of genre for both indexers and users guage anime genre terms. As a preliminary attempt to 18 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 H. Cho, Th. Disher, W.-C. Lee, S. A. Keating and J. H. Lee. Facet Analysis of Anime Genres
Figure 2. Data collection process. compare English and Japanese anime genre terms, besides 3.2 Data cleaning the thirty-six English language sources, we examined three Japanese sources for reference (i.e., Kinokuniya web store, There are five stages of data cleaning. The first stage is Tsutaya web store, and d Anime store), all of which are merging duplicates, in which identical terms are merged. major online stores selling anime DVDs and Blu Rays or After the first stage, we made the terms into cards and con- are streaming providers. Another criterion is term variety. ducted card sorting for the second and third stages. The While identifying prominent facets of anime genre second stage is merging variant forms. Variant forms of through a bottom-up approach, we selected sources with a the same term may differ in spacing, usage of hyphen, and variety of anime genre terms. There is a range of seven to Romanization (e.g., lolicon and rolikon [Lolita complex]). 283 genre terms, with subdivided terms in each source se- Obvious typos are also merged at this stage. The third lected. stage is merging translations and romanizations. For in- The principles for term collection are transcription and stance, we merged magical girl with mahou shoujou. After the context preservation. For sources that organize genres hier- first three stages of data cleaning, we sorted the terms into archically, we collected the terms of each subdivision and three groups: simple terms, compound terms, and sub- preserved the context. For instance, both “sports” and genre terms. Simple terms describe one concept (e.g., mys- “game” are top level genre terms; and both terms have the tery, love triangle, mind-twisting, piloted robot). Com- subdivision term “baseball.” In this case, we collected four pound terms address more than one concept (e.g, ac- terms: “sports;” “sports—baseball;” “game;” and, “game— tion/adventure, military and warfare, anime and manga). baseball.” Documenting the hierarchy in this way helps pre- Sub-genre terms refer to terms including hierarchical serve the context and meaning of a subdivided term. We structure. For instance, “game—baseball” specifies that collected 1,597 terms from thirty-six English-language the sub-genre term “baseball” is subdivided under “game.” sources. Considering the complexity of the three types of terms, Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 19 H. Cho, Th. Disher, W.-C. Lee, S. A. Keating and J. H. Lee. Facet Analysis of Anime Genres we used simple terms as the foundation for facet develop- terms include more than one concept. We used the facets ment. and foci to describe all concepts presented in the genre The fourth stage is merging similar simple terms with dif- terms collected and adjusted terms accordingly. ferent levels of specificity. For instance, we grouped after- We recognize that new genre terms continue to emerge life, underworld, heaven, hell, and makai (world of spirits; and that the genre terms collected are not comprehensive. hell) and labeled them as “afterlife.” In this case, “afterlife” However, the purpose of this study is not to provide an was selected as the preferred term to represent this group exhaustive list of genre terms. Instead, we propose a fac- of similar terms. Another example is using “game” to rep- eted structure to organize anime genre descriptors. resent different types of games, including “board games,” Through collecting various terms, the goal is to identify “online computer gaming,” “high stakes game,” and “action prominent dimensions of anime genre. We present the re- game.” In this stage, we merged similar or closely related sults of this study by developing mutually exclusive and terms with different levels of specificity and labeled the collectively comprehensive facets that are flexible enough group with a broader term. The broader term is the pre- for expansion. Further, we collect existing terms that users ferred term encompassing the concepts of the group of already apply for anime information, organization, and re- terms. The data cleaning in this stage adjusts the granularity trieval. Some terms present challenges and reaffirm the of the data. Instead of focusing on the different meanings complex nature of genre. We will discuss some of these of similar or closely related terms, this approach directs our challenges below. focus to identify prominent general concepts about anime genre. The fourth stage thus establishes the foundation of 4.0 Findings and Discussion facet analysis for this study. The fifth stage is standardization. We applied three prin- 4.1 Overview of Developed Facets ciples for selecting and standardizing preferred terms. The first principle focuses on the part of speech and singular or We identified nine facets and 153 foci terms. Each facet rep- plural forms. Preferred terms are terms with the highest fre- resents a different aspect of anime, mutually exclusive from quency. If there is no prominent preference identified, we other facets. The facets, the number of foci within each use plural nouns. The second principle standardizes the rep- facet, and the examples of foci are shown in Table 2. The resentation for romanizations and English terms. For terms complete list of subject foci terms is presented in an appen- having both Japanese romanization and English translation, dix. we use romanization and place the English term in paren- Some of the facets, such as “setting,” “plot/narrative,” thesis. An example is “kodomo (children).” The third prin- “subjects,” “feature” and “production” have sub-facets to ciple focuses on disambiguation. For terms encompassing represent specific hierarchical relationships. For example, multiple concepts, we use parenthetical qualifiers to disam- “setting” has three sub-facets: “setting-time,” “setting-situa- biguate. For instance, the concept “gekiga” refers to a com- tional,” and “setting-place.” All the foci of “setting” belong bination of a type of plot and a realistic visual style. We use to one of these sub-facets. In the case of “plot/narrative,” “gekiga (Plot)” and “gekiga (style)” to differentiate the spe- most of its foci directly belong to the main facet, “plot/nar- cific aspect of focus. rative,” but one of its foci, “romance,” is further divided into The five stages of data cleaning render a total of 643 “romance-types” and “romance-multiple people.” terms, including 538 single and compound terms and 105 It was challenging to construct facets that: sub-genre terms. 1) distinguish clearly among the component parts; 3.3 Data analysis 2) are relevant to the purpose, subject, and scope of the classification; There are two phases in the data analysis process. The first 3) represent characteristics of division that can be meas- phase develops facets and sub-facets using a bottom-up ured; approach. We examined the preferred terms that appeared 4) only represent single characteristics of division; more than once after data cleaning. These terms are the 5) are mutually exclusive to each other; and, foci. Based on the foci, we developed nine facets and thir- 6) are derived based on the nature of the subject being teen sub-facets. After the first phase, each focus was as- classified (Spiteri 1998). signed to one facet and one facet only. Foci assignment tests the mutual exclusivity of the facets. Though we are satisfied with the facets presented in this The second phase tests the exhaustivity of the facets study, we acknowledge that classifying subjective infor- with compound terms and sub-genre terms. As defined in mation of a cultural medium will evolve over time. To ac- the data cleaning section, compound terms and sub-genre commodate the dynamic nature of anime genre terms, the 20 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 H. Cho, Th. Disher, W.-C. Lee, S. A. Keating and J. H. Lee. Facet Analysis of Anime Genres
Number of Facet Examples of Foci Foci Josei (Women), Seinen (Young Men/Youth), Shōnen (Boys), Shōjo (Girls), Kodomo Audience 6 (Children), Family - Setting-Time: Cyberpunk, Steampunk, Historical - Setting-Situational: Fantasy, Apocalypse, Science Fiction, Science Fantasy, Dystopia Setting 15 - Setting-Place: Isekai (Parallel Universe), Western, Restaurants/Stores, Space Opera, Space, School, Afterlife Mood 7 Tragedy, Thriller, Comedy, Psychological, Horror, Suspense, Iyashikei (Healing) Detectives, Police, Students, Idols, Pirates, Hunters, Hybrids, Cyborgs, Androids, Ro- Character 32 bots/Mecha, Bishōjo (Beautiful Girls), Bishōnen (Beautiful Boys), Monsters, Aliens, Vampires, etc. Slice of Life, Coming-of-Age, Adventure, Mystery, Absurd, Romance, etc. Plot/Narrative 21 - Plot/Narrative-Romance-Types: Bara (Boys’ Love for Male Audience), Age Gap, Shōnen Ai/Yaoi (Boys' Love), Shōjo Ai/Yuri (Girls' Love) - Plot/Narrative-Romance-Multiple People: Love Triangle, Harem/Reverse Harem Game, Vehicles, Cooking, Time Travel, Magic, Virtual Reality, Politics, Work Life, Subjects 47 Crime, Arts, Natural Disaster, Sports, etc. - Subjects-Sports: Wrestling, Baseball, Gymnastics, Boxing, Martial Arts, Archery, etc. Association with Other 5 Parody, Novel, Comics, Manga, Documentary Works Action Scenes, Fan Service, Power Suits, Henshin (Transformation) Feature 7 - Feature-Action Scenes-Types: Proxy Battles, Swordplay, Gunfights - Production-Techniques: CG Animation - Production-Styles: Chibi (Super Deformed), Gekiga (Style) - Production-Regions: Foreign Anime, Cartoon Production 13 - Production-Agents: Voice Actors - Production-Formats: ONA (Original Net Animation), Special (SP), OVA, Short (Length), Movies, Series - Production-Languages: Dubbed Table 2. Anime genre facets with examples of genre terms. proposed facets are flexible. New genre terms may be First, it draws on existing categories for organizing added to the faceted schema, and the structure can be ex- anime. On Crunchyroll, for example, shōnen, shōjo, and seinen tended as well. are included as genres. Anime-Planet and MyAnimeList use Note that some of the foci are written in Japanese and shōnen, shōjo, seinen, and josei, with MyAnimeList also provid- have a translated meaning inside of the parentheses beside ing “kids” as a genre term. Denison (2015, 24) points out the original Japanese term, such as “josei (women)” and that “anime is for everyone in Japan, but not every show is “iyashikei (healing).” As discussed above, it is very com- aimed at everyone—there are genres for most age groups, mon in the current US anime community for anime fans genders and sexual orientations, and anime’s genres often to use Japanese terms to describe genre information. Con- reflect industrial categories” and that the terms most fre- sidering user warrant (Svenonius 1989), we could have quently applied to anime in Japan come from the manga de- adopted the current term practices directly into our faceted scriptors for intended audiences. Denison adds that “in Ja- schema. However, for the faceted schema to be more in- pan, shōnen and shōjo are themselves, therefore, sprawling tuitive and user-friendly to people who are not familiar transmedia categories whose meanings can seem confusing with anime and Japanese, we decided to have a translated or seemingly arbitrary.” So, while there is strong literary and meaning together with the commonly used Japanese genre user warrant for the “audience” facet’s foci terms, the term to increase ease of use for English language indexing. boundaries between the categories they pull from are not always clear. 4.2 Audience Second, the “audience” facet highlights that the in- tended demographic of an anime can have an impact on The Audience facet encompasses the target demographic of the content. That is, there are various tropes associated the anime. Thus, the foci terms tend to originate from the with each of the foci. Shōnen anime often incorporate creators, publishers, and/or distributors of anime. The rea- fighting and male protagonists, while shōjo anime often fea- son for including the target audience as a facet is twofold. ture romantic subplots and female protagonists. However, Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 21 H. Cho, Th. Disher, W.-C. Lee, S. A. Keating and J. H. Lee. Facet Analysis of Anime Genres it is important to note that the actual demographic watch- two phrases are unlikely to be what was meant on the vari- ing anime can differ from the intended demographic. ous sites harvested for terms, it is possible that some of the sites meant the word meaning “adult age” as a means of – Kodomo (Children) is for anime intended for children referring to adult content. The comparatively mature con- with an upper bound of late elementary school age to tent of many seinen anime also lends itself to this possibility. junior high school age; – Family is for anime intended for all ages based on a hy- 4.3 Setting pothetical family containing young children to adults/elderly; The “setting” facet describes the environment the anime – Shōnen (Boys) is for anime intended for teenage boys; takes place in. The facet is split into three sub-facets, which – Shōjo (Girls) is for anime intended for teenage girls; represent the different aspects of setting: “setting-time,” – Seinen (Young Men/Youth) is for anime intended for “setting-place,” and “setting-situational.” young men; and, The “setting-time” sub-facet contains terms that relate – Josei (Women) is for anime intended for women. to the temporal aspect of setting. As such, it situates the anime in time if the anime takes place on earth or provides Because “kodomo” and “family” anime both have young an equivalent time period if the anime takes place in an children as all or part of the intended demographic, the alternate world: boundary between them is difficult to determine. Richmond (2009, 201) calls My Neighbor Totoro and Doraemon anime for – “Historical” is for anime that take place during a past children in his discussion of anime demographics. However, time period; IMDb lists the genres of My Neighbor Totoro as “animation, – “Steampunk” is for anime that take place in a time pe- family, fantasy” and those of Doraemon as “animation, com- riod where steam power is prevalent; and, edy, family, sci-fi.”. The Japanese Wikipedia entries for the – “Cyberpunk” is for anime that take place in a future 1979 (Wikimedia 2017a) and 2005 (2017b) Doraemon anime time period where advanced technology intersects an further complicate matters by listing both as falling under abnormal social order. the “family/intended for general public anime” (famiri ippan- muke anime ファミリー・一般向けアニメ) and “science The “setting-place” sub-facet contains terms that relate to fiction gag anime” (SF gyagu anime SFギャグアニメ) gen- the spatial aspect of setting. As such, it provides the loca- res. One final wrinkle is that the Japanese Wikipedia page tion the anime takes place in: for “intended for children anime” (Kodomomuke anime 子供向けアニメ) links to the 2005 Doraemon anime from – “Isekai (parallel universe)” is for anime that take place its section on the characteristics of “Kodomo” anime for in an alternate reality; infants and young children (2017b). If the creator, publisher, – “Western” is for anime that take place in the Western or distributor of an anime that could fall into either United States; and, “kodomo” or “family” does not provide the intended de- – “Space opera” is for anime that take place across an mographic, then assigning either “kodomo” or “family” to extensive expanse of interstellar space. an anime becomes a subjective decision based on whether the cataloger feels the anime is strictly for young children. The “setting-situational” sub-facet contains terms relating Seinen (青年) as a term can mean “youth,” though typi- to an abnormal state in the setting’s place, time, or other cally it is used to refer to young men. Denison (2015, 24) characteristics. It provides a description of the aesthetic or illustrates the difficulty of the term by translating it two dif- other circumstances of the anime: ferent ways on the same page: first as “young adult” and later as “aimed at adult men.” It may be the case that some of the – “Fantasy” is for anime that are set in a world where sites are using the term in the broader sense of referring to some level of magic or the supernatural is present; all youth regardless of gender. However, Richmond (2009), – “Apocalypse” is for anime that are set in a world af- Brenner (2007), and Poitras ([2007] 2010) use the term in fected by cataclysmic events; the narrower sense of young men, which is supported by – “Science fiction” is for anime set in a world where sci- several Japanese dictionaries (Kodansha’s 1999; Kodansha’s ence and advanced technology play a role; and, 2002; Breen 2018). Another difficulty with seinen arises be- – “Dystopia” is for anime that are set in a society or cause most English-language sites do not provide the kanji world where living conditions are poor. for Japanese terms. Seinen is also the pronunciation of 成年, meaning “adult age; majority,” 盛年, meaning “prime of The “setting-time” sub-facet currently lacks a robust set life,” and 生年, meaning “year of birth; age.” While the last of foci to describe when an anime is set. “Historical” as a 22 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 H. Cho, Th. Disher, W.-C. Lee, S. A. Keating and J. H. Lee. Facet Analysis of Anime Genres term is rather broad, which limits its usefulness in search- ies, mood can have two different contexts: certain atmos- ing for anime. More granularity in descriptors of the past pheres represented by a particular work (in this case, would facilitate locating desired works. The hazards in anime), or the emotional states of the audience. For ex- breaking down the “historical” label too far are that cata- ample, one might want to watch an anime that has a tragic logers may have difficulty identifying the proper label and mood (former) to alleviate his or her current sad feeling searchers may locate only a small number of anime. Terms (latter). In this study, mood is the emotional state of the associated with “historical” must be broad enough to fa- audience in relation to the feelings an anime elicits. cilitate easy cataloging and narrow enough to communi- While the definition suggests using adjectives for the cate useful information in search results. A further diffi- foci terms, we use the most common forms from the data culty will include choosing terms that encompass time- collected. Most “mood” terms are nouns when used as based information without also necessitating other de- genre terms: scriptors; for example, while the term “medieval” would clearly indicate a relatively narrow set of centuries, it would – “Psychological:” An anime emphasizing the mind, fo- also presuppose a “setting-place” facet of Europe. cusing on the motivations or mental states of the char- “Cyberpunk,” “steampunk,” “western,” “fantasy,” and acters. A psychological anime often surfaces questions “science fiction” are all problematic because the terms which initiate thought-provoking, agitated, unsettling, have elements that fit into more than one setting sub-facet. or disturbing feelings. While “cyberpunk” anime are usually set in a future “set- – “Iyashikei (healing):” Iyashikei means “healing” in Jap- ting-time,” the word also requires “setting-situational” as- anese. The audience feels healing and soothing. Many pects in terms of technological and societal characteristics. “iyashikei (healing)” anime have a calm and slow-paced In other words, “cyberpunk” is not exclusively an indicator atmosphere, depicting small delights in daily life, a ten- of time. Similarly, a “western” is often conceived of as be- dency which overlaps with the “slice of life” focus un- ing situated in the Western United States (“setting-place”) der the “plot/narrative” facet. in the second half of the nineteenth century (“setting- time”) with certain conventions (“setting-situational”). An anime may trigger different moods, and through facet However, as Tudor (1974, 139) points out, “there is no ba- analysis, we can describe different moods presented in a sis for assuming that a ‘Western’ will be conceived in the single anime by assigning multiple foci terms. As presented same way in every culture. The way in which the genre in the “iyashikei (healing)” example above, the “mood” term is applied can quite conceivably vary from case to terms are often closely related to “plot/narrative” terms. case.” Cowboy Bebop draws from the “western” genre but is Audiences often feel “healed” by watching anime with a not set in the time and place of most Westerns. “Fantasy” “slice of life” plot. and “science fiction” proved especially difficult to pin down as the research team’s members have varied under- 4.5 Character standings of what those genres entail. The “setting-place” sub-facet is challenging because of “Character” describes the figures in an anime. It covers hu- the variety of places available; some anime span galaxies man, non-human, and imaginary figures. There are terms or planets whereas other anime can be confined to a single referring to characters of specific occupations (e.g., “pi- location, such as a school. Some anime also begin in one rates,” “maids,” “students”) and those with specific charac- location, but then move out to other locations. For in- teristics (e.g., “bishōjo [beautiful girls],” “rorikon [Lolita stance, Space Patrol Luluco could potentially be said to fall complex]”). Some terms describe imaginary creations as under the scope of both the “school” and “space” terms. characters, such as “robots/mecha,” “demons,” and “vam- Because of this it will be necessary to determine whether pires.” only the most prevalent setting should be listed for a par- As mentioned in the research method section, consid- ticular work or whether all applicable settings should be ering the granularity of terms, some foci terms are used considered. for concepts that are not identical but similar. For instance, “gangs” is used for both Mafia and Yakuza (crime groups 4.4 Mood that originated in Japan); and “monsters” is used for yōkai (supernatural creatures in Japanese folklore). Depending According to Turco (1999, 50 emphasis original), “Atmos- on local needs and collections, an information system may phere is the mood of the narrative, and mood is created apply this faceted structure and decide to merge or divide by means of setting (locale and surroundings in which the similar terms. The foci terms generated from this study are narrative takes place), attitude (of the narrator and of the not an enumerative list. The faceted structure is flexible for characters in the narrative), and descriptions.” In media stud- expansion and provides a customizable level of specificity. Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 23 H. Cho, Th. Disher, W.-C. Lee, S. A. Keating and J. H. Lee. Facet Analysis of Anime Genres
The adjustment of specificity of foci terms does not affect schema, “sekai-kei” does not have any translated meaning the nine facets identified. next to the term. The reason is that the definition of this term, “sekai-kei” itself, has not been clearly agreed upon or 4.6 Plot/narrative developed by anime communities. Thomas (2014, ii) states, “The term sekai-kei (“world-type”), a genre of subcultural “Plot/narrative” is defined as how the story unfolds. In lit- narrative whose defining characteristic is the omission of a erary discourses, Brooks (1984, XI) defines plot as “the de- mediating social dimension between individual characters sign and intention of narrative, what shapes a story and and an apocalyptic large-scale situation, has come to be used gives it a certain direction or intent of meaning.” Similarly, as a tool of cultural criticism pertaining to young adults of Turco (1999, 101) defines it as the “series of rising actions the mid-90s to the mid-2000s.” Satoshi Maejima’s book leading to the climax in a written or theatrical narrative; the Sekai-kei to wa nani ka: Posuto-Eva no otaku shi further explains thread of associated incidents that makes a story, including “sekai-kei.” Maejima (translated and paraphrased by its beginning, middle, and end” (emphasis original). In other Thomas 2014, 14-15) finds that “sekai-kei” anime share words, plot occurs when narratives, or accounts of events some characteristics: “1. They omit the social setting, 2. (Wolfreys, Robbins, and Womack 2016), are ordered in a cer- What is fought and on which principle it functions is not tain way with a certain intention. In this regard, this facet is understood, and 3. These omissions are deliberately in- distinguished from “subjects” in that “plot/narrative” fo- cluded in order to induce sympathy for the protagonists’ cuses more on the overall development of the storyline, in- self-consciousness or the (often tragic) love between the stead of overarching themes or topics. Among the twenty- protagonist and the heroine in the consumers” (emphasis one foci terms, there are six sub-terms under “romance.” original). Some of the foci terms in this facet are: Other than the somewhat forced and unnatural transla- tion “world-type,” which does not mean anything specific in – “Romance:” The main body of the story deals with English, there is not a good translation to define what love; “sekai-kei” indicates. The fact that there is not a clear-cut – “Romance-types:” Different types of romance; consensus on what the genre means does not help the situ- – “Bara (boys’ love for male audience):” “Romance” ation, either. The research on the term and discussions fi- anime in which the main characters are both male; often nally lead us to decide to keep the term as it is, “sekai-kei,” a created by male artists, for a male audience; decision which may indicate a limitation of the faceted – “Shōnen ai/yaoi (boys' love):” “Romance” anime in schema. which the main characters are both male; generally tar- Another foci-term that needs to be discussed further is geted towards women; “gekiga (plot).” As a term that is often used to describe cer- – “Shōjo ai/yuri (girls' love):” “Romance” anime in tain darker genres of manga and anime, “gekiga” originated which the main characters are both female; in “the late 1960s, when new styles and approaches to con- – “Age gap:” Anime that shows a romantic relationship tent were explored by a variety of manga artists” (Brophy between two main characters with a significant age gap; 2010, 130). Brophy (131) goes on to describe how “gekiga” – “Slice of life:” A story that shows the everyday life of is expressed in some of Osamu Tezuka’s works: the characters; – “Coming-of-age:” A story that depicts the process by If the earlier works invited identification with the cud- which young characters grow up, by showcasing char- dlesome, the gekiga works portend a harsh duality in acters who make the transition naturally or who are their theatricalized two-facedness. Centered as so forced to grow due to external motivations; many of the stories are on the duplicitous and deceit- – “Sekai-kei:” As a neologism which has not been clearly ful maneuvers of humans, the postcute effect of their defined, this term typically refers to a story that shows visages serves to amplify the psychological mecha- an association between two main characters’ relation- nisms that motivate their actions. From portraits of ship and a crisis in the world, e.g., Neon Genesis Evangelion self-disorienting quandaries of personal identity (Ru- (1995); dovihi B, Apporo no uta, and Bomba!) to investigations – “Absurd:” A story that is wildly unreasonable, illogical, into self-destructive disregard for personal ethics or inappropriate; and, (Tsumi to batsu [Crime and Punishment], Mu, Ningen – “Gekiga (plot):” A story that is likely to be serious and konchu ki) to treatises on self-revelatory moments of mature, with realistic and darker settings. personal enlignment (Kirihito sanka, Buddha, Hi no tori), Tezuka’s characters teeter on the brink of redefinition Among these foci terms, “sekai-kei” and “gekiga (plot)” re- and reincarnation (emphasis original). quire more discussion. Unlike other foci in this faceted 24 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 H. Cho, Th. Disher, W.-C. Lee, S. A. Keating and J. H. Lee. Facet Analysis of Anime Genres
The tricky part of “gekiga” is that the term indicates two – “Fan service:” work that contains “service”; typically, different aspects of anime, the story and the visual style. some form of sexualization of male or female charac- Generally, “gekiga” anime can be identified by their focus ters, largely for the audience rather than the show; on realistic artwork and character design and their inclu- – “Power suits:” Suits or other forms of mobile armor sion of mature and serious stories. Thus, placing the foci that provide characters extra power in some form—in- under a single facet does not satisfy the condition of being cludes Gundam-type armors, but also exoskeletons and mutually exclusive, because the schema contains both other forms of armor enhancement; and, “plot/narrative” and “production-styles.” Therefore, we – “Henshin (transformation):” scenes that show off a created two separate terms, “gekiga (plot)” and “gekiga character changing form in some way, typified by magical (style)” to differentiate the nuances and place them sepa- girl series, though before this, often included in Power rately under two different facets. Rangers and other series involving characters changing to a “powered up” form. 4.7 Subjects 4.10 Production The “subjects” facet refers to themes or topics an anime pri- marily conveys. The facet contains thirty-three foci terms, “Production” represents a wide variety of terms for how including “game,” “cooking,” “time travel,” “magic,” “tour- the anime was created. This includes the different ways in naments,” “politics,” “work life,” “crime,” “arts,” “super- which an anime may be brought about by way of presen- powers,” etc. One foci-term from the facet, “sports,” has tation. The facet relates strongly to style visually as well as fourteen child terms, including “wrestling,” “baseball,” acoustically and includes a wider discussion of how length “gymnastics,” “archery,” and “ice skating,” indicating the defines the varying types of anime typically created. Some popularity of “sport”s subjects in anime. Although the foci of the sub-facets and foci terms are as follows: terms listed here under “subjects” are not the complete set of topics existing in anime, they are the subjects that ap- – “Techniques∷ the method for constructing the anime peared more than one time in the databases researched. visually; When there are more “subjects” terms retrieved in the fu- – “CG animation:” a visual method using digital com- ture, they can be easily added to the current structure. puter graphics to render characters or environments, ra- ther than hand-drawn animation; 4.8 Association with other works – “Styles:” the normative visual representation of charac- ters or backgrounds in the anime; “Association with other works” describes a facet that defines – “Chibi (super deformed):” a style defined by characters connections to works that are largely referential in nature. with cartoonishly large heads and much smaller bodies, For example, an anime falling under the facet may use a cli- often focusing on representational facial animations; ché gag or reference a famous manga or other entertainment – “Gekiga (style):” a style defined by dramatic imagery, work (situating historical work, as in Mushi-shi), displaying including characters in relief, often including wide pan- cultural connectivity between creative works. These connec- oramic shots and specific use of shadow to denote fa- tions often occur due to the use of manga as a basis for cial features; anime stories and production; however, it is also the case – “Regions:” the location in which the anime is made; that anime can be used to display a certain rhetorical under- – “Foreign anime:” anime developed outside of Japan or standing of Japanese culture. Foci terms included are “par- of the normative culture defining it; ody,” “novel,” “comics,” “manga,” and “documentary.” – “Cartoon:” shows developed or produced with west- ern audiences in mind, typically more stylistic than spe- 4.9 Feature cific to location; – “Agents:” groups or individuals involved with the pro- Feature describes a facet that is highly specific yet increas- duction of anime; ingly general and regularly presented within anime. In a – “Voice actors:” individuals who provide audio for char- sense, these are clichés that have become descriptive of acters in anime; works unto themselves, such that they are, at times, the en- – “Formats:” the structure of the anime either as it re- tirety of the work, rather than specific instances within the lates to length or connectedness to other works; work. Still, there are also many anime where these aspects – “ONA (original net animation):” a typically short work are simply inserts, presented in a narrow manner for a cer- produced for immediate release online, rather than tain audience, with little consequence or meaning with re- other methods of broadcast; gards to the rest of the show: Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 25 H. Cho, Th. Disher, W.-C. Lee, S. A. Keating and J. H. Lee. Facet Analysis of Anime Genres
– “Special (SP):” a work that is typically a one-time event, – “Series:” shorter, episodic works that are connected by presented for a specific purpose, such as a Christmas a consistent cast of characters, storylines and events, special; often culminating or building up over time. – “OVA (original video animation):” a short work pro- duced for immediate release to some fixed physical for- 4.11 Facet application to existing anime mat, such as VHS, Blu-ray, DVD, or other forms of fixed media. To show how our schema can describe different genre in- – “Short (length):” a short is defined both by length and formation in anime, Table 3 shows facet and foci applica- presentation, typically in a trailer-like fashion, fre- tion to existing anime as examples. Note that multiple foci quently presenting or expanding upon some quirk or terms can be applied to each facet due to their mutual ex- oddity in a work; clusivity, which makes the genre facet classification – “Movies:” longer works presented in a non-serialized stronger by enabling users to describe anime in detail. manner, often complete and standalone works, without When a specific facet of an anime is ambiguous, unclear, need for connective tissue from other works or epi- or cannot be described well with the current foci, it is left sodes; and, with N/A.
One Punch Man Attack on Titan Ristorante Ouran High School One Piece (1999) (2015) (2013) Paradiso (2009) Host Club (2006) Audience Seinen (Youth) Seinen (Youth) Josei (Women) Shōjo (Girls) Shōnen (Boys) Situational: Place: Situational: Setting Science Fiction Place: School Apocalypse Restaurants/Stores Fantasy Tragedy; Thriller; Mood Comedy Iyashikei (Healing) Comedy Comedy Horror; Suspense Hero (Protagonist); Cyborgs; Hero Heroine (Protagonist); Hero (Protagonist); Heroine Students; (Protagonist); Character Monsters; Monsters; (Protagonist) Pirates; Aliens; Bishōnen (Beautiful Hunters Boys) Hybrids Samurai; Ninja Romance; Romance; Romance- Coming-of-Age; Romance-Types: Age Coming-of-Age; Plot/ Coming-of-Age; Multiple People: Harem/ Gekiga (Plot); Gap; Drama; Narrative Adventure Reverse Harem; Slice of Life; Survival Slice of Life Adventure Drama Violent Contents; Superpowers; Cooking; Superpowers; Subjects War; Club Violent Contents Work Life Violent Contents Military; Association with Other Manga Manga Manga Manga Manga Works Action Scenes; Feature Action Scenes Fan Service Fan Service Action Scenes Swordplay Formats: Series; Formats: Series; Formats: Series; OVA (Original Video Movies; Production OVA (Original Formats: Series Formats: Series Animation); OVA (Original Video Animation) Styles: Gekiga Video Animation) (Style)
Table 3. Facet application to existing anime examples. 26 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 H. Cho, Th. Disher, W.-C. Lee, S. A. Keating and J. H. Lee. Facet Analysis of Anime Genres
5.0 Challenges and Implications condensed into general facets of genre, listing specific op- tions as foci terms under each facet. By organizing genre The biggest challenge confronted was the choice of foci terms in such a manner, our system allows each anime title terms for each facet. Because anime naturally adopts Japa- to encompass multiple genres. nese culture and language to describe its genres, most Eng- The faceted approach to anime genre, furthermore, re- lish-speaking users also tend to use Japanese terms to de- veals connections between genre terms in a way that is not scribe anime’s genres, which has become communally nor- necessarily visible from traditional organizational methods mative. Considering user warrant and literary warrant for genre. Traditional hierarchical methods limit genre ele- (Svenonius 1989), we believe the genre terms currently ments to related concepts, such as broader terms or nar- used by real users should be reflected in our schema for rower terms, while our analysis reveals that genre includes users who are already familiar with the material. Using ex- more aspects than the traditionally narrow labels for gen- isting terms also demonstrates respect for the culture, do- res and sub-genres. Using facets to address various aspects main, and community. of a work (setting, mood, character types, etc.) demon- At the same time, as we briefly discussed in the Intro- strates how more than one type of information can be rep- duction section, adopting foreign terms to the organiza- resented in a genre organization system. Instead of re- tion system thoughtlessly, especially when there are many stricting an anime’s genre to one choice in a hierarchical foreign terms, may yield several serious issues. The organ- system, a structure that provides multiple labels allows us- ization system should be user-friendly to new or casual us- ers to accurately represent the multi-genre nature of ers. That is, the terms themselves used in the schema anime. For example, while a story that includes comedic should be intuitive enough so users would not require and romantic elements might traditionally be labeled a “ro- much training to learn how to use the schema. With these mantic comedy,” as its own genre, that story could in our conflicting goals in mind—honoring existing terms and faceted approach support both a mood genre of comedy cultures and providing an intuitive schema—we discussed and a narrative/plot genre of romance, more clearly iden- three different options for term selection: using original tifying the work’s characteristics. (Japanese) terms, using English-translated terms, and using In addition, the faceted approach is easily applicable to both together. formats beyond anime. Genre as a universal concept can Using English-translated terms might create a more in- be useful and flexible when describing existing works. tuitive schema, especially for users who are not familiar Granted, multifaceted genre labels have limited usefulness with anime terminology. However, it would not be within the physical space of a library or other physical col- “friendly” to anime fans and people who are familiar with lection, in that a single DVD cannot be shelved in multiple the culture already, ironically. Additionally, several terms places at the same time. But, a multifaceted genre system could not be translated easily because of their complex has complete freedom within modern electronic indexing meanings or interrelationships with either Japanese or and searching systems to make works accessible to users. anime culture. As examples, we discussed “gekiga” and No matter how many different search terms or facets a “sekai-kei” above. The prevalence of difficult-to-translate user includes in a search, the database can still point the terms is the reason we chose to use both English and Jap- user to relevant results. A faceted system such as we pro- anese, having original terms and translated terms together pose is also easier to extend than traditional hierarchies. in our schema. Using such a method, we can keep the orig- While a hierarchical system must flex in many directions inal terms used in the community and have a schema intu- to accommodate the addition or deletion of a term by es- itive enough for users unfamiliar with anime jargon. tablishing new pathways between terms, a faceted system Any researchers in the knowledge organization domain can easily absorb new terms within various facets. will likely face linguistic issues when they attempt to build We found disparate conceptions of genre and a lack of a new schema for relatively new types of information or uniformity among anime search systems restrictive to the foreign materials, including art, design, visual media, and usefulness of genre data. For users, breadth and specificity more. We hope our approach might provide some guide- of data are desirable. A faceted system allows anime to be lines for future research. identified by breadth of information (in listing multiple as- pects, such as setting, theme, and target audience) and by 6.0 Conclusion specificity of information (in selecting as many labels as necessary from within each aspect). Instead of a traditional By harvesting genre terms from a diverse spread of online hierarchy, a faceted approach better organizes and repre- anime collections and investigating the relationships be- sents the nebulous conceptual space of genre; a faceted tween them, we identified common types of information approach welcomes the complexity of anime works rather represented in related terms. These commonalities were than limiting them to single spaces in a genre catalog. Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 27 H. Cho, Th. Disher, W.-C. Lee, S. A. Keating and J. H. Lee. Facet Analysis of Anime Genres
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Students Subjects Idols Game Maids Vehicles Pirates Cooking Hunters Time Travel Hybrids Magic Trap Virtual Reality Cyborgs Tournaments Androids Politics Robots/Mecha Sexual Contents Bishōjo (Beautiful Girls) Violent Contents Bishōnen (Beautiful Boys) Work Life Monsters Body Sharing/Body Swapping/Reincarnation Aliens Crime Vampires Music Busty Females Arts Shotakon (Shōtarō Complex) Natural Disaster Rorikon (Lolita Complex) Amnesia Gender Bender War Samurai Military Demons Club Delinquents Genetic Modification Mahō Shōjo (Magical Girls) Human Enhancement Ninja Superpowers Gods Otaku Culture Angels Abuse Hero (Protagonist) Supernatural Heroine (Protagonist) Seishun (Youth) Terrorism Plot/Narrative Educational Sudden Girlfriend Appearance Gambling Slice of Life Mythology Coming-of-Age Bullying Drama Sports Adventure Subjects-Sports Mystery Wresting Conspiracy Baseball Sekai-kei Gymnastics Absurd Boxing Abstract Martial Arts Mind-Twisting Archery Gekiga (Plot) Fishing Survival Swimming Biography Volleyball Romance Ice Skating Plot/Narrative-Romance-Types Cycling Bara (Boys' Love for Male Audience) Soccer Shōnen Ai/Yaoi (Boys' Love) Tennis Shōjo Ai/Yuri (Girls' Love) Dancing Age Gap Plot/Narrative-Romance-Multiple People Association with Other Works Love Triangle Parody Harem/Reverse Harem Novel 30 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 H. Cho, Th. Disher, W.-C. Lee, S. A. Keating and J. H. Lee. Facet Analysis of Anime Genres
Comics Production-Regions Manga Foreign Anime DocumentaryFeature Cartoon Action Scenes Production-Agents Fan Service Voice Actors Power Suits Production-Formats Henshin (Transformation) ONA (Original Net Animation) Feature-Action Scenes-Types Special (SP) Proxy Battles OVA (Original Video Animation) Swordplay Short (Length) Gunfights Movies Series Production Production-Languages Production-Techniques Dubbed CG Animation Production-Styles Chibi (Super Deformed) Gekiga (Style)
Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 31 Sh. Shakti Ghosh, S. Das, and S. Kumar Chatterjee. Human-centric Faceted Approach for Ontology Construction
Human-centric Faceted Approach for Ontology Construction† Shiv Shakti Ghosh*, Subhashis Das**, and Sunil Kumar Chatterjee*** Jadavpur University—Library & Information Science—Main Campus. 188, Raja S.C. Mallick Rd , Kolkata, West Bengal 700032, India, *
Shiv Shakti Ghosh is doing his PhD and is a senior research fellow in the Department of Library & Information Science, Jadavpur University, India. In 2013, he completed his bachelors in mathematics from Serampore College, India and obtained his master’s degree in library and information science (MSLIS) from the Documentation Research and Training Centre (DRTC), Indian Statistical Institute, India in 2015. His research interests include information science and arts and humanities.
Subhashis Das currently works as a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science (DISI), Università degli Studi di Trento, Italy. He obtained his Ph.D from the ICT-Doctoral School, University of Trento, Trento, Italy. Subhashis does research in information science, computing in health science, arts and humanities and geoinformatics (GIS).
Sunil Kumar Chatterjee is a professor in the Department of Library & Information Science, Jadavpur University, India. In 1987, he obtained his MSc in chemistry. In 1990, he got the associateship in information science from INSDOC, India and completed his master’s degree in library and information science from Burdwan University, India in 1991. He obtained his PhD in 2005. Having begun as a researcher in library and information science during the early nineties, he has contributed papers in several peer reviewed journals and conferences of national and international repute. His research areas include scientometrics, informetrics and information science.
Shiv Shakti Ghosh, Subhashis Das, and Sunil Kumar Chatterjee. 2020. “Human-centric Faceted Approach for Ontology Construction.” Knowledge Organization 47(1): 31-44. 39 references. DOI:10.5771/0943-7444-2020-1-31.
Abstract: In this paper, we propose an ontology building method, called human-centric faceted approach for ontology construction (HCFOC). HCFOC uses the human-centric approach, improvised with the idea of selec- tive dissemination of information (SDI), to deal with context. Further, this ontology construction process makes use of facet analysis and an analytico-synthetic classification approach. This novel fusion contributes to the originality of HCFOC and distinguishes it from other existing ontology construction methodologies. Based on HCFOC, an ontology of the tourism domain has been designed using the Protégé-5.5.0 ontology editor. The HCFOC methodology has provided the necessary flexibility, extensibility, robustness and has facilitated the cap- turing of background knowledge. It models the tourism ontology in such a way that it is able to deal with the context of a tourist’s information need with precision. This is evident from the result that more than 90% of the user’s queries were successfully met. The use of domain knowledge and techniques from both library and information science and computer science has helped in the realization of the desired purpose of this ontology construction process. It is envisaged that HCFOC will have implications for ontology developers. The demon- strated tourism ontology can support any tourism information retrieval system.
Received: 8 May 2019; Revised: 17 June 2019, 8 July 2019, 20 August 2019, 2 September 2019, 25 October 2019, 5 November 2019: Ac- cepted: 15 November 2019
Keywords: ontology, tourism, information, domain, concepts, terms
† The link for accessing the tourismontology.owl file can be found at (https://webprotege.stanford.edu/#projects/00bef201-8f71-4f68- b507-b04d4bd9b99d/edit/Classes)
32 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 Sh. Shakti Ghosh, S. Das, and S. Kumar Chatterjee. Human-centric Faceted Approach for Ontology Construction
1.0 Introduction Plenty of research is being conducted to determine con- text. The possibility of using ontology as a tool for context Recent years have witnessed an increase in the use of ontol- management has also been endeavored. The methodologies ogy for knowledge representation, sharing and distribution. for developing or constructing these ontologies depict the As defined in Studer et al. (1998), ontology is a formal, ex- human-centric approach to deal with context, its analysis plicit specification of a shared conceptualization. Concepts and development. Further, in the field of library and infor- belonging to a domain of discourse are described with the mation science, the idea of selective dissemination of infor- help of properties. The description present in the properties mation (SDI) propounded by Luhn (1961) has been in use refers to the different features and attributes of the con- for quite a considerable amount of time. SDI has been rou- cepts. Thus, semantic relationships are established between tinely used to deal with “context.” SDI got involved with the the concepts. As an outcome, background knowledge or rel- aim of catering information to those who found it most use- evant semantic information pertaining to the domain of dis- ful, or, in other words, it aimed to cater information accord- course gets encapsulated. In totality, an ontology attempts ing to the right context. Additionally, the aim was to prevent to model a domain of discourse. The modeling here refers communication of misinformation or, information that is to either an attempt to describe or categorize objects be- out of the context. The system is to be fed with a database longing to the domain of discourse. of users’ profiles containing areas of interest belonging to As remarked by Smiraglia (2015, 19), knowledge organ- individual end users. SDI advocates that when a particular ization studies are focusing towards a domain-analytical di- item or information is to be disseminated, it is to be done rection. Hjørland (2017) has termed domain analysis as the after comparing its information pattern or trend with pro- theorization and analytical approach to library and infor- files of the members present in the system. The system may mation science and knowledge organization. For domain select as many recipients as it finds suitable. There is a con- analysis, many ontology construction methodologies have cept of weeding out imbibed within SDI as it has been rec- conceived the concept of facet analysis (see study by ommended to delete those document patterns that have be- (Prieto-Diaz 2003), (Giunchiglia et al. 2009) and (Das and come obsolete. Furthermore, interests sustaining for longer Roy 2016)) and analytico-synthetic classification pro- time must be preserved. This sense of weeding out of ob- pounded by Ranganathan (1967). The analytico-synthetic solete information patterns and preservation of infor- approach consists of two phases. In the first phase, known mation sustaining for longer time periods has particularly as the analysis phase, compound and complex ideas are motivated the evaluation step in HCFOC. New concepts fragmented into fundamental ideas. After analyzing their and its representatives must be sustained for longer periods characteristics, these fundamental ideas are grouped or and must be inserted and embedded within the ontology clustered according to similarity. This first phase is com- with the objective to saturate it. The requirement of addi- pleted by following the first-link-downwards and last-link- tion or deletion of outdated information patterns must be upwards approach. The difference between these two ap- identified by repeating the evaluation step of HCFOC. The proaches are characterized in the way they start approach- idea of SDI is quite similar to the human-centric approach ing concepts, where a concept, as defined by Dahlberg followed while dealing with context. Lamsfus (2009) has fa- (1978) is a knowledge unit, and the statements about its miliarized the human-centric approach with relevance to referent are the characteristics of the given concept. The contextual information. The proposed human-centric fac- first-link-downwards starts the analysis from the root con- eted approach for ontology construction (HCFOC), dis- cepts in the domain and then gradually narrows down to cussed in this paper, uses a synthesis of both these similar more specific concepts. Thus, it proceeds from abstract approaches to correctly deal with context. Further, the ana- level to a concrete level. The last-link-upwards technique lytico-synthetic approach has been also utilized for design- identifies and studies the characteristics of base concepts ing this methodology. Tourism has been chosen as the do- and assembles them depending upon their similarity of main for exemplifying this process. Since people moving features. In this way, by continuing the process of clubbing from one place to another may need relevant information together a large or universal concept is formed. By repeat- for enhancing their mobility at any time, it becomes crucial ing this process, the root concept is reached. Thus, the bot- to accurately determine the context of a tourist’s infor- tom up approach proceeds from concrete level to an ab- mation requirement or information seeking pattern. Opting stract level. In the second phase, mentioned as the synthe- tourism as a domain for study and experimentation is readily sis phase, semantic relationships are established between providing a scope to test the context-modeling capability of concepts. This approach helps in identifying facets, where the HCFOC methodology. Smiraglia (2015, 19) has listed a facet, as has been described in Giunchiglia and Dutta the domains that have been taken up recently for knowledge (2011) as a hierarchy of homogenous group of terms organization studies, which clearly reveals that not even (nodes), each term denoting a primitive atomic concept. once the tourism domain was taken up for study. Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 33 Sh. Shakti Ghosh, S. Das, and S. Kumar Chatterjee. Human-centric Faceted Approach for Ontology Construction
Furthermore, many regions and countries rely on tour- within it to find semantic similarities between items for use ism as the main source of revenue generation, which con- in an e-Government tourism service recommendation sys- tributes to the national GDP. This domain has become the tem. The Harmonise ontology proposed by Fodor and focus of a lot of economic activities. According to the Werthner (2005) focuses on tourism data exchange. The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) (2017), “the QALL-ME framework by Ferrandez et al. (2011) has been business volume of tourism equals or even surpasses that mapped with Princeton WordNet by Miller (1995) and the of oil exports, food products or automobiles.” Besides Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO) and thus it has this, it has direct effects on educational, cultural and social a strong foundation knowledge base. GETESS by Staab et sectors. Transportation, hospitality and entertainment ser- al. (1999) deploys natural language processing (NLP) and se- vices also harness benefits from this industry. Mobility of mantic web methods to answer user queries using web- people has increased significantly over time. Quite natu- based information exchange and distribution. Existing on- rally, the tourism domain is also experiencing a surge in tologies on the tourism domain have been listed in Mathur information and knowledge handling like never before. et al. (2015). The Mondeca ontology has been built using And to deal with this, innovative approaches and applica- concepts from the thesaurus developed by the World Tour- tions are required. So, an effort has been made to build a ism Organization (UNWTO) (2001). The OnTour ontology model for the tourism domain using ontology. by the eTourism Semantic Web Portal describes the con- The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section cepts of location coordinates, accommodation, date and 2.0 provides a brief literature review on this domain and time of certain events, etc. for tourism information dissem- discusses the related works. Section 3.0 explains the ination. The purpose of the HiTouch Ontology and the HCFOC methodology exemplifying its use for construct- TAGA ontologies is to cater to travel agents. Gregor et al. ing the tourism ontology. Section 4.0 concludes the paper (2016) have proposed a methodology using semantic clus- while discussing avenues for future work. tering algorithms to create ontology for intelligent transpor- tation systems. Frikha et al. (2016) and Lee et al. (2017) have 2.0 Ontologies related to tourism shown the use of ontology for medical tourism and leisure tour recommender systems respectively. She et al. (2018) Since the efficiency of ontologies in decision making has have deployed property graph ontology for a tourism rec- been proven, a lot of research is focusing on ontology con- ommender system. Special efforts for understanding and struction methodologies. Qiu et al. (2018) have used a modeling the context in tourism can be seen in (Kashevnik combination of rule-based (for concept and relationships 2017). extraction), statistics-based (for ranking the concepts) and cluster-based methods (for clustering and constructing 3.0 The HCFOC methodology and the tourism taxonomy) for constructing ontologies. Nguyen and Lu ontology (2016) have developed ontologies for web pages. The steps followed are requirement analysis, conceptualization and The human-centric faceted ontology construction implementation. Yang et al. (2017) have proposed DOCM (HCFOC) methodology consists of eight steps. The on- or domain ontology construction method. The methodol- tology construction process demonstrates the synthesis of ogy involves requirements and domain knowledge analysis the idea of SDI from the field of library and information followed by establishment, evaluation and modification ef- science with the idea of human-centric approach to deal fort assessment of the ontology. Further, a method has with the context of the primary information seeker. Fur- been proposed to evaluate the modification effort on the ther, the analytico-synthetic classification approach has ontology. Suárez et al. (2015) have developed the NeOn been also used to capture the necessary and relevant back- Methodology framework based on glossary of processes ground or inherent knowledge. This methodology evolved and activities and ontology building scenarios, networks while attempts were being made to develop an ontology and life-cycle models. for the tourism domain, which has been also shown here. The tourism domain is also experiencing a surge in the The tourism ontology has been developed using the Pro- use of ontologies for information dissemination, decision tégé-5.5.0 (https://protege.stanford.edu) ontology editor. making and fabrication of recommendation systems. Chu et It is a free, open-source ontology editor developed by the al. (2016) have constructed a tourism recommender system. Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research at For this, users in the database have been categorized as re- the Stanford University School of Medicine. The Protégé lated and unrelated. Different kinds of algorithms have been OWL (web ontology language) ontologies consist of clas- used to deal with the contexts of users belonging to differ- ses, properties (object properties and data properties) and ent categories. Al-Hassan and Lu (2015) have discussed the individuals. Classes are sets of individuals that are objects use of ontology and the defined relationships and attributes of the domain. Object properties are relations between the 34 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 Sh. Shakti Ghosh, S. Das, and S. Kumar Chatterjee. Human-centric Faceted Approach for Ontology Construction objects. Data properties are relations between the objects guage, weather, latitude, longitude, mountain, landform, and data types. desert, postal code, river, basin, vehicle, website, etc. An analysis of these questions revealed the approach and in- 3.1 Step 0: domain selection formation seeking behavior in this domain, and the pri- mary information seeker was identified as a tourist. So, this A field or area of study is to be selected on which the on- ontology has been conceived keeping the tourist at the tology will be created. The field or area of study is com- centre. Further, this analysis also helped us in forming a monly referred to as domain. The tourism domain is the prospective map of the context of tourists’ information centre of a lot of economic activities. Contextual infor- needs. This map also represents the purpose and scope of mation is highly sought after in this domain. The aim of the tourism ontology. the HCFOC methodology is to understand and deal with context in a comprehensive and precise manner. Based on 3.3 Step 2: information acquisition previous studies and reviewing of existing literature the tourism domain has persistently appealed as a perfect do- A footprint of the ideas, concepts and their features, pre- main for testing and implementing this methodology. sent in the existing information sources on the domain un- Moreover, as this domain is multifaceted, the analytico- der consideration, is to be formed. This footprint is to be synthetic approach ingrained in the HCFOC methodology matched against the map created in the previous step, and will also be tested. the overlapping areas are to be identified. Information sources on all such overlapping areas are to be studied and 3.2 Step 1: focus map creation the collected information must be consolidated. Figure 1(a) depicts the general information acquisition The contextual queries of the primary information seeker process, and Figure 1(b) shows how tourism information in the selected domain are usually considered to ascertain is scattered over different domains like geography, cadas- the focus. Ascertainment of the focus helps in aligning with tre, automotive and economy. Our present requirements or modifying the purpose and scope of the ontology. This are only a subset of information from each domain. For step is instrumental in making the ontology capable of deal- instance, monuments and heritage buildings are usually ing with the context of the primary information seeker. Cor- collected from the cadastre database, but we might not rect and comprehensive understanding of the context helps need property tax or building material information in the in increasing the precision of the answers, responses and re- context of tourism application. sults obtained in return. To achieve this, the HCFOC meth- Information for developing the tourism ontology has odology uses a synthesis of two ideas, namely, the human- been obtained from different governmental and non-gov- centric approach, to deal with context, and selective dissem- ernmental tourism websites, reference tools on tourism, ination of information (SDI). Following this synthesis, a travelers and users of tourism information. Several indi- prospective map of depicting the contextual behavior of the vidual travel experiences that were shared over the internet primary information seeker has been included in this step. were studied. Information provided by users in travel This map also represents the purpose and scope of the on- groups prevalent on social media platforms were also scru- tology under construction. tinized. The results of the assessment done on these re- Competency questions were obtained from prospective sources have been explained in Ghosh and Chatterjee tourism information users, which include professors, re- (2019). A reliable information base was formed after com- search scholars, students and heads of travel agencies from piling all such information. India and Italy. Some of the frequently asked questions are: a) Where can I stay during my visit to Kolkata?; b) Which 3.4 Step 3: term identification rivers pass through India?; c) List all the mountains in India?; d) List of cuisines of India?; e) List of bridges in India?; f) Terms representing the ideas, concepts and their features Which deserts are located in India?; g) How to reach Mum- belonging to the overlapping areas found in the previous bai from Kolkata?; h) What is the local language of Salem, step are to be identified. Different tourism related terms Tamil Nadu?; i) How is the weather of Bangalore in June?; were identified from the compiled information base and, j) What are the drinks available in Goa? formed in the “information acquisition” step. The World Accordingly, to answer the aforementioned questions, Tourism Organization (UNWTO) thesaurus (World Tour- some of the terms that need to be considered are: address, ism Organization 2001) has been used as a guide to tour- administrative division, drinks, alcohol, artifact, structure, ism terminology. WordNet was rigorously consulted in this bridge, bus, car, transport, city, contact, email, fax, country process. Besides this, Schema.org (https://schema.org/ code, country, geo-coordinate, location, height, hotel, lan- Thing) and the INSPIRE (https://inspire.ec.europa.eu/) Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 35 Sh. Shakti Ghosh, S. Das, and S. Kumar Chatterjee. Human-centric Faceted Approach for Ontology Construction
Figure 1(a). Information acquisition Figure 1(b). Domains intersecting with tourism
knowledge base were also consulted. This helped in resolv- tourism ontology. Domain expertise and proficiency and ing the ambiguity involved in understanding the concepts. friendliness with the vocabularies and tools used in the Also, the perfect term to represent the concepts could be study were an essential requirement of this step. Due to identified. Some of the terms are: artifact, structure, lodg- lack of required ability, not many users were enthusiastic ing, hostel, monument, telpherage, biome, cuisine, drink, or eligible to participate in this step. Some were also wary event, mountain, hill, plateau, location and person. of the amount of time this work would require. Thus, though we had initially thought of involving the users in 3.5 Step 4: analysis. this step, we dropped this idea later.
The terms obtained in the previous step have to be ana- 3.6 Step 5: knowledge synthesis lyzed for identification of differences and similarities. Terms denoting compound and complex ideas have to be After the analysis carried out in the previous step, the ideas disintegrated into terms denoting simple ideas. Keeping in were clustered or grouped together based on similarity in mind the purpose, scope and context of the primary infor- characteristic, and the categories have to be labeled. In this mation seeker, it is to be analyzed whether a term will be step, for classifying the facets, the first link downwards and used to denote a class / sub-class / instance / relation or last link upwards approach was followed. The first link attribute (of object or of data). downwards approach proceeds from abstractness to con- For the tourism ontology, the analysis was continued creteness. While the last link upwards approach proceeds with reckon to the purpose, scope and context of a tourist. from specific concepts towards generic concepts. Following Besides other principles as proposed in Ranganathan these two approaches leads to an overall increase in the de- (1967), the “principle of context” and “canon of rele- gree of robustness. Knowledge on the domain is synthe- vance” was widely used in the procedure. Terms with sim- sized in this step by establishing relationships between the ilar features were grouped together. For example, terms concepts. like arena, camp, hospice and hostel were found to be sim- For the tourism ontology, facet discovery and inventory ilar. They have been grouped together. control were guided by the “principle of context” and “prin- Analysis has been done without user participation as it ciple of helpful sequence” as proposed in Ranganathan difficult to involve users. This is because not all users are (1967). For example, the group containing the terms arena, domain experts. Many of them are leisure travelers. Some camp, hospice and hostel were listed under “lodging.” The of them are also not aware of the exact piece of infor- features of the concepts represented in one group were mation they want (very similar to users in libraries, where used to establish relationships between concepts repre- often the librarians try to find out the exact needs of the sented in other groups. For example, “lodging” has features users). Certain categories of users have been involved for like price, location etc., which have been used to establish its defining the competency questions and their respective relationship with other concepts. Facets contain sub-facets. evaluation. Many user centric questions were formulated, For example, “lodging” has been listed under “structure,” which proved to be helpful in designing and evaluating the which has been again listed under “artifact.” 36 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 Sh. Shakti Ghosh, S. Das, and S. Kumar Chatterjee. Human-centric Faceted Approach for Ontology Construction
3.7 Step 6: knowledge representation Class Thing Event This step consists of the following sub steps: MentalObject Cuisine Term standardization: There may exist many terms to AfricanCuisine denote a single concept. However, such synonymous … terms may differ among themselves based on usage. PhysicalObject The use of an appropriate and proximate term has to Artifact be decided. Such proximate terminology should suit the Handicraft context of the ontology model. Also, the terms chosen Structure Building should be most frequently used or collected from a HealthcareFacility standard vocabulary on the domain on which the ontol- Hospital ogy is being constructed. Use of popular terms in- … creases user friendliness while use of terms from stand- Brothel ard vocabulary helps in interoperability. Use of a term Library by domain experts in their written and verbal commu- … nication influences its selection for use in the ontology. Fountain The terms that have been standardized for use in the … tourism ontology have been enlisted by consulting dif- TransportationSystem ferent controlled vocabularies on tourism. For example, AirTransportationSystem the word “artifact” has been chosen to represent the … concept “any object made by human beings, especially Location with a view to subsequent use.” The term “artifact” has AdministrativeDivision been chosen from those terms representing the sense … of product such as, merchandise, produce, creation; ex- amples of terms representing the sense of relic such as, Person antique, monument (representing the sense relic); ex- TravelAgent amples of terms representing the sense such as, handi- … work, artisanship (representing the sense handicraft). Substance Ordering: There exist many criteria for ordering the Drink standardized terms within the array. Some of the crite- … ria as mentioned in Ranganathan (1967) are existent Object Properties hasCreator classification schemes on the domain, alphabetical or- isBasedFrom der, decreasing or increasing complexity, increasing or hasArrivalPoint decreasing extension, etc. Whichever criterion is cho- … sen, it must be kept in mind that the ordering must help Data Properties hasPrice in reaching the desired aim of the ontology. hasIdentifier This step was completed keeping in mind the purpose hasGeocoordinate and scope of the tourism ontology and the context of … the tourist’s information need. In Table 1, the outcome hasCheckInTime hasRating of ordering is visible. … Modeling: The HCFOC methodology uses the DERA (domain, entity, relation and attribute) framework men- Table 1. Partial list of classes, object properties and data tioned in Giunchiglia and Dutta (2011) for structuring properties from the tourism ontology. the facets of the domain under consideration. Here, the idea of entity has been derived from Bhattacharyya (A), and an additional special category called “modifier” (1975). Ranganathan’s faceted classification (1989) di- (m), known by the acronym DEPA. The DERA frame- vides knowledge into five fundamental categories, work advocates organization of knowledge into do- namely, “personality” (P), “matter” (M), “energy” (E), mains. Further, each domain should be organized using “space” (S) and “time” (T), known by the acronym facets. Giunchiglia et al., (2014) shows that DERA allows PMEST. Bhattacharyya (1981) further refined the divi- addition of domains, facets and terms into the ontology, sion into four main categories, namely, “discipline” (or whenever required, and its exploration for automatic rea domain) (D), “entity” (E), “property” (P) and “action” soning via direct encoding into description logics (DL). Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 37 Sh. Shakti Ghosh, S. Das, and S. Kumar Chatterjee. Human-centric Faceted Approach for Ontology Construction
Figure 2. Flowchart of HCFOC methodology.
Due to these features of DERA, the characteristic fea- 3.8 Step 7: evaluation tures of DL, like, soundness, decidability and decision procedures will be inherited into the system. Further- In this step, the ontology is put to test. It is to be tested more, since addition of facets can be done any time, the whether the ontology is fulfilling its purpose according to use of DERA makes the system expandable. the specifications. It is to be found out whether the ontol- All that has been developed in the previous steps are to ogy is able to deal with the context intended for, thereby be put into action in this penultimate step using DERA. addressing other aims and objectives. Necessary correc- The domain knowledge that has been synthesized in the tions are to be made, if required, by going back and re- previous steps is to be expressed in this step by clearly peating the steps in order. establishing the relationships between the concepts. For The syntactic correctness and consistency of the tour- this ontology on the tourism domain D, the set of fac- ism ontology were checked in Protégé, using the HermiT ets Event, MentalObject, PhysicalObject, Substance, OWL reasoner. The HCFOC methodology itself ensures etc. belong to the element E, the set of facets hasCrea- the completeness and conciseness of the tourism ontol- tor, hasIdentifier, isBasedFrom, isLocatedAt, etc. be- ogy. The usability of the tourism ontology from a tourist’s long to the element R and the set of facets Cost, Name, point of view has been gauged. It has been found out Currency etc. belong to the element A. An example of whether the ontology is capable of understanding the an established relationship is, Taj Mahal (Subject) isLo- tourist’s context with the help of competency queries. Use catedAt (Predicate) Agra (Object). Similarly, Feni (Sub- of competency queries as an evaluation method is one of ject) isBasedFrom (Predicate) Goa (Object). Here, the best available methods to evaluate an ontology, as has Taj_Mahal, Agra, Feni, Goa are instances of the classes been suggested by Abacha et al. (2013) and Bezerra et al. Monument, AdministrativeDivision, AlcoholicDrink (2013). Competency queries provided the way to check the and AdministrativeDivision respectively. entity (E) facet, relation (R) facet and attribute (A) facet together, which are embedded in the form of natural lan- 38 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 Sh. Shakti Ghosh, S. Das, and S. Kumar Chatterjee. Human-centric Faceted Approach for Ontology Construction guage in a given question. For example, queries like “What the task was to list as many user queries as possible. This are the amenities (X) provided by the hotels (Y) nearby to helped in understanding the appropriateness of the ontol- the place?” From this natural language question, we can ogy framework. This also helped in finding out whether derive “identification” using a general query pattern: the ontology could meet the purpose for which it was built. The comments posted by the evaluators served as a poten- Give me all X in Y AND WHERE.property.True. Iden- tial feedback on the usefulness of the tourism ontology tification: “concepts” and “properties.” Entity: hotel, and how it could be improved further. The listed questions place relation (R) nearby, place and attribute (A) amen- provided an in-depth insight on the information seeking ities. Boolean. behavior of the tourists. Key terms were extracted from the questions listed by The evaluation of the tourism ontology was carried out by the users. Then, it was found out manually for each ex- research scholars and students belonging to Jadavpur Uni- tracted key term whether, the term, or a synonymous term, versity, Kolkata who are quite enthusiastic when it comes or the concept denoted by the term is present in the on- to tourism. Queries collected from them helped in check- tology or not. The questions with all key terms having rep- ing the elements entity, relation and attribute embedded in resentation in the ontology were marked as fully answera- natural language together. They have analyzed whether the ble. The questions with some key terms having represen- ontology is able to meet their criteria of needs. The group tation in the ontology were marked as partially answerable. of evaluators and the group from whom the competency The questions with all key terms having no representation questions had been obtained were disjoint. The evaluators in the ontology were marked as not answerable. The fully were asked to imagine that they are going to visit a place answerable, partially answerable and not answerable ques- as a tourist. Now, based on the above situation, they were tions were pointed out to the evaluators after the marking. asked to enlist the questions whose answers they would 90.19% of the queries posed by the evaluators were fully like to know before the visit. answerable. 2.94% of the queries were partially answera- The purpose of the ontology constructors behind set- ble. 6.86% were unanswerable. The concepts denoted by ting up this situation and asking the evaluators to complete the key terms present in the questions that were partially
Query Extracted key terms or concepts What is the currency of the place?
Table 2. List of some of the fully answerable queries and the extracted key terms or concepts.
Query Extracted key terms or concepts Which are the tourist spots adjacent to the place?
Table 3. List of some of the partially answerable queries and the extracted key terms or concepts.
Query Extracted key terms or concepts Will water be available on the highways connecting two places?
Table 4. List of some of the unanswerable queries and the extracted key terms or concepts. Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 39 Sh. Shakti Ghosh, S. Das, and S. Kumar Chatterjee. Human-centric Faceted Approach for Ontology Construction
Evaluators No. of queries No. of Fully answerable queries No. of Partially answerable queries No. of Not answerable queries Evaluator 1 9 8 1 0 Evaluator 2 6 6 0 0 Evaluator 3 7 6 0 1 Evaluator 4 7 6 0 1 Evaluator 5 6 5 1 0 Evaluator 6 6 5 0 1 Evaluator 7 7 7 0 0 Evaluator 8 11 10 0 1 Evaluator 9 8 8 0 0 Evaluator 10 4 4 0 0 Evaluator 11 7 4 1 2 Evaluator 12 8 7 0 1 Evaluator 13 5 5 0 0 Evaluator 14 6 6 0 0 Evaluator 15 5 5 0 0 Total 102 92 3 7
Table 5. Statistics of queries posed by the evaluators. answerable or not answerable were analyzed. Out of the text.com) by OntoText, an enterprise-ready semantic unanswerable questions many were found to be out of the graph database, compliant with W3C standards. Figure 4 scope of the ontology. For example, “What is the socio- depicts how the food named “panipuri,” an instance of political scenario of the place?” or “What are the fields AsianCuisine is related with the country India by the rela- that an educational institution located at a place specializes tion isBasedFrom. On the right side of Figure 4, descrip- in?” Queries expressed using spatial relations like “nearby,” tion, type and rank of this namedIndividual are available. “adjacent,” etc., were either unanswerable or were partially Similarly, Figure 5 shows that “pizza,” an instance of Eu- answerable. During the initial conception of the tourism ropeanCuisine isBasedFrom the country Italy. ontology, only geo-coordinates were included for locating Then they were asked to comment expressing their con- a place. But, since users tend to express queries using the cerns and suggestions. The reports given by the evaluators natural language sense of distance, hence it was decided once again acted as a tool to determine the usefulness of that the spatial relations must be included. Some of the the tourism ontology and how it could be improved further. spatial relations, as has been mentioned in Dutta et al. This strategy of evaluation ingrained in the HCFOC meth- (2011), that need to be considered are: directional (north, odology aims to increase the exhaustiveness of the ontol- south, north-east, south-west, etc.), internal (inside, cen- ogy. After taking into consideration the comments of the tral, etc.), external (adjacent, nearby, etc.), position with re- evaluators and with a view of expanding the scope and spect to a border (overlap, opposite, etc.), longitudinal (be- coverage of the ontology many concepts have been noted hind, towards, etc.), sideways (left, right, etc.) and relative down. As of now, the tourism ontological model does not (up, below, etc.). contain background knowledge on transport booking sys- The class visualization of the entities in the tourism on- tem, price or tax havens (for business tourism where people tology has been done using the ProtégéVOWL (http:// may seek information for taking advantage of lower prices vowl.visualdataweb.org/protegevowl.html) visualization (for example, booze cruise) or people trying to take ad- tool. Figure 3 partially shows the hierarchy of the tourism vantage of tax loopholes), social welfare systems (for ben- ontology and the class visualization on the left and right efit tourism where people move to take advantage of wel- side of the figure respectively. The connected entities and fare schemes), law (for people moving to take advantage of the visualization were shown to the evaluators. The key the legal system for filing lawsuits), birthright (for tourists terms from the evaluators’ queries that were visible in the with the purpose of giving birth in the destination), hotel visualization were pointed out to the evaluators. amenities (for example, number of suites, air-conditioning), For query visualization and analytics, the tourism model accessibility of disables (website accessibility, trained staff was deployed using GraphDB (http://graphdb.onto- availability for dealing with accessibility issues, well-adapted 40 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 Sh. Shakti Ghosh, S. Das, and S. Kumar Chatterjee. Human-centric Faceted Approach for Ontology Construction
Figure 3. Connected entities.
Figure 4. Visualization of individuals panipuri and India. hotel rooms, technical aids and disability equipment such ligious programs), kosher tourism (for orthodox Jews re- as wheelchairs, bath chairs and toilet raisers, accessible res- quiring kosher foods, accommodations within walking dis- taurants and bars, adapted toilets in restaurants and public tance from synagogues, flights with kosher meals), literary places, accessible streets and sidewalks, a specific attrac- tourism (dealing with places and events from fictional texts tion’s level of accessibility), agri-tourism events (for people and their authors’ lives, for example, Tolkien tourism by willing to participate in cattle drives or ranches), adventure fans of The Lord of the Rings), romance tourism (for people sports (for example, rambling, climbing, biking, horseback travelling in search of relationship), sex tourism (for peo- riding, caving, hiking, trekking, snowshoeing, ski moun- ple travelling to have sex), set-jetting (for people traveling taineering, diving, rafting), drug tourism, fashion tourism, to destinations first seen in movies), medical tourism or genealogy tourism, halal tourism (pork and alcohol free wellness tourism (for people travelling to obtain medical flights and hotels, separate spa and swimming pools for treatment or improve health focusing on prevention), sui- men and women, announcement of prayer timings and re- cide or euthanasia tourism (for people traveling to commit Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 41 Sh. Shakti Ghosh, S. Das, and S. Kumar Chatterjee. Human-centric Faceted Approach for Ontology Construction
Figure 5. Visualization of individuals pizza and Italy.
suicide or assisted suicide), 3DVT (or 3D virtual tourism, tion, relationship exploration and cross-enterprise data pub- for people willing to explore physical places without phys- lishing and consumption are important. The “connected” ical travel) or tombstone tourism (for people travelling to graph is the final implementation of the model in the visit cemeteries, epitaphs, etc.). GraphDB platform. Figure 4 and 5 depicts snap shots of The evaluation strategy also presented some questions the connected graph of HCFOC ontology. From Figure 4 that will catalogue the guidelines for any tourism infor- and 5 we can easily understand how one individual is con- mation system that may be built on top of this ontology. nected with other related entities. Where the same color For example, “How much money is required for this nodes represent entities, which belong to the same class, and tour?” or “Which mode of transport will be cheaper?” To directed arrows depict how they are connected. GraphDB answer such questions, the information system behind also supports queries based on simple structured query lan- which the tourism ontology will be instrumental, must guage (SQL) as well as semantic similarity. have capabilities of drawing inference. It would be advan- tageous to make use of the resources made available by the 4.0 Conclusion and future work LOD (linked open data) project rather than populating the ontology with individuals that would be time-consuming. The HCFOC methodology demonstrated here depicts the Such an effort has been seen in Dastgheib, Mesbah and detailed modus operandi followed for building the ontol- Kochut (2013), where the mOntage framework has been ogy. The efficacy of the human-centric context modeling introduced, which allows populating the ontology from se- and the faceted approach ingrained within the HCFOC lected LOD sources. Prototype system architecture has methodology were explicitly visible while building the been provided below: tourism ontology. The tourism ontology has been built We envisage that the demonstrated tourism ontology considering the tourist as the primary information seeker constructed following the HCFOC methodology will be in this domain and thus the tourist was at the centre of able to support any tourism information retrieval system. A conception of the ontology. 90% of the queries could be prototype system architecture has been provided in Figure answered just after the initial phase of the ontology con- 6. In our future work, we intend to implement a prototype struction. It is contemplated that after inserting the con- system using GraphDB by OntoText (http://graphdb.on- cepts succeeding the initial evaluation phase, the precision totext.com). It is an enterprise-ready semantic graph data- of answers returned will further increase. Owing to the ad- base, compliant with W3C standards. Semantic graph data- vent of the faceted approach, it will be extremely effortless bases (also called RDF triple stores) provide the core infra- and straight forward to insert concepts into the ontology, structure for solutions where modelling agility, data integra- in the near future. For example, tombstone tourism can be 42 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 Sh. Shakti Ghosh, S. Das, and S. Kumar Chatterjee. Human-centric Faceted Approach for Ontology Construction
Figure 6. Prototype system architecture.
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Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 45 A. MacFarlane, S. Missaoui and S. Frankowska-Takhari. On Machine Learning and Knowledge Organization …
On Machine Learning and Knowledge Organization in Multimedia Information Retrieval† Andrew MacFarlane*, Sondess Missaoui**, and Sylwia Frankowska-Takhari*** Centre for HCI Design, Department of Computer Science, City, University of London, UK *
Andrew MacFarlane is a reader in information retrieval in the Centre for HCI Design, Department of Computer Science at City, University of London. He got his PhD in information science from the same institution. His research interests currently focus on a number of areas including image retrieval, disabilities and information retrieval (dyslexia in particular) and AI techniques for information retrieval and filtering. He was the principle investigator for the PhotoBrief project, which focused on meta-data and images and is current involved in the DMNIR project, which is investigating information verification tools for journalists.
Sondess Missaoui is a postdoctoral research fellow in information retrieval in the Centre for Human-Computer Interaction Design, City, University of London. She graduated in computer science at the University of IHEC Carthage (Tunisia) and she obtained her PhD in computer sciences at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Depart- ment of Informatics, Systems, and Communication (Italy). Her research interests are recommender systems, information retrieval, mobile information retrieval, context-awareness, and user profiling. Currently, she is work- ing on a research project (DMINR) that aims to create a digital tool for researching and verifying stories. She focuses on a number of areas including aggregated search, natural language processing, and deep learning.
Sylwia Frankowska-Takhari holds a MA in linguistics and information science from the University of Poznan, Poland (2001) and a MSc in human-centred systems from City, University of London (2011). She completed her PhD under the supervision of Dr. Andrew MacFarlane and Dr. Simone Stumpf at the Centre for HCI Design, Department of Computer Science at City, University of London. Her key research interests are information behaviour and image retrieval. Sylwia’s PhD work investigates the information behaviour and image needs of professionals working in creative industries with a particular focus on how images are selected, used and tailored in online journalism.
MacFarlane, Andrew, Sondess Missaoui and Sylwia Frankowska-Takhari. 2020. “On Machine Learning and Knowledge Organization in Multimedia Information Retrieval.” Knowledge Organization 47(1): 45-55. 44 refer- ences. DOI:10.5771/0943-7444-2020-1-45.
Abstract: Recent technological developments have increased the use of machine learning to solve many prob- lems, including many in information retrieval. Multimedia information retrieval as a problem represents a signif- icant challenge to machine learning as a technological solution, but some problems can still be addressed by using appropriate AI techniques. We review the technological developments and provide a perspective on the use of machine learning in conjunction with knowledge organization to address multimedia IR needs. The semantic gap in multimedia IR remains a significant problem in the field, and solutions to them are many years off. However, new technological developments allow the use of knowledge organization and machine learning in multimedia search systems and services. Specifically, we argue that, the improvement of detection of some classes of low- level features in images music and video can be used in conjunction with knowledge organization to tag or label multimedia content for better retrieval performance. We provide an overview of the use of knowledge organization schemes in machine learning and make recommendations to information professionals on the use of this technology with knowledge organization techniques to solve multimedia IR problems. We introduce a five-step process model that extracts features from multimedia objects (Step 1) from both knowledge organization (Step 1a) and machine learning (Step 1b), merging them together (Step 2) to create an index of those multimedia objects (Step 3). We also overview further steps in creating an application to utilize the multimedia objects (Step 4) and maintaining and updating the database of features on those objects (Step 5).
Received: 27 August 2019; Revised: 14 October 2019, 8 November 2019; Accepted: 15 November 2019
Keywords: features, machine learning, knowledge organization, multimedia
† Many thanks to Sven Bale for his advice and clarification of features in music.
46 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 A. MacFarlane, S. Missaoui and S. Frankowska-Takhari. On Machine Learning and Knowledge Organization …
1.0 Introduction the paper is a process model that uses knowledge organi- zation schemes and machine learning algorithms to create AI techniques, in particular machine learning have become a database of objects for the purposes of multimedia in- a significant technology in information retrieval software formation retrieval. The proposed process model uses and services. Machine learning is defined as a method that both high-level and low-level features identified for a mul- learns from data with minimal input from humans. A key timedia object and the creation of an index within a data- example is search engines (Dai et al. 2011), which uses base for the purpose of retrieval. learning to rank algorithms to keep results presentation up to date given the inherent dynamism of the web. The web 2.0 Machine learning and technological develop- changes constantly both in terms of content and user re- ments for machine learning quests, the data being documents, queries and click throughs, etc. For text retrieval, the machine learning in- What are the key developments that have led to improve- frastructure is an essential part of the provision of a ser- ments in technology, and which have significant implica- vice that meets user needs, and there is a large body of tions for the use of knowledge organization in multimedia research for this domain going back many years (Smiraglia search? In recent years, deep learning has become much and Cai 2017). The same however, could not be said of more prominent in machine learning circles (Pouyanfar et multimedia information retrieval where many challenges al. 2018) for a wide range of different applications such as are still evident, although technological developments are speech processing and machine vision (Deng and Yu. beginning to change the situation. By multimedia retrieval 2014). As you would expect there is a wide range of defi- we mean search for non-text objects such as images, pieces nitions of deep learning, depending on the context, but of music (Byrd and Crawford 2002) or videos/moving im- the most appropriate in this context is a “class of machine ages (Hu et al. 2011). Because of the semantic gap (Enser learning techniques that exploit many layers of non-linear 2008), the features of these objects can be hard to identify information processing for supervised or unsupervised and index, which leads to a separation of techniques in feature extraction and transformation, and for pattern terms of concept-based retrieval and content-based re- analysis and classification” (Deng and Yu 2014). trieval (with text we have terms that represent both). In Whilst the underlying technology for deep learning (ar- MacFarlane (2016), it was argued that human involvement tificial neural networks) has been around for many years is necessary in many circumstances to identify concepts (McCulloch and Pitts 1943), it is only recently that the use recognizable to humans—the example being a picture of of the techniques has become widespread and available in a politician in an election. Whilst the politician can be easily open frameworks such as TensorFlow (Abadi et al. 2016). identified (the “ofness” of the image), the election is a Over the years, the AI community has developed a strong more nebulous concept that is difficult to extract from an body of knowledge in the use of the techniques, but a key image, without context (the “aboutness” of the image). turning point has been the availability of graphical pro- Low-level features of objects are often difficult if not im- cessing units (GPUs), which are specialist chips that are possible to match with concepts, and this problem is likely able to significantly increase the processing of arithmetical to be one that persists for a significant length of time. operations (Singer 2019). They are particularly useful for Knowledge organization methods are essential to ensure image processing but have become very useful generally that these conceptual features are captured and recorded for other types of applications such as neural networks in multimedia software and services. that require significant processing of numbers. In this paper, we address the technological changes that A benchmarking experiment conducted by Cullinan et have led to the potential for improvements in multimedia al (2013), showed significant advantages for the GPU over search and argue that knowledge organization can be used CPU’s (central processing units) in terms of raw pro- together with a supervised learning technique. We then re- cessing. The raw processing power from GPUs has proved view the landscape of multimedia search and show some to be the catalyst for a massive increase in the deployment possibilities for using knowledge organization and ma- of deep learning algorithms, in areas such as machine vi- chine learning to improve results for users in some types sion to detect features in images. This includes features of information needs. Features in various types of multi- such as the detection of neuronal membranes (Ciresan et media objects are reviewed and we provide some advice at. 2012), breast cancer (Ciresan et at. 2013) and handwrit- on how to use these features and machine learning in con- ten Chinese character recognition (Ciresan and Meier junction with knowledge organization in multimedia IR 2015). systems and services. We provide some ideas for the way Such advances in machine learning methods, including forward together with the practical implications for machine vision algorithms (Karpathy and Li 2015), have knowledge organization practitioners. The contribution of provided the functionality to identify specific objects in Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 47 A. MacFarlane, S. Missaoui and S. Frankowska-Takhari. On Machine Learning and Knowledge Organization … images giving multimedia IR designers and implementers by practitioners. The scope of our work is in the use of the ability to address the semantic gap to some extent. It is non-symbolic AI methods (such as neural networks), ra- argued that in conjunction with knowledge organization, ther than symbolic methods deployed in prior work when machine learning can be used to provide better and more knowledge organization has been used with machine learn- relevant results to users for a given set of needs that re- ing, e.g., in expert systems (Lopez-Suarez and Kamel quire the identification of specific objects to resolve or ad- 1994). dress that information need. This paper puts forward an argument for a supervised learning approach in multime- 4.0 Machine learning and multimedia information dia search, where a knowledge organization scheme is used retrieval as a rich source of information to augment the objects identified by any machine learning algorithm. This is to There are limits to the use of machine learning/AI tech- provide an enhanced index of objects, allowing more ef- niques to the application of multimedia information re- fective search for those objects by the user. We review the trieval (MacFarlane 2016). However, new advances in tech- overall approach we advocate when using machine learn- nology laid out in Section 2 above and the ability of ma- ing in conjunction with knowledge organization next. chine learning algorithms to detect objects in media, e.g. images (Karpathy and Li 2015), have provided scope to 3.0 Machine learning and knowledge organization improve multimedia search results using knowledge organ- ization . In MacFarlane (2016), we argue that media of var- As feature extraction from various media has improved in ious kinds (e.g., images, music) requires cultural knowledge recent years through developments overviewed in Section that can often be only expressed tacitly and require human 2, what are the implications for the use of knowledge or- input. The advantage of knowledge organization schemes ganization techniques? Knowledge organization in its is that they provide this knowledge that is hard for machine many forms (thesauri, taxonomies, ontologies) are human learning algorithms to detect and can, therefore, be used generated schemes, which provide a rich source of evi- with features extracted from multimedia objects to aug- dence to describe features of objects that are of interest— ment the indexing of that object. in this case, multimedia objects such as images, music and The key to understanding the application of knowledge video. The key to understanding the contribution organization and machine learning to multimedia infor- knowledge organization can make in multimedia search is mation retrieval problems is to consider different types of to consider the types of learning: unsupervised, semi-su- information needs in particular domains. One particular pervised and supervised (Russell and Norvig 2016). These domain that provides useful examples is the creative do- are classed by their access to labelled or categorised data. main, where various media is required on a daily basis, e.g. Unsupervised learning (Russell and Norvig 2016, 694) is video, music (Inskip et al. 2012) and images (Konkova et where algorithms work without any labelled data, for ex- al. 2016), for advertising campaigns, images for online ample, with clustering objects together based on the fea- news stories (Frankowska-Takhari et al. 2017). A specific tures extracted from them. This does not apply to our con- example of information needs is the use of briefs in the text, where we examine the use of knowledge organization advertising world, which provide an overview of the media techniques to the problem. Semi-supervised learning (Rus- required and some specification of the criteria for the ob- sell and Norvig 2016, 695) does have some access to some ject to be suitable for that particular campaign. Analysis of labelled data, and it is possible to use this technique in these briefs has demonstrated that there are some aspects some contexts where a limited number of multimedia ob- that can be easily detected by machine learning algorithms, jects have been manually classified by a practitioner. Super- whilst others are too abstract for current techniques to vised learning (Russell and Norvig 2016, 695) requires ac- work. For example, in music, Inskip et al. (2012) found that cess to data that is completely labelled and is appropriate mood was a significant criterion for relevance in music here—where we consider a large number of multimedia briefs, which would be hard for an algorithm to detect. objects have been classified by a practitioner. We can either However, knowledge organization schemes with human match features detected by both the machine learning al- input can help to resolve the need. Inskip et al. (2012) also gorithm and the practitioner (exact match case) or estimate found that music features such as structure are also im- the probability of a features matching from both sources portant, which machine learning algorithms can clearly be using supervised learning techniques (best match case). We applied to. In terms of images, Konkova et al. (2016) consider both examples later on the paper in Section 6. In found three categories of facets in image briefs including this paper, we focus on the user of knowledge organiza- syntactic feature such as “colour” and “texture” as 'well as tion and supervised learning in multimedia search, in the high-level general and conceptual image features such as context of large amounts of data that have been labelled “glamorous” and “natural.” These aesthetic features are an 48 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 A. MacFarlane, S. Missaoui and S. Frankowska-Takhari. On Machine Learning and Knowledge Organization … open problem in the field (Datta et al. 2008). As with mu- 5.1 Image features sic, there is a clear distinction as to which image facets can be detected using machine learning algorithms. There is a wide variety of schemes that identify image at- Machine learning algorithms are very often used to de- tributes for modelling image retrieval. These include se- tect features (Datta et al. 2008) in a variety of different ap- mantic (e.g., Panofsky/Shatford), syntactic and non-visual plications. The full range of algorithms can be found in attributes (Westman 2009, 65-66). While non-visual attrib- Datta et al. (2008), Pouyanfar et al. (2018) and Murthy and utes (such as the meta-data, e.g. bibliographic data) can be Koolagudi (2018), but what problems are the algorithms useful (Konkova et al. 2016), this is not the concern here, applied to in the context of multimedia IR? Key problems as we focus on the semantic and syntactic features. One of that are addressed in many applications are classification, the earliest frameworks is Panofsky’s theory (Panofsky, object detection and annotation. Examples include images 1962) that describes three levels of meaning in a work of where superhuman performance has been recorded in the art: pre-iconographical, iconographical and iconological. 2015 large scale visual recognition challenge (ILSVRC’15) Shatford (1986) extended this model and proposed that se- using deep learning methods (Poyyanfar et al. 2018), which mantic information in an image may be analysed on the has come about due to much improved object recognition level of generic and specific elements present in the image (improving the ability to detect objects improves classifi- (the “ofness” of the image), and on the level of the ab- cation techniques). This has also led to techniques that can stract themes present in the image (the “aboutness” of the automatically annotate and tag images, including online image). While describing the “ofness” involves decoding services such as Imagga (https://imagga.com/). In music, and naming of the objects in the image, interpreting the techniques to apply classification and temporal annotation “aboutness” from the image, especially, an image rich in have been developed at low-level (e.g., timbre), mid-level symbolic meaning (e.g., a work of art), requires previous (e.g., pitch and rhythm) and high-level (e.g., artist and personal, cultural knowledge and experience from the genre) in many music applications (Murthy and Koolagudi viewers. Therefore, semantic information for an image will 2018). In video (which is moving images together with require human input to establish the “aboutness” of a sound), problems addressed include event detection by lo- given object. Currently, this can be done through generic cating scene changes and segmentation of the object into schemes such as the Thesauri for Graphic Materials (Li- stories, e.g., scenes and threads in a TV programme or film brary of Congress N.D.b), and specific schemes such as (Lew et al, 2006). A quick review of the literature shows Iconclass (http://www.iconclass.nl/) that is focused on art that machine learning has been applied to many problems images. While most existing frameworks stem from the in multi-media successfully, but there are many issues to Panofsky/Shatford matrix (Shatford 1986), the more re- which the technique cannot be addressed (see above). The cent models (e.g., Eakins et al. 2004; Hollink et al. 2004; key, therefore, to augmenting any application that uses Jaimes and Chang 2000) allow the distinction between the knowledge organization as its core with machine learning, semantics and syntax of images. Syntactic attributes can is to identify the features to which the technique can be either be primitive visual elements such as colour, texture, used. It is these features that have been used successfully hue and shape, or compositional, e.g., relationship between in the field that are known to bear fruit given the empirical shapes, motion, orientation, perspective, focal point (West- evidence available. It is to these that we turn to next. man 2009, 65). It is these syntactic attributes to which machine learning 5.0 Features in multimedia information retrieval can be applied. Specific application areas have particular needs. For example, the concept of “copyspace” is im- Features are aspects of an object that can be used for mul- portant in advertising, which is a clear space to insert text timedia search purposes. The key to the application of (Konkova et al. 2016). Further, studies from the user-cen- search on multimedia objects is to identify these features tred tradition advocate that human image users in specific and provide an index for them, allowing for applications domains have specific image needs. Such studies aim to such as direct search and classification or categorisation. uncover the needs of users and identify which aspects of In this section, we review the features for images, music user needs can be used to facilitate automation of image- and video and provide an overview of what machine learn- based tasks. For example, Frankowska-Takhari et al. (2017) ing can identify and what is appropriate for knowledge or- investigated the needs of image users in online journalism. ganization techniques and when both can be combined. Initially, their findings were similar to those from earlier Our emphasis is on combining the features from both studies, e.g., Markkula and Sormunen (2000), Westman and sources to improve multimedia search applications and Oittinen (2006), and showed that users’ descriptions of services. their image needs were often limited to their conceptual needs, and search queries tend to relate to concepts, while Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 49 A. MacFarlane, S. Missaoui and S. Frankowska-Takhari. On Machine Learning and Knowledge Organization … information about users’ needs on the perceptual level was tures. The features are not mutually exclusive (Downie limited to descriptions of visual effects required in images. 2002), and low-level features are used to build mid-level fea- As suggested in Machin and Polzer (2015), it was neces- tures, which in turn can be used to extract high-level fea- sary to reach beyond these descriptions, to identify the con- tures (Murthy and Koolagudi 2018). Low-level features are crete visual features that engendered the required effects. defined as the fundamental property of sound, mid-level Frankowska-Takhari et al. (2017) applied the visual social se- features the fundamental properties of music and high- miotics framework (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006) to ana- level features the human perceptual interpretation of the lyse images used in online journalism. They identified a set mid-level features. of eleven recurring visual features that engender the visual The low-level features are timbre and tempo. Timbe is effect required in images used for illustrating news headline defined as an attribute related to the tone, that differs in the content (see Table 1). These included: a strong single focal instrument being played (e.g., trumpet vs piano). It is the point to draw readers’ attention, the use of specific palette sound, tone quality and colour that make up the voice qual- of colours depending on the tone of the news story, a pho- ity of a musical note (Murthy and Koolagudi 2018, 7). tographic shot from waist-up including head and shoulders Tempo is defined as the duration between two musical and close-up on the face, and a preference for a large ob- events (e.g., two notes). Timbre and tempo are strongly con- ject/person in the frame. Most of the identified features are nected through frames, a short time segment of 10-100ms. detectable to currently available systems that make use of These low-level features can fail to capture much infor- advanced computer vision. They could be implemented, for mation from a given song in their own right (Murthy and example, as multi-feature filters for image retrieval. Such a Koolagudi 2018) and mid-level features are required to build system firmly rooted in the image users’ needs, could be a up a picture of music that can be used for an application. step towards automating image retrieval with a purpose to These mid-level musical features are pitch, rhythm, har- support a specific group of image users carrying out specific mony and melody—note that in our scheme these features illustration tasks. are still low-level. Pitch is frequency of sound, the oscilla- tions per second. Differences between two pitches are de- 5.2 Music features fined as being the interval between them. Harmony is de- tected when two or more pitches sound at the same time to Downie (2002) identifies seven facets of music information create polyphonic sound, which is determined by the inter- that can be considered as features to learn for a retrieval val. Rhythm is defined by an occurring or recurring pattern system, which can be further classified into low-level, mid- in the music, e.g., the beat. Rhythm and pitch determine a level and high-level features (Murthy and Koolagudi 2018). further important feature of music namely melody, which is We merge these two schemes together as they provide a a succession of musical notes. Murthy and Koolagudi (2018) useful overall classification of features in which machine do not classify this feature, but it is clearly a mid-level feature learning can be applied and where knowledge organization as it strongly related to other mid-level features but cannot schemes are appropriate, as well as identifying the key fea- be regarded as a high-level feature. It is these mid-level fea- tures to which machine learning can be applied. There is more ambiguity in terms of high-level features Feature Visual image features and some can be detected through learning mid-level fea- The specific (identifiable) person/people related 1 to the topic depicted in the image tures, but others require human input. In some, both ma- chine learning and knowledge organization can be used. 2 The person/people depicted in the foreground High-level features include editing, text, bibliography 3 Shot from waist up (Downie 2002) and artist, genre, instrument and emotion 4 Face visible: frontal or profile shot (Murthy and Koolagudi 2018). Editing is defined as perfor- 5 Gaze: direct or side gaze mance instructions of a piece of music such as fingering, 6 The depicted person is “large” in the frame articulation, etc. Knowledge organization schemes such as Positioned centrally or to the right within the the Library of Congress performance terms for music (Li- 7 frame brary of Congress 2013c; 2013d) focused largely on western 8 Colour image classical music, are appropriate. Text relates to any lyrics as- 9 Colour intensity: saturated or soft colours used sociated with a musical piece and can be handled via normal text retrieval techniques. It may be appropriate to use this 10 Blurry or monotone background feature to augment machine learning algorithms (in con- 11 The person’s face in focus (sharp) junction with natural language processing techniques). Bib- Table 1. Image features recurring in news headline images. Source: liography refers to the meta-data of the piece, which is de- Frankowska-Takhari et al. (2017). 50 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 A. MacFarlane, S. Missaoui and S. Frankowska-Takhari. On Machine Learning and Knowledge Organization … termined by human entry of aspects such as composer, per- 5.4 Summary of features former, etc. Appropriate meta-data standards in the field are applied here, and as with text can be used to augment ma- In this section, we have identified two classes of features, chine learning algorithms. Bibliography can determine the one to which machine learning can be applied and one artist, genre, emotion and instrument features (depending which cannot. The low-level features such as colour and on the meta-data scheme used), but machine learning has hue in images, pitch and tempo in music and shot bound- been used to identify those high-level features from mid- aries in video are ones that can be extracted using machine level features extracted from a musical piece, e.g., to classify learning techniques, whilst high-level features such as it by the given feature (Murthy and Koolagudi 2018). The “aboutness” require the use of human intervention via the genre feature can also be augmented with knowledge organ- application of knowledge organization schemes. Next, we ization schemes such as the Library of Congress mu- consider the use of these different classes of features in sic/genre headings (2013a; 2013b). conjunction with each other to improve multimedia infor- mation retrieval services. 5.3 Video features 6.0 Using machine learning and knowledge organi- Video is multimedia in the complete sense as it consists of zation to enhance multimedia moving images in sequence with audio. Image features information retrieval identified in 5.1 above can be used here, and as we have extra evidence (e.g., a series of images) we have more evi- We propose a process model by which the features for a dence to improve the detection of objects in the media multimedia object are identified (both high-level and low- being indexed. A practical example of the features that can level) to create a database of objects for the purposes of be identified are outdoor and indoor shots, people and retrieval. We assume access to digital objects (analogue ob- landscapes/cityscapes (Smeaton and Over 2002). There jects are not considered here). We identify five steps in this are many features from audio that can be extracted via ma- process model (see Figure 1). In Step 1, we identify the chine learning including speech to text (where text retrieval corpus and knowledge organization scheme for the given techniques can be used) and music (see 5.2 above). Whilst corpus, which is split into two separate sub-steps: applying we can build on these features, there are unique features the knowledge organization scheme to the high-level cor- of video that can be used to classify or segment video ob- pus objects (1a) and using machine learning to identify the jects. Video can be split up into scenes and threads (Lew low-level object features (1b). In Step 2, we combine both et al. 2006), for example in a news programme where dif- high and low-level object features to provide a comprehen- ferent news stories are presented to the viewer. The sive set of features for multimedia, which is richer for re- TRECVID track at the TREC (Text retrieval Conference) trieval purposes (Step 3). From Step 3 we have the infor- investigated this in the shot boundary detection task mation to create the application of our choice, either a (Smeaton and Over 2002) by detecting different categories, classification or categorization system, or to support mul- e.g. cut (sort finishes, one starts right after), dissolve (one timedia search functionality (Step 4). A further Step is con- shot fades out while new one fades in), fadeout/in (one sidered (Step 5), given two scenarios—either a new set of shot fades out then new one fades in) plus other categories features is identified (by a change in the knowledge organ- which don’t fit into these precise boundaries. Detecting ization scheme or improved feature detection using ma- shot boundary allows the detection of higher-level features chine learning) or a new set of objects is received and such as events, embodied in LSCOM (http://www.ee.co- needs to be indexed. We discuss each of these Steps below, lumbia.edu/ln/dvmm/lscom/), the large-scale concept highlighting the input and output data for each Step. ontology for multimedia (Naphade et al. 2006). This is a knowledge organization scheme built via the empirical 6.1 Step 1a: apply knowledge organization scheme work carried out by the multimedia community, with to corpus TRECVID being particularly notable. Examples include people crying (007), maps (204) and people associated with Input Data Output Data commercial activities (711). These features can be aug- 1. Corpus Object features (high-level) mented with other knowledge organization schemes such 2. Knowledge Organization as the Library of Congress (N.D.a) scheme for assigning Scheme genre/form terms to films and video. Table 2. Data required for Step 1a.
The information professional needs to choose a relevant knowledge organization scheme for the corpus they are Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 51 A. MacFarlane, S. Missaoui and S. Frankowska-Takhari. On Machine Learning and Knowledge Organization …
Figure 1. Process using knowledge organization and machine learning to index multimedia.
managing. This will either be a standard scheme (examples 6.2 Step 1b: apply machine learning technique to are cited in Section 5 above), or a specialist in house corpus scheme derived by the organization that requires access to the multimedia. Collection size is a concern here—unless Input Data Output Data there are significant human resources, manually catalogu- Corpus Object features (low-level) ing multimedia objects using the knowledge organization scheme might not be practical. In this case any meta-data Table 3. Data required for Step 1b. associated with the object can be used, with knowledge or ganization applied to the meta-data to identify relevant fea- The next step for any information professional is to iden- tures for the database. In other cases, the corpus will al- tify the low-level features using machine learning. This may ready have been indexed (perhaps over many years) and require the assistance of technical staff with AI expertise, high-level features for each object will be readily available. but the information professional should be aware of the If the media contains speech (if the corpus is either audio process used to generate these features. A key decision is or video that contains audio), machine learning can be to identify training and test objects from the corpus or a used to detect text, on which the knowledge organization subset of the corpus. The training set is used to detect the can be applied. Whilst the word error rates might be high, features from the corpus, whilst the test set is used to val- the main bulk of concepts for the objects will be detected. idate the features detected. Getting this right is key, as poor This text might itself be indexed as part of the multimedia decisions can lead to over fitting of features, reducing their search service. utility for retrieval purposes. In general, the standard way An example to illustrate this is from the advertising do- to split the corpus into training and test collections is two main. Konkova et al. (2016) provide a list of facets for im- thirds for training and one third for testing at least. The ages in which knowledge organization elements can be training set should always be much larger than the test set. placed. Examples of this are image style and conceptual A further step is to split a corpus into a number of seg- features, which are very subjective and require human in- ments (say k) and spilt each of these k segments applying put. Image style could include glamour, whether it is natu- the machine learning algorithms to each of these seg- ral or manipulated (using photoshop), amateur or profes- ments, by treating each k segment as a test set with other sionally taken photo. Conceptual features could include segments as the training set. This can be repeated with all positive busy images of bustling street life, inno- of the segments and the results merged to create a set of cence/guilt, freedom/slavery, beauty/ugliness, etc (the features that is more robust. This is known as cross-vali- “aboutness”). General semantics of what is in the image dation. could also be detected, e.g., beautiful images of clouds on The type and size of corpus is a consideration. The pro- the planet Jupiter, family walking together on a beach, etc. fessional should consider appropriate features identified in 52 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 A. MacFarlane, S. Missaoui and S. Frankowska-Takhari. On Machine Learning and Knowledge Organization …
Section 5 for their corpus, and the training and test sets may match a term in the knowledge organization scheme) should not be too large (in some cases corpuses with many and record that feature in the index. In most cases, the fea- millions of objects and large features sets may be difficult tures will be distinct (the disjoint sub-case—a feature is to manage as machine learning is computationally inten- identified either by the knowledge organization scheme sive). It should be noted that in order to get an unbiased OR by the machine learning algorithm) and the infor- estimate of how good your algorithm is doing, it was com- mation professional will need to think about which fea- mon practice to take all your data and split it according to tures to record. They may think it appropriate to record all a 70/30% ratio (i.e., 70/30 train test splits explained features, but this may have drawbacks (features may not be above). These ratios were perfectly applied when dealing useful for search). One way to get around this is to use with small datasets. However, in the big data and deep machine learning to see which of the low and high-level learning era, where, the data could exceed millions of in- features correlate with each other in the input dataset and stances, the test sets have been becoming a much smaller choose the best set of features—this is the best match ap- percentage of the total. For example, if you have a million proach. In this, either all inputs from both sources or from examples in the dataset, a ratio of 1% of one million or so the disjoint sub-case could be used. This would work by (99% train, 1% test) will be enough in order to evaluate applying a further step of machine learning (as outlined in your machine learning algorithm and give you a good esti- Step 1b above), in which an appropriate sample would be mate of how well it’s doing. This scheme is manageable for used to generate a set of features for indexing. The advice large datasets. However, any sample chosen must also be given in Section 6.2 would apply in the best match case. At representative, otherwise the features will not be valid. At the end of this, a full set of features appropriate for search the end of this step, the low-level object features will be will be identified. There are many different contexts to identified. consider, and the information professional will need to be An example to illustrate this is from the advertising do- clear about the particular implications for their given situ- main. Konkova et al. (2016) identifies a list of facets ripe ation. for the application of machine learning. Composition of Taking the example given from the advertising domain the image can be detected such as shooting distance (close above (Konkova et al. 2016), this would appear to be dis- up, panoramic view of a landscape), angle (shot taken from joint and the features about any given image object can be the left of a subject), object location (lamp on a desk) or merged together quickly and easily. The facets and their focus (sharp, blurred). Light is a related facet where the qualities are really quite different and distinct, and it is clear time of day can be detected (shadows), type of light (nat- which process will create the appropriate image descrip- ural, artificial) and by location (outside or inside shot). Spe- tion for that facet. It should be noted that improvements cific semantics including particular entities/places/people in machine learning may address the general semantics can be detected, e.g., a human hand holding an archaeo- facet, which may need reviewing by the image indexer. logical artifact, a shot of St Peters Basilica in Rome, etc. 6.4 Step 3: create index of features 6.3 Step 2: merge features for multimedia objects (database of objects)
Input Data Output Data Input Data Output Data 1. Object features (high-level) Object features (combined) Object features (combined) Database of Objects (Index) 2. Object features (low-level) Table 5. Data required for Step 3. Table 4. Data required for Step 2. Once a full set of features has been identified, an index of The data produced in Step 1 from both sub-steps needs to objects using those features can be generated. This can be be merged together to create a comprehensive set of fea- either an inverted list or a relational or object relational da- tures for each object in the multimedia corpus. It is this tabase, depending on the context. The information profes- comprehensive set of features that provides the enhance- sional could consult a technical person to assist with this. ment required for better multimedia retrieval. Getting the Examples of software available include Elasticsearch merge process correctly configured is, therefore, critical, (https://www.elastic.co/), MongoDb (https://www.mon- and there are two cases to consider: one straightforward godb.com/), Neo4j (https://neo4j.com/), MySQL (https:// and one that requires a little more thought. The simpler www.mysql.com/) and PostgresQL (https://www.post case is the exact match case, split into conjoint and disjoint gresql.org/). sub-cases. In conjoint sub-case, we have the same feature identified in both inputs (e.g., text extracted from images Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 53 A. MacFarlane, S. Missaoui and S. Frankowska-Takhari. On Machine Learning and Knowledge Organization …
6.5 Step 4: create application or service with lections and who are charged with supporting search ser- combined features vices to those collections. We believe that information pro- fessionals should treat machine learning and/or AI tech- Input Data Output Data niques an opportunity rather than a threat and should se- Link to Database of Ob- Object classification or cate- riously think about using technology to improve the mul- jects (Index) gorisation timedia services they manage. Information professionals should be wary of the hype that surrounds machine learn- Table 6. Data required for Step 4. ing/AI that has all too often been overhyped in terms of
impact, leading to AI winters. However, the process model Once the database has been created, the application or ser- vice to meet user needs can be produced. For retrieval pur- we describe in Section 6 we believe gives the information professional an opportunity to seize the initiative and build poses, this may just mean writing an appropriate front end on their domain knowledge gained in working on images, given users’ needs, together with a back end that matches user defined features identified at the front end. However, music and video. We urge the community to consider this when considering access to multimedia digital objects for if categorisation or classification were required, a further their users. round of machine learning would be appropriate. This would be taking the machine learning process overviewed References in Step 1b above but applying the algorithm to the com- bined feature set. An example can be found in Fan et al (2007), who combined wordNet and ontology data to sup- Abadi, Martin. Paul Barham, Jianmin Chen, Zhifeng Chen andy Davis, Jeffrey Dean, Matthieu Devin, Sanjay port a surgery education application. Ghemawat, Geoffrey Irving, Michael Isard, Manjunath
6.6 Step 5: Update database of objects with new in- Kudlur, Josh Levenberg, Rajat Monga, Sherry Moore, Derek G. Murray, Benoit Steiner, Paul Tucker, Vigay formation Vasudevan, Pete Warden, Martin Wicke, Yuan Yu and
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56 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 B. Włodarczyk. KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory …
KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory of Historiographical Metaphors and Different Historiographical Traditions Bartłomiej Włodarczyk University of Warsaw, Faculty of Journalism, Information and Book Studies, 00-310 Warsaw, Poland, Bednarska 2/4,
Bartłomiej Włodarczyk is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Journalism, Information, and Book Studies at the University of Warsaw. He received an MA in history (specialization in social history) and a PhD in library and information science from the University of Warsaw. His main research area is knowledge organization.
Włodarczyk, Bartłomiej. 2020. “KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory of Historiographical Metaphors and Different Historiographical Tradi- tions.” Knowledge Organization 47(1): 56-71. 60 references. DOI:10.5771/0943-7444-2020-1-56.
Abstract: The aims of this article are, first, to provide a necessary background to investigate the discipline of history from the knowledge organization (KO) perspective, and secondly, to present, on selected examples, a way of analyzing knowledge organization systems (KOSs) from the point of view of the theory of history. The study includes a literature review and epistemological analysis. It provides a preliminary analysis of history in two selected universal Polish KOSs: KABA subject headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors. The research is restricted to the high-level concept of historiographical metaphors coined by Wojciech Wrzosek and how they can be utilized in analyzing KOSs. The analysis of the structure of the KOSs and indexing practices of selected history books is performed. A particular emphasis is placed upon the requirements of classical and non-classical historiography in the context of KO. Although the knowledge about historiographical met- aphors given by Wrzosek can be helpful for the analysis and improvement of KOSs, it seems that their broad character can provide the creators only with some general guidelines. Historical research is multidimensional, which is why the general remarks presented in this article need to be supplemented with in-depth theoretical and empirical analyses of historiography.
Received: 19 August 2019; Revised: 2 December 2019; Accepted: 16 January 2020
Keywords: history domain, historiographical metaphors, research, domain analysis, historiography, knowledge organization
1.0 Introduction KO research (Smiraglia 2012), which emphasizes the differ- ences between underlying assumptions, paradigms, objects One of the basic goals of knowledge organization (KO) is of inquiry, and methods used in different disciplines, sub- to form the theoretical background to create new disciplines, and fields. knowledge organization systems (KOSs) and improve exist- The object of analysis in this paper is the domain of ing ones. These tools have different structures and contexts history. The point of departure is the definition taken from of use, but their primary purpose is to organize documents the Oxford English Dictionary (https://www.oed.com/), to provide users with a convenient way to access and man- which defines it as, “The branch of knowledge that deals age them as knowledge artifacts (Mazzocchi 2018). This with past events; the formal record or study of past events, means that KO is mainly based on the practical needs of esp. human affairs. Also: this as a subject of study.” His- researchers and others interested in gaining knowledge tory is a separate discipline with a tradition dating back to about a specific aspect of reality; but at the same time, it has antiquity. The works from this period such as the Chinese to be deeply grounded in domain knowledge. It seems to be Spring and Autumn Annals with commentaries (Zuo Tradition especially true in the context of domain-specific KOSs, 2016), Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian (1993), where only detailed knowledge of a domain can form a the Greek The Histories by Herodotus (1996), and History of sound foundation for all KO activities. The need for analysis the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides (2017) are the classic of various domains is a fundamental task in contemporary works of Eastern and Western civilizations. Since its in- Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 57 B. Włodarczyk. KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory … ception in antiquity, the bulk of research has focused on preliminary analysis of history in two selected Polish political and diplomatic history. The state was stabilized in KOSs: KABA subject headings (KABA) and the National the nineteenth century with the professionalization of his- Library of Poland Descriptors (NLPD). Furthermore, the torical research (Finney 2005; Iggers 2005). Since the be- analysis is mainly restricted to the high-level concept of ginning of the twentieth century, and especially after the historiographical metaphors and how they can be utilized end of the Second World War, new research fields such as in analyzing KOSs. The paper makes use of a specific his- social history and historical anthropology have emerged.1 toriographic framework as an example, but there are also This turn was connected with new research methods. A other views that can be applied to the analysis of KOSs. work of a Polish historian Maria Nietyksza (1971) entitled Some of other authors working in the field of the theory Ludność Warszawy na przełomie XIX i XX wieku is a repre- and methodology of history are mentioned in the litera- sentative example of the social history approach. The au- ture review. thor analyzed the populace of the capital of Poland (then The remainder of the article is organized as follows: one of the cities of the Russian Empire), utilizing quanti- Section 2.0 presents a literature review with special consid- tative methods and a broad range of statistical sources. A eration of domain-analytical works in history and related different approach was taken by Anna Żarnowska (1985), disciplines. Section 3.0 presents Wojciech Wrzosek’s con- who explored the life of workers in Warsaw at the turn of cept of a historiographical metaphor as the theoretical the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The author used background of research. The example of an epistemolog- different primary sources than Nietyksza, biographical ma- ical analysis of two Polish KOSs from the perspective of terials, among others, and asked different research ques- two historiographical traditions and their historiographical tions. The subject of the work, to a large extent, was the metaphors is presented in Section 4.0. An analysis is per- workers’ culture and their daily life. formed on the structure of the KOSs and indexing prac- In order to provide users with useful KOSs in the disci- tices of selected history books. A special emphasis is pline of history, there needs to be an understanding of this placed upon the requirements of classical and non-classi- mix of ideas, methods, and approaches. The aims of this cal historiography in the context of KO. Lastly, a summary article are, first, to provide a necessary background to inves- is presented. tigate the discipline of history from a KO perspective, and secondly, to present, on selected examples, a way of analyz- 2.0 Literature review ing KOSs from the point of view of a theory of history. The study makes use of a literature review and epistemolog- A sizeable body of research exists in KO on different do- ical analysis. A starting point for the review was the Interna- mains, but only a small number of studies have focused on tional Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) KO lit- history. This section provides a review of the literature erature database (https://www.isko.org/lit.html). Other about domain analysis in general, along with selected pa- sources, like Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/), pers and books related to the use of different approaches were also used to find relevant literature. The main part of in KO and information science to the domain of history the paper is devoted to the use of epistemological theory and related disciplines. Additionally, some chosen works developed by Polish historian Wojciech Wrzosek, who spe- about history, interesting from the perspective of the goal cializes in the history and theory of modern historiography, of this paper, are also presented. This part can be deemed to analyze KOSs. In this respect, the paper refers to Birger an introduction to the domain analysis of history and the Hjørland’s epistemological approach (see 2002, 438-440). It foundation for the sample analysis presented in the follow- also seems to be in line with the suggestion formulated by ing sections. Richard P. Smiraglia (2015, 99), who pointed to specific The origin of domain analysis is connected with a pro- work on impressionist artists, which, according to him, posal formulated by two Danish researchers, Birger Hjør- “could easily be viewed as a prelude to domain analysis of land and Hanne Albrechtsen, in the 1990s (for a short his- the French painting world.” Therefore, it appears that KO tory of a domain analysis see Smiraglia 2015). In a pro- researchers should try to exploit domain knowledge, includ- grammatic article published in Journal of the American Society ing different theories, to advance KO. for Information Science, Hjørland and Albrechtsen (1995, 400) The objects of analysis are selected Polish thesauri and advocated studying “the knowledge-domains as thought or indexing practices followed by indexers from institutions discourse communities, which are parts of society’s divi- that have developed these tools. The paper refers here to sion of labor.” Their research program was in contrast to two approaches presented by Hjørland (2002), that is, con- popular then, yet limited approaches based on formal structing special classifications and thesauri (see 2002, 425- computer-related or cognitive analysis. After this initial 428) and indexing and retrieving specialties (see 2002, 429- step, Hjørland (2002) published the next seminal paper ex- 430). It should be stressed that the paper provides only a ploring eleven approaches within the domain-analytical 58 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 B. Włodarczyk. KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory … view, such as constructing special classifications and the- dealing with KO. Włodarczyk has also analyzed papers sauri, indexing and retrieving specialties, and epistemolog- from relevant sources (2015–) such as the journal Knowledge ical and critical studies. According to Hjørland (2002, 451), Organization and ISKO proceedings to find additional materi- the combination of choosing methods and conducting re- als using a domain-analytical approach. The analysis re- search based on them can help “strengthen the identity of veals that the state of domain analysis has not changed IS and strengthen the relationship between research and very much. The domain of KO is still extensively analyzed practice in IS.” (e.g., Castanha and Wolfram 2018; Wang 2019). It should Other authors’ works also contribute significantly to the be stressed that these kinds of analyses should be seen as theory and practice of domain analysis. Hanne Albrechtsen fundamental for the future development of KO, but a (2015), one of the creators of this new line of research, pre- need exists to embrace other domains, especially within sented the origins of domain analysis as a new approach to other research communities, like sociology, anthropology, KO and information science in a project on software reuse. history, and much more. Smiraglia’s work can serve as a Joseph T. Tennis (2003) focused on providing transferable point of departure for every project considering domain definitions of domains using two analytical devices, namely, analysis as its core paradigm. Together with Hjørland’s def- “areas of modulation” (the extension of a domain) and “de- inition (2017a) from the ISKO Encyclopedia of Knowledge Or- grees of specialization” (the intension of a domain). One of ganization, the review prepared by Smiraglia gives insight the issues addressed by Tennis (2003, 194) was how “the into the frontier of domain analysis research. domain is positioned against other domains.” María J. Aside from the contributions presented above, papers López-Huertas (2015) discussed domain analysis in the light on history have been written by KO researchers. Claudio of interdisciplinarity, stressing different requirements for the Gnoli (2014) analyzed Marc Bloch’s essay The Historian’s analysis of disciplines in comparison to interdisciplines. Craft from the perspective of KO. Gnoli (2014, 129) was Jenna Hartel (2003) focused on hobby domains as a subject interested in Bloch’s view on “how historical knowledge of domain-analytical research. The point of departure for can be organized.” His article was divided into four her study was the concept of “serious leisure” coined by themes: dealing with terminological problems, general Robert A. Stebbins and his taxonomy of hobbies. Hartel rules of the organization of historical knowledge, histori- provided examples of employing domain knowledge as she, cal sources, and interdisciplinarity of history. For Gnoli for instance, wrote in the context of analyzing changing (2014, 134), the most important is the last aspect. He con- forms of recipes, “Literature on the social history of cook- cludes: “The very delimitation of a discipline like history ing would explain how household cooking routines at the involves complex problems. All this should encourage ex- turn of the 19th century generated tacit cooking knowledge perts of knowledge organization to adopt a cross-medial, in children and obviated the need for detailed recipes” (Har- interdisciplinary approach, if they really desire to be of tel 2003, 234). In the context of this paper, it should be un- help to researchers.” Interdisciplinarity as an important derscored that there might be real differences between pro- feature of history and how this domain is influenced by fessional historians’ and hobbyists’ approaches to history, other disciplines will be further described in the next sec- but there has not been such research from the perspective tions. It should also be stressed that Bloch’s opinion is only of KO so far. Maurine W. McCourry (2015) presented a one of many, although formulated by the renowned and model that can be used to assess whether library cataloging influential historian. codes suit user needs. The author studied a domain of mu- Ann M. Graf and Richard P. Smiraglia (2014) carried sic, but as she suggested, her methodology could be used to out a descriptive study of entries related to race and eth- research in other domains as well, e.g., in history. nicity from the bibliography forming a basis for the au- A vital addition to Hjørland’s work has been made by thors of the Encyclopedia of Milwaukee, developed in the his- Richard Smiraglia. He is, among other things, the author tory department of the University of Wisconsin-Milwau- of a thorough examination of formal studies employing kee. They utilized basic bibliometric methods analyzing, domain-analytical approaches. The analysis, covering pa- among other things, the productivity of authors, types of pers published in the years 2003-2014, revealed that the resources, and title term co-occurrence. Their research majority of studies used informetric and terminological showed (Graf and Smiraglia 2014, 120) that “Concept techniques. Almost no studies focused on the production population is shared with the domain at large but without of guides to reference materials, yet Smiraglia (2015) the indicators of productivity that are found in domains stressed that they are instead the objects of applied activity representing research fronts.” The paper is a good example in KO. Smiraglia also noted that only five domains had of an approach based on quantitative techniques, different been studied three times as of 2014, namely archives, im- from the approach applied by Gnoli (2014). Graf and Smi- age searching, LGBT, physics, and social media. There raglia (2012) also described the process of the develop- were also four papers related to music and twenty-two ment of a taxonomy used to organize the content of the Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 59 B. Włodarczyk. KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory …
Encyclopedia of Milwaukee. They showed how knowledge of heritage (archival) institutions and researchers, and the Milwaukee history and practical reasons informed specific sketching out of a conceptual system. García-Marco decisions made during the activity. Although not explicitly, (1994) also observed that a HIS, due to its complexity, is a Małgorzata Pawlak and Karol Sanojca’s (2018) study about good testing field for KO. This complexity results both the evolution of the internal structure of the Bibliography from a long history of a domain and from its interdiscipli- of Silesia History can also be regarded as KO research in narity. Claire Beghtol (2001) also aimed at addressing a history. The authors presented the changes occurring in practical problem. She described the methodology em- the Polish and German bibliographic schemes and indexes. ployed in the Iter Bibliography, which is a part of the Iter The temporal aspect of reality has also been studied Project, concerned with the Middle Ages and Renaissance, within KO and related fields. These studies are of both to develop high-quality KO. Further studies investigated theoretical and practical nature. Jutta Frommeyer (2004) the practical uses of different KOSs in history. For in- examined the chronological terms and period subdivisions stance, Branka Purgarić-Kužić (2006) analyzed the practice in three subject heading systems, Library of Congress Subject of classifying materials related to history, according to the Headings (LCSH), Répertoire d’Autorité Matière Ency- Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) in the National clopédique et Alphabétique Unifié (RAMEAU), and Re- and University Library in Zagreb. Apart from the interdis- geln für den Schlagwortkatalog, pointing out serious prob- ciplinarity of history (which is widely acknowledged within lems connected with these systems. The analysis resulted the KO community), she stressed, among other issues, the in a proposal for a new time-retrieval model and search disadvantages of geographical subdivisions for Croatia in interface. The issue was further explored by Vivien Petras, UDC. This paper is only one example of numerous studies Ray R. Larson, and Michael Buckland (2006), who pro- devoted to different classifications in various cultural set- posed the Time Period Directories, an infrastructure con- tings. Although history was a topic of research in library necting named periods, events with dates, and locations. and information science and KO, the analyses are scat- The purpose of it was to allow users to search for temporal tered, and there is still a lack of theoretical background in information in a more effective way. One of the latest at- the domain of history from the perspective of KO. This tempts to describe periods using linked data is a project research generally did not consider epistemological stances entitled PeriodO. It aims to build a period gazetteer that and different discourse communities within a broad do- includes different period definitions such as of the Iron main of history. Age. The authors (Rabinowitz et al. 2016, 55) hope that The KO studies on the humanities can be regarded as a due to the improvement of tools associated with a dataset, source of inspiration for KO research on history. Hjørland they “illuminate the evolution of historical disciplines over (2017a, 441) pointed to Anders Ørom’s (2003) discourse time.” It appears that with the development of PeriodO, analysis of the domain of art studies as “a model of a do- the data can be used by information scientists specializing main-analytic study.” Ørom examined different approaches in KO to better understand the characteristics of temporal (paradigms) to art history (traditional paradigms: icono- information in different disciplines, thereby developing graphical, stylistic, materialistic, and “new” art history para- better KOSs. digms) and matched them with three levels in the domain The researchers have also explored problems related to of art (art exhibitions, documents, KOSs). The significance the cultural aspects of chronological information. Qing of the study lies in the analysis of the impact of different Zou and Eun G. Park (2011) presented a proposal for a paradigms on the art domain, and consequently, on the the- Chinese Time Ontology, which enables reconciliation with oretical framework of KOSs in this domain. the traditional Chinese approach to time, based on a luni- Archeology, which is closely related to historical re- solar calendar, the titles of different emperors, and their search, has also been studied within KO. Teija Oikarinen reign periods. They stressed that their model can be em- and Terttu Kortelainen (2013) employed the content de- ployed to other non-Western time scales. The cultural as- composition method to research a catalog of archeological pects of temporal information were also explored by artifacts. The study showed problems related to non-uni- Arashanapalai Neelameghan and G. J. Narayana (2013), formity and omissions in the catalog, which partly resulted who presented a detailed study discussing both socio-cul- from the character of the archeological materials. The au- tural background and time issues concerning KOS. thors used both qualitative and quantitative analyses to de- Studies have been written on historical information sys- scribe the collection description. This approach, based on tems (HISs) and practical implementations of specific the combination of different methods, seems to be the KOSs in history. Javier García-Marco (1994) gave the basic most fruitful for domain analysis. It seems to enable infor- outline of the use of KO in HISs. He described funda- mation scientists to look at the analyzed domain from mental issues, like the influence of different theories on many perspectives complementary to each other. Quanti- terminology, differences in treating historical systems by tative analysis can provide important basic information 60 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 B. Włodarczyk. KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory … about, among other things, the terms and concepts used, specific topics (e.g., Heuman and Burnard 2011); and lastly, but it does not answer questions concerning the motiva- 5) scientific journals devoted to the history or theory of tions of researchers. It appears to be especially relevant to historical research, for example, Klio Polska, History and The- social science and humanities research (see Hjørland 2002, ory, Rethinking History, Historical Methods, and Historyka, 439-440). Another study on a domain of archeology is au- which can be regarded as useful sources for researchers thored by Edmund Lee (2017), who presented, among aiming at analyzing history from the point of view of KO. other things, the use of KO in archeological research in However, as Georg G. Iggers (2005) underlined, one the United Kingdom and the impact of KO on new his- should be careful about different theories, because some torical narratives. of them differ considerably from the practice of histori- KO studies focused on archival science are of high ography. Iggers (2005, 100) wrote that value for historical research. For instance, Thiago Hen- rique Bragato Barros and João Batista Ernesto de Moraes a number of theorists in France and the United States, (2010) carefully analyzed two archival science manuals us- mostly coming from literary criticism, such as Roland ing discourse analysis to find the differences and similarity Barthes, Paul De Man, Hayden White, Jacques Der- within the domain. José Augusto Chaves Guimarães and rida, and Jean-François Lyotard, frequently identified Natália Bolfarini Tognoli (2015) discussed provenance, a as postmodernists—a label some of them would vig- fundamental concept of archival science, as a domain anal- orously reject—would call for this surrender and ysis approach. Analyses of archival science from the per- question the distinction between fact and fiction, his- spective of KO seem to be especially important for histo- tory and poetry. They viewed history as having no ref- rians and also for the creators of KOSs in history due to erence to a reality outside of its texts. But as we shall archives being a gateway to primary sources, the essential see, practicing historians seldom went so far … Not materials for historical research. only did historians continue to work conscientiously Among the aforementioned studies, Gnoli (2014) and and critically with sources, but, … they also adopted Ørom (2003) are especially interesting in the context of methods and findings from the social sciences. Thus, this study because of the objects or methods used. The they by no means gave up the conviction that the his- first is one of few attempts at combining the theory of torian must follow rational methods to gain truthful historiography and KO. The author rightly emphasized the insights into the past. importance of interdisciplinarity in the context of histori- cal research. Ørom is an example of a relatively unusual As a consequence, it is worth noting that, apart from ana- approach to the humanities in domain analysis based on lyzing studies into the theory of history, a more detailed discourse analysis. Discourse and epistemological analyses empirical analysis of practical examples of historical writ- can potentially provide the creators of KOSs with addi- ing is needed. This kind of research can utilize, for exam- tional knowledge to broaden their view of a domain, and ple, bibliometric methods like word co-occurrence. thereby lead to the construction of a better KOS (see The review of the literature presented above shows that Hjørland 2002, 439-440). no detailed study concerns the broad domain of history The KO community can also try to exploit domain from the perspective of KO. Moreover, only a few works knowledge to shape the evolution of KOSs (Smiraglia apply domain analysis to the humanities. It illustrates that 2015, 100). Plenty of research studies have been written there is a need to conduct more such investigations (cf. on historiography and historical methodology, which are Smiraglia 2015). It should be noted, however, that this highly important for constructing well-suited and useful study is only a preliminary investigation into the domain KOSs in history. Due to the substantial body of literature, of history, and more work is needed. only some example sources are mentioned: 1) encyclope- dias and dictionaries regarding historiography, which con- 3.0 Wojciech Wrzosek’s theory of historiographical sist of entries for individual historians and regional and metaphors topical historiography (e.g., Boyd 1999); 2) books contain- ing an overview of general (e.g., Schneider and Woolf This section is devoted to the concept of historiographical 2011) and national historiography (e.g., Grabski 2006); 3) metaphor as presented in Wojciech Wrzosek’s (1997) book specific time periods in the history of historiography are entitled History, Culture, Metaphor. The rest of this section also the topic of monographs, particularly about a signifi- is based on this author’s description and analysis. The au- cant change in historiography that occurred in the twenti- thor described a breakthrough in French historiography as eth century (e.g., Iggers 2005); 4) numerous individual a change between the classical and non-classical. Although works and edited books on different fields (e.g., Perks and Wrzosek (1997, 12) focused on a single country’s histori- Thomson 2016), methods (e.g., Gregory et al. 2018), and ography, he stressed that the changes that occurred within Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 61 B. Włodarczyk. KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory … it “reflect certain global trends.” The partial convergence and directional. The metaphor of genesis, important for can be seen, for instance, in the case of French and Polish historiography, can be understood, according to Wrzosek, historiography from 1956 through 1989. However, it must twofold. First of all, it can be understood as a set of cir- be noted that significant background differences existed cumstances that are associated with and precede a specific (Pleskot 2012). phenomenon (like the genesis of feudalism) and secondly, Wrzosek (1997) defined a historiographical metaphor as “chains of consecutive incidents which are connected as a fundamental category that forms a basis for historical by the presumed generation of some by others” (Wrzosek knowledge, i.e., the works of historians trying to describe 1997, 46). The concept of genesis, in turn, is related to the and understand the past. It should be stressed that meta- concept of time, which is “linear, astronomical time, or- phors are not exclusive to a domain of history but are per- dered in the triad past—present—future” (Wrzosek 1997, vasive in all domains. As a consequence, scientific meta- 117). phors deserve the KO community’s attention (Hansson 2013). This approach was adopted by Marek Hetmański 3.2 Non-classical historiographical metaphors (2014), who analyzed the role and characteristics of meta- phors in KO. Wrzosek (1997) maintained that the change of historio- Wrzosek (1997, 47) emphasized that graphical metaphors resulted in the advent of the French non-classical historiography. The main difference lay in a The metaphors which are dominant in a culture, in- shift of focus from the “objective” description of related cluding those on which a certain discipline of schol- events to the description of human life as a whole. New arship is based, provide models—so to say—of the historians have focused on fields that their traditional field of study.” He later clarified, “Such metaphors, counterparts were not interested in, such as everyday life. being embedded in culture, become neutral, and They started utilizing two main approaches: modernist (eventually) objective, segments of the commenta- (quantitative-based social and economic history) and non- tor’s thinking. In other words, they govern the inter- modernist (historical anthropology). Wrzosek (1997) di- pretation of phenomena without being controlled by vided the modernist historiography into moderate and ex- anything. Thus, metaphorical clauses impose a cer- treme. One of the features differentiating them is the ex- tain understanding of the world, and turn into heu- istence or the lack of a single determining factor. Wrzosek ristic models of sorts. (47) added that Fernand Braudel’s modernist view does not in- dicate it, but other historians, who are called extreme mod- The basic information about different historiographical ernists by him, point to different spheres of social life, e.g., metaphors is presented below. economics or demography, as pivotal points for under- standing historical development and change. The latter ap- 3.1 Classical historiographical metaphors proach is related to quantitative history (Wrzosek 1997). The author stressed that modernist historiography refers According to Wrzosek (1997), significant differences exist to new ideas such as Ludwig von Bertalanffy’s systems the- between classical and non-classical historiography that ory, Claude Lévi-Strauss’s theory of structuralism, and arose from the change of underlying historiographical Émile Durkheim’s view on sociology. In contrast to tradi- metaphors. Classical historiography embraces different tional historiography, the position of humans in this vari- schools and approaches, but they all employ such elements ant of historiography is significantly different. New histo- as a broadly applied, anthropomorphic view on historical rians are more interested in processes and structures than phenomena and traditional historiographical metaphors in the lives and activities of individuals, which marks a fun- of development and genesis (with linear time). They are damental shift in historical research. It marks a departure strictly related to each other. The anthropomorphism can from the perspective of direct anthropomorphism. The be seen not only when the object of the analysis is a life changed metaphors involve a different concept of devel- of a single person like a king or a famous hero, but also opment, the modified concept of genesis, “the categories when traditional historians describe the history of a na- of determinism which are radically different from those of tion, organization, or society. Each subject is treated like the genetic or cause-and-effect determinism of traditional an individual who is a direct maker of history, shaping a historiography” (Wrzosek 1997, 99), and the concept of historical process. The anthropomorphism of classical his- time completely different from linear time. Once again, toriography is related to a concept of development and these metaphors are strictly related to each other. Wrzosek genesis. Wrzosek (1997), citing the work of Robert A. (1997) described these metaphors using the example of Nisbet, stressed that development is seen by these histori- Fernand Braudel’s work. According to this view, the devel- ans as spontaneous, inborn, continuous, indispensable, opment is seen as non-linear with many possible paths. 62 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 B. Włodarczyk. KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory …
The historical world is a complex social system consisting Wrzosek 1997, 136) as “a system of images and concepts of different subsets such as geographical regions and so- that produce different harmonies in the various social cial groups that are connected by relationships. The system groups and strata making up society.” is shaped by different processes, of which the most im- Wrzosek (1997) explored and described two distinct ap- portant are the processes of long duration, almost immu- proaches to historiography, classical and non-classical, that table, like a relationship between a human and the natural emphasize different aspects of historical existence. He world. These processes determine the identity of the sys- noted (1997, 124-125), tem. For new historians, a cause-and-effect relationship is not as crucial as for traditional historians who focus on The two images of the human being, the traditional events. They use a different intra-structural concept of one and that depicted by non-event historiography, genesis, where links between different substructures and are mutually incompatible. It seems impossible to changes of substructures are the most important deter- develop a coherent historical narrative that would mining factors. The cause-and-effect determinism has use both approaches—the process-centered and been replaced by functional determinism. A new kind of event-based. In order to do this after all, one would determinism also influences the concept of time. As have to establish explanatory links between process- Wrzosek (1997, 117-118) stressed, centered and event-based reality, inter alia, by proving that functional determinism may be reduced to modernist historians are no longer able to assign pre- cause-and-effect brand—or vice versa; if this is unfea- cise dates to patterns of economic evolution, booms sible, then both spheres of discourse remain incom- and slumps in the market or instances of cultural dif- mensurable with respect to explanation. fusion; they may only indicate the duration of such developments and their temporal correlation with This problem was exemplified by Wrzosek (1997) by Fer- other processes. This is because it is impossible to nand Braudel’s (1995) work entitled The Mediterranean and assign a precise date to such occurrences as Protes- the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, which failed to tantism, the baroque or the influence of Islam. achieve this goal. The historiographical metaphors can be used as a high- Wrzosek (1997) wrote that the advent of non-modernist level backdrop for analyzing KOSs in history and indexing historiography has originated from the objection to the historical works. The next section contains a review of structuralist and functionalist metaphors of modernist his- sample universal indexing tools used in Polish libraries toriography based on economics and sociology. The crea- from the perspective of historiographical metaphors, and tors of this new line of research have turned to anthropol- consequently traditional and “new” history. These meta- ogy as a focal point. The central concept has become the phors help to uncover the epistemological backbone of culture and people as actors in different cultural settings. these systems and identify possible improvements and According to Wrzosek (1997, 141): changes.
The genre’s luminaries, along with foreign (i.e., non- 4.0 KABA subject headings and the National French) scholars who follow in their footsteps, try to Library of Poland Descriptors from the preserve such components of the ideology of the An- perspective of different historiographical nales school as would allow the maintaining of tradi- traditions and metaphors tional historiography’s humanistic value: the tenet that the human being is the focus of history. They want to The section presents two Polish universal KOSs through sustain the human being’s prominent position. Never- the lens of classical and non-classical historiography and theless, the human being is now deemed not the Wrzosek’s historiographical metaphors. First, both sys- agents of events, but the creator of and participant in tems are briefly introduced. Secondly, the structure of culture, and the vehicle of civilization. By means of KABA and NLPD and indexing practices are presented in examining the individual or an anonymous group of relation to classical historiographical metaphors. Lastly, individuals, we may fathom the universal and supra- these systems are analyzed from the standpoint of non- individual rules that inflexibly govern a certain society classical metaphors and interdisciplinarity as a basis of or epoch. non-classical historiography. Examples of the structure of KOSs and book descriptions are representative; that is, The important line of research has become investigation they have been selected to illustrate standard practices fol- on mentalité (mentality), understood by Georges Duby in lowed by developers and indexers. his article Histoire des mentalités from 1961 (as cited in Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 63 B. Włodarczyk. KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory …
4.1 Introduction to KABA subject headings and the Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival National Library of Poland Descriptors Materials (Włodarczyk 2014). NLPD, the system developed in the National Library The two Polish universal systems analyzed here differ sig- of Poland, was introduced at the beginning of 2017. It has nificantly from each other, as their history, structure, and been recently presented by Joanna Cieloch-Niewiadomska indexing rules are markedly different. KABA, managed by (2019), so in this article, only some fundamental rules of the NUKAT Center, is used by the network of Polish ac- this system are presented. Apart from the article men- ademic and scientific libraries. It originated from work car- tioned above, information about the project is also availa- ried out in the early 1990s aiming to automate library pro- ble at the special website maintained by the National Li- cesses at the Warsaw University Library. After careful con- brary of Poland (http://przepisy.bn.org.pl/). The descrip- sideration, it was decided that the basis for the creation of tion provided below is based on these documents. The a subject access tool would be a French subject heading main source of the vocabulary, at least in the first stage of system, RAMEAU, with Library of Congress Subject Headings the project, is the previous system called the National Li- (LCSH) and Répertoire des vedettes matière de l’Univer- brary of Poland Subject Headings (NLPSH), which uti- sité Laval as secondary sources. The French subject head- lized the division into headings and subdivisions. The ings were a source of relational structure and rules of ap- NLPSH thesaurus is now being transformed according to plication of specific headings and subdivisions for the the rules of NLPD, and after the completion of this pro- Polish thesaurus (Kotalska 2002). Barbara Kotalska (2002, cess, it will serve as a basis for retrieval and indexing. The 154), an author of the article presenting the cooperation analysis of the NLPD structure presented in the article is between KABA and RAMEAU teams, cautioned that performed using examples from this unfinished tool, but “RAMEAU headings are subjected to a naturalization pro- ready-to-use descriptors have been selected. cess.” However, this translation process sometimes re- In contrast to NLPHS, NLPD is a post-coordinated sulted in the use of headings and subdivisions inappropri- system based to a large extent on common usage. In com- ate for Polish historiography. For instance, a chronological parison to KABA, the vocabulary is characterized by a subdivision “1870-1914” copied from RAMEAU is used much more specific level of granularity; i.e., the creators in KABA to index books about Polish history. This period have tried to separate individual pieces of information as is especially significant for France and Germany, but not much as possible. NLPD is formed by a set of independ- for Poland, because the starting date is connected with the ent, domain-specific thesauri, but connected and pre- outbreak of the Franco-German War. However, with time, sented in one interface. This structure of separate domain- KABA has gained more independence; i.e., more and more specific thesauri seems to ease the issue of domain decisions have been made independently, yet older head- knowledge incorporation but may restrict interdisciplinary ings and subdivisions have not been corrected. development of the system. The team responsible for the development of KABA The NLPD vocabulary is divided into twelve facets: consists of subject specialists. However, each person usu- “form and type,” “genre,” “audience,” “cultural area,” ally manages vocabulary for more than one discipline. For “subject,” “subject: person,” “subject: corporate body,” example, Iwona Ruść deals with economics, geography, “subject: event,” “subject: place,” “subject: work,” “sub- psychology, pedagogy, and sociology. Paweł Rygiel is re- ject: time,” and “discipline and approach.” The structure sponsible not only for history, but also for law, religious, described above is not fully employed due to practical lim- and art studies (NUKAT 2018). It seems impossible that itations of the software used by the National Library of one person could have substantial knowledge of all these Poland, where only nine facets are available, and some de- domains. For instance, Rygiel is a specialist in archeology. scriptors are wrongly assigned to facets. For instance, Consequently, the question arises whether the KABA vo- genre descriptors are presented in the general “subject” cabulary for different domains is developed at the same facet. level of granularity. The development of NLPD’s domain-specific vocabu- Although there were some attempts to use KABA in a lary is addressed differently from the solution adopted at novel way (e.g., Mazurek et al. 2014), it has remained a tra- the NUKAT Center. During the NLPD project starting in ditional, pre-coordinated system based on headings and 2015, a number of subject librarians, e.g., in history, eco- subdivisions used mainly in Polish academic libraries. The nomics, and ethnology and anthropology, have been em- team responsible for the development of the KABA sys- ployed for, among other things, “managing subject the- tem has made some improvements, e.g., it has introduced sauri, and designing new descriptors according to the de- new genre/form headings in line with changes introduced mands of the publications within the discipline and this in the Library of Congress. It should be noted, however, discipline’s development” (Cieloch-Niewiadomska 2019, that the accepted rules are complex in comparison to the 46). Cieloch-Niewiadomska (2019) provided examples of 64 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 B. Włodarczyk. KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory … vocabulary enhancement resulting from the employment In the light of traditional historiographical metaphors, it is of specialists. not enough to code the exact date of the event, e.g., the day and time of a battle. The genetic relationships between 4.2 KABA subject headings and the National the events need to be explicitly shown. The need for im- Library of Poland Descriptors from the plementation of such causal relations in information sys- perspective of classical historiography and tems has been already identified by different researchers its historiographical metaphors (e.g., Petras et al. 2006). In the records presented above, several traces of this way of thinking can be found. First 4.2.1 The structure of KOSs of all, it can be seen in the fragment related to the assassi- nation of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. The de- The classical metaphors of development and genesis can be scriptor in NLPD, which represents this event, is directly tracked in the structure of both KOSs. This type of meta- related to the descriptor “World War I (1914-1918),” which phor is especially prevalent in the context of event-related reflects the genetic relationships between the assassination political historiography. Thesauri may show the genetic se- and the outbreak of the First World War. In contrast, the quence of events and the linearity of development. To ana- creators of KABA have added another level of the divi- lyze KOSs from the perspective of classical historiograph- sion with the subdivision “Causes,” whose name directly ical metaphors, they should contain well-developed vocabu- refers to a metaphor, yet it is the only event mentioned in lary related to different kinds of events. Both KABA and this record. Additionally, the term “World War I (1914- NLPD are in line with these requirements in this respect. 1918)” in NLPD is related to a descriptor representing the According to classical metaphors, these events can be easily Paris Peace Conference. This way of thinking is not in- presented on a timeline as points in time because they are cluded in KABA since headings for meeting names are not more or less precisely dated and linked by a cause-and-effect connected with topical terms. The examples provided relation. As an example for further analysis, the shortened, above are also in line with a linear time metaphor. translated versions of records representing the First World However, the two systems do not include other associ- War are presented and analyzed below. ative relationships that can be established through the point of view of classical historiographical metaphors. NLPD The set of narrower terms for the First World War in NLPD is formed by the names of different battles, World War I (1914-1918) whereas in KABA, once again, in compliance with the RT Paris Peace Conference (1919-1920) grammar of the system, there is one more hierarchical RT Assassination at Sarajevo (1914) level established by the addition of subdivisions “cam- NT Battle of Gorlice (1915) paigns and battles,” supplemented by the names of the NT Battle of Konary (1915) countries or regions. When one looks at these examples NT Battle of Łowczówek (1914) from the perspective of classical metaphors, new associa- tive relationships could be established between related Polish Legions (1914-1917) events. It should be underscored that several choices al- RT Battle of Konary (1915) ways exist. For example, battles form different lines of RT Battle of Łowczówek (1914) successive stages. In the battle of Łowczówek (22-25 De- cember 1914), the First Brigade of the Polish Legions, KABA which fought on the Austro-Hungarian side, faced the Russian forces. After the battle, which did not change the World War, 1914-1918 strategic situation considerably, the next more significant RT World history—20th century clashes at this part of the Eastern front line broke out dur- ing Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive of Austro-Hungarian World War, 1914-1918—Campaigns and battles—Po- troops. It was the logical aftermath of the battle of land Łowczówek, and consequently, an associative relationship NT Gorlice, Battle of (1915) could be established. The next battle fought by the First NT Konary, Battle of (1915) Brigade was the battle of Konary (Klimecki 1993), so it NT Łowczówek, Battle of (1914) could also be related to the descriptor representing the bat- tle of Łowczówek. These are only two examples of possi- World War, 1914-1918—Causes ble choices. In comparison to KABA, the option for the RT Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina)—1914 (Assas- creation of such relationships in NLPD is facilitated due sination) to the establishment of the relationships between the de- Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 65 B. Włodarczyk. KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory … scriptor for the Polish Legions and descriptors represent- KABA ing different battles in which Polish soldiers fought. It should be noted, however, that there are serious 650 World War, 1914-1918—Causes problems associated with the classical metaphor of devel- 650 World War, 1914-1918—Diplomatic history opment. Wrzosek (1997) contended that this metaphor has 651 Europe—Politics and government—1871-1918 become intertwined with other metaphors, e.g., of pro- gress and evolution. For the history of a concept of state, NLPD for instance, it means that there are initial, intermediate, and final stages of development. The last one can be dif- 648 1801-1900 ferently conceptualized, for instance, as Western democ- 648 1901-2000 racy or a communist state but always as a highly desirable 648 1901-1914 and final stage. Contemporary research and practice show 648 1914-1918 that this view is too simplistic; hence, it cannot be (and is 650 World War (1914-1918) unadvisable to be) directly included in the KOS structure. 650 World politics It shows the limitations of including traditional metaphors 651 Europe when other modernist and anti-modernist approaches are vital and accepted within the research community. As described in Section 3.1, the establishment of genetic relationships between events is one of the essential foun- 4.2.2 Indexing practices dations of historical research employing traditional meta- phors. There is no one solution used in KABA to show the Indexing can also be analyzed from the point of view of genesis of events at the level of indexing. The first solu- classical historiographical metaphors. For instance, it is tion, exemplified by the description given above, utilized possible to do so with a traditional metaphor of genesis. two groups of headings: the name of an event with the Once again, it is primarily possible in the case of some po- subdivision “causes” and strings representing facts or do- litical and military history works, i.e., the books and articles main where the genesis of this event was sought. The sec- that emphasize and analyze the roots of political events. ond solution is used when a book or article is devoted to An example of such an approach is Christopher Clark’s many different factors contributing to the event described. (2013) book entitled Sleepwalkers, whose aim is to explain In such instances, only the name of an event supplied by the decisions made by politicians that led to the outbreak the subdivision “causes” is utilized. The question arising of the First World War. As Clark (2013, xxix) wrote, from the second solution is connected with the granularity of a description: is it possible to take into account more The story this book tells is, by contrast, saturated with specific factors? It could be useful, especially in the context agency. The key decision-makers—kings, emperors, of academic and research libraries, but the level of granu- foreign ministers, ambassadors, military commanders larity should be set independently by each institution. and a host of lesser officials—walked towards danger The NLPD indexing rules do not allow indexers to in- in watchful, calculated steps. The outbreak of war was dicate the genesis of events explicitly. The difficulties re- the culmination of chains of decisions made by polit- sult partly from the characteristics of post-coordinated ical actors with conscious objectives, who were capa- systems. There is no direct indication of cause and effect ble of a degree of self-reflection, acknowledged a descriptors, which are listed in a description on the same range of options and formed the best judgements level. However, admittedly, analyzed subject indexing prac- they could on the basis of the best information they tices have not been applied consistently. The element of had to hand. Nationalism, armaments, alliances and causation is not included in numerous cases that it could finance were all part of the story, but they can be be in both KABA and NLPD. In the NUKAT Center, it made to carry real explanatory weight only if they can seems to be connected with the practice of a central cata- be seen to have shaped the decisions that—in combi- log where librarians from different institutions produce nation—made war break out. records, including subject indexing.
The descriptions of the 2017 Polish translation of the book in both Polish KOSs are provided below. Both sys- tems employ MARC 21 Format for Bibliographic Data. MARC tags are given only to identify data elements used (cf. Library of Congress 2017), to understand the exam- ples better. 66 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 B. Włodarczyk. KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory …
4.3 KABA subject headings and the National KABA, NLPD has better-developed relationships be- Library of Poland Descriptors from the tween the terms denoting methods and techniques. How- perspective of non-classical historiography ever, it seems that there is a need to supplement the two and its historiographical metaphors systems with more terms for methods used in contempo- rary historical research. 4.3.1 The structure of KOSs Another issue, which seems to be primarily connected with the complexity of new historiography, concerns the Many historical works written in the twentieth century ex- types of relationships that should be included in KOSs. This emplify the employment of non-traditional approaches problem, but from the general point of view, was discussed that one can also try to include in the process of creating by Hjørland (2016) in an article about the future of tradi- thesauri. These approaches are connected, according to tional thesauri. Hjørland (2016, 152) noted that “Different Wrzosek (1997), with the influence of other domains like kinds of relations have different importance in different do- sociology, economics, ethnology, and anthropology; hence mains . . . Because of this, and because the semantic rela- their terminology should be incorporated into KOSs at an tions themselves may be relative to different queries, it is appropriate level of granularity. It seems that at the stage problematic to consider a thesaurus as a uniform standard of vocabulary development, taking into account non-clas- for all fields as opposed to a domain-specific semantic tool.” sical metaphors is, to some extent, equal to the analysis of Hjørland (2016) argued, discussing the differences between interdisciplinary issues connected with new lines of re- thesauri and ontologies, that semantic relations should not search. Such a thesaurus needs to include many interdisci- be restricted to three basic types (BT/NT, RT, USE/UF) at plinary terms; however, it should be underscored that the any cost, because there is no research indicating the atem- creators of thesauri in the discipline of history need to an- poral and domain-independent value of such an approach. alyze primarily terms developed within this domain. The Both KABA and NLPD only utilize these basic types of re- analysis shows that there is a lack of some important terms lationships. It seems that the establishment of more specific in both Polish KOSs. For instance, in NLPD, one cannot relationships in KOSs in history could facilitate the descrip- find the term “microhistory,” which is a significant sub- tion of a complex landscape of contemporary historiog- field of historical anthropology. raphy based on different metaphors. For instance, a special The systems built according to non-classical ap- type of relationship could be used to show the connection proaches should include the terms for different disciplines, between influencing and influenced substructures. How- subdisciplines, fields, subfields, but what is equally im- ever, this issue has to be further investigated in the context portant is the appropriate relationships pointing to the im- of specific history works. pact and interrelations between them. This condition is Interdisciplinarity that influences both terms and rela- better satisfied by the NLPD system, which has a better- tionships among them is closely related to new historio- developed network, consistent with contemporary thesau- graphical metaphors. One of them is a new metaphor of rus construction standards and Polish historical research. genesis. Instead of the line of events where one generates In KABA, for instance, the descriptor “social history” is another linearly, new historians have proposed more com- not related to the term “history” but only to “sociology;” plex solutions of intra-structural genesis. They are not ho- similarly, the descriptor “economic history” is only con- mogenous; that is, there are numerous variants of this gen- nected to the term “economics.” These are examples of eral approach. Some of them identify a specific aspect of the general situation that needs to be improved. reality as a causative factor, and some build a more multifac- Another aspect connected with the advent of new his- eted image of historical reality (Wrzosek 1997). In the con- toriography that needs to be emphasized is related to text of the former approach, a KOS creator might relate broadening the scope of research methods and techniques. different fields to one selected as the most important one. Modernist historians, due to the interest in a wide range of For instance, the creation of a system from the perspective topics, have accommodated methodological influences of the theory that the historical reality is founded on eco- from different disciplines, and within them from different nomics entails the extension of terms and relationships re- scientific theories. Both systems include descriptors repre- lated to this domain, and moreover, that is fundamental in senting them, but the main difference lies in the method the light of the theory, the subordination of different as- of categorizing terms. In KABA some terms, e.g., “statis- pects to the economy. The subordination does not neces- tical methods,” are represented as subdivisions, which are sarily need to be understood as the creation of hierarchical not included in the network of relationships, because there relationships but rather as the direct linkage between de- are no relations between headings and subdivisions. This scriptors representing different aspects of reality with that lack is a permanent, well-known feature of such systems representing economic phenomena. However, the richness that impedes their browsing functionality. In contrast to of modern historical research in terms of methodological Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 67 B. Włodarczyk. KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory … and theoretical pluralism indicates that the structure of the 648 1101-1200 majority of KOSs cannot be founded on a single approach 648 1201-1300 to historiography such as that assuming the precedence of 648 1301-1400 the economy over other domains. As a consequence, the 648 1401-1500 task of establishing relationships in compliance with this in- 648 1501-1600 tricate image is much more difficult in comparison to a sys- 650 Human body tem based on a single approach. Every aspect of reality, like 650 Philosophical anthropology a structure or process, can be potentially related to others. It 650 Social anthropology seems that the only solution for the creators of KOSs is to 650 Sociology of the body analyze the existing approaches carefully and decide which 650 Middle Ages are the most representative and beneficial for their group of 651 Europe users. It can be achieved by a thorough examination, not 655 Essay only of the history domain, but also other related disciplines 658 Ethnology and cultural anthropology and fields. During this activity, there is a need to include sub- 658 History ject specialists to a much greater extent than before. As was presented in Section 4.1, this aspect is addressed better in Apart from the lack of precision (the book is mainly about the development of NLPD. Western Europe), librarians from both institutions correctly used the name of the leading topical element: “human 4.3.2 Indexing practices body.” The interesting aspect of these descriptions lies in the use of descriptors representing different disciplines and An important issue, worth considering from the perspec- their branches. The use of the descriptor “sociology of the tive of non-classical historiography and its metaphors, body” in KABA’s description results from the equivalence concerns how history works are indexed in both systems. relationship with “human body—social aspects” and “hu- One of the approaches used in non-classical historiog- man body—sociology.” By contrast, the description made raphy is historical anthropology. An example of such an using NLPD involves the disciplinary approach of the book approach is a book entitled A History of the Body in the Mid- (“ethnology and cultural anthropology,” “history”) de- dle Ages by Jacques Le Goff and Nicolas Truong (2018), scribed explicitly in the separate 658 MARC fields (see Li- which presents the two-fold approach of Medieval people brary of Congress 2017). The creators of the system have to the body as both positive and negative. Different as- allowed librarians to use only thirty-four selected descriptors pects of the main object, such as gender, work, crying, to show this feature, and consequently, some disciplines and dreams, age, death, eating, beauty, and social metaphors re- subdisciplines, although also used by researchers, cannot be lated to the body, are described and analyzed. Le Goff and employed this way. The NLPD description of A History of Truong have tried to approach the topic, from, among oth- the Body in the Middle Ages also includes the descriptors for ers, sociological and anthropological perspectives, absent the sociology of the body, philosophical, and social (cul- in traditional history, and consequently not embraced by tural) anthropology that cannot be used to show the disci- classical metaphors. Although they described the situation plinary point of view adopted by the authors. However, from the fifth to fifteenth centuries, with some remarks on these descriptors do not show the subject of the book, but the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the book cannot rather the authors’ perspective on the subject. The essay is be considered a systematic and thorough description of undoubtedly not about philosophical or social anthropol- the issues mentioned above. It is instead a historical essay ogy. Moreover, although the NLPD contains the descriptor that can be regarded as an example of an historical anthro- “historical anthropology,” it was not used to describe the pological analysis, including the history of the mentality of book. It shows that the NLPD system should be developed medieval people. The results of the subject indexing of the further to accommodate different disciplines’ perspectives. work are presented below. As discussed, non-classical historiography also employs new research methods from a range of social sciences disci- KABA plines. However, currently, neither system takes into account this property of historical writing. The decision about the 650 Human body—Religious aspects—Middle ages inclusion of such information could be based, e.g., on user 650 Sociology of the body—Middle ages studies similar to the one conducted by McCourry (2015). Another important aspect is the method of indexing NLPD temporal information in both systems. Time is metapho- rized differently in non-classical historiography, which also 045 1001-1501 has some implications for KO. It has not been seen as 68 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 B. Włodarczyk. KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory … merely linear and teleological. Wrzosek (1997) drew the phasize whether an author of a historical book or article connection between functional determinism and a new looked at subject from the perspective of long term pro- concept of time. He showed this aspect of modernist his- cesses, e.g., with the descriptor “long duration.” toriography through the example of Fernand Braudel’s In this section, KABA and NLPD systems have been work. According to the French historian, different aspects analyzed through the lens of different historiographical of reality evolve in different rhythms. Some of them traditions and metaphors. Both structures of KOSs and change more slowly than others. One of the examples of indexing practices have been examined on selected exam- slow development is, according to Braudel, material cul- ples attempting to show that the knowledge of different ture from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century (see traditions and metaphors can illuminate the development Wrzosek 1997). The subject descriptions of the first vol- of such systems. It seems that due to this knowledge, ume of Braudel’s (2019) Civilization and Capitalism, 15th- KOSs creators can make better, informed decisions. 18th Century, which focus on this aspect of reality, are pre- sented below. 5.0 Summary
KABA This article has presented a general review of literature, which is crucial from the perspective of the creation of 650 Economic history—15th century KOSs in history. Moreover, it has provided examples of 650 Economic history—1500-1800 epistemological analyses of KOSs’ structures and indexing 650 Material culture—15th century practices of history books from the point of view of a 650 Material culture—1500-1800 single historiographer’s framework. There are other theo- retical standpoints in history that should be analyzed from NLPD the perspective of their applicability to the development of KOSs. It seems that even such a general epistemological 648 1401-1500 theory as presented in this paper can be regarded as a val- 648 1501-1600 uable point of departure for analyzing and possibly im- 648 1601-1700 proving KOSs in history. KO researchers and practitioners 648 1701-1800 need to be aware of this theoretical background that can 650 Economic history bring changes both to thesaurus structure and indexing 650 Capitalism practices. However, the designers of systems, both in their 650 Material culture structure and indexing rules, will inevitably face the prob- 651 World lem of deciding which specific elements can be included 655 Monograph in a system; that is, they need to compromise on the ques- 658 Economy, economics, finance tion of domain knowledge. As Wrzosek (1997) stressed, 658 History two distinct approaches to historical reality represented by classical and non-classical historiography are difficult, or The use of different chronological subdivisions or de- even impossible, to combine in historical writing. It seems scriptors suggests the lack of continuity, which does not that there are two main possible solutions to address the comply with Braudel’s view. This issue is connected with challenge faced by KOS designers. The first solution is to what is called by Hjørland (2017b, 59-60) “the epistemo- build a system based on only one group of interrelated logical view” of subjects, which asserts “that different ‘par- metaphors, but it would result in the exclusion of other adigms’ entail different subject representations.” If one views (cf. the example of BKK provided by Ørom 2003, agrees that the “long duration” concept is cognitively im- 142). It would be potentially possible to do so only when portant, and it seems to be such, the creators of KOSs of information resources indexed with this system would be history should take it into account while formulating in- limited to representing this one group of metaphors. The dexing rules. Braudel’s book is not merely a collection of second solution is to attempt to take into account different simple facts and events that occurred around the world groups of metaphors and to try to include them into one from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. Braudel looked system. This solution is associated with a similar issue that instead at the durability of the world in longer period. In was faced by Ørom (2003) during the analysis of the visual the context of such works, the idea of using the names of art domain. Ørom (2003, 142) wrote, the periods mentioned by Petras, Larson, and Buckland (2006), which suggest durability, seems to be in line with Because the Art & Architecture Thesaurus is a more the “long duration” underlined by Braudel. It would also “open” and more expanded work of “bricolage” be possible to add additional descriptors that could em- than universal classification systems, it is easier to in- Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 69 B. Włodarczyk. KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory …
tegrate new aspects of art studies in the facet struc- riography have some common features. One is that they ture. At a theoretical level however, the eclecticism are almost invariably produced outside history depart- and the “additive” conception of conceptual rela- ments and faculties. For this reason they have tended to tions mean that the Art & Architecture Thesaurus be regarded as somewhat exotic specialties.” Cf. Gnoli has a problematic epistemological foundation. (2014, 133-14) who discussed boundaries of history.
In the case of KOSs in history, different facets could be References organized according to different traditions and metaphors. Indexers could also possibly apply knowledge about clas- Albrechtsen, Hanne. 2015. “This is Not Domain Analy- sical and non-classical historiography to improve indexing sis.” Knowledge Organization 42: 557-61. practices. Some examples were provided in Sections 4.2.2 Barros, Thiago Henrique Bragato and João Batista Ernesto and 4.3.2, but more work is needed. de Moraes. 2010. “From Archives to Archival Science: An additional problem can result from a possible lack of Elements for a Discursive Construction.” In Paradigms domain knowledge. Non-specialists creating domain vocab- and Conceptual Systems in Knowledge Organization: Proceedings ulary and indexing history books and articles may not notice of the Eleventh International ISKO Conference 23-26 February the need and possibility of different choices, as primary and 2010 Rome, Italy, ed. Claudio Gnoli and Fulvio Maz- secondary school curricula are based on traditional meta- zocchi. Advances in Knowledge Organization 12. Würz- phors for the most part. Therefore, the employment of spe- burg: Ergon, 398-404. cialists is advised. This is accommodated in both Polish sys- Beghtol, Clare. 2001. “Knowledge Representation and Or- tems, yet, as it was presented in Section 4.1, the developers ganization in the Iter Project: A Web-Based Digital Li- employed at the NUKAT Center also need to deal with the brary for Scholars of the Middle Ages and Renaissance vocabularies outside of their areas of expertise. Similarly, in- (http://iter.utoronto.ca).” Knowledge Organization 28: 170- dexing books at NUKAT is often done by librarians who 79. are not specialists in a specific domain. Boyd, Kelly, ed. 1999. Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Although the knowledge about historiographical meta- Writing. 2 vols. London: Fitzroy Dearborn. phors given by Wrzosek can be helpful for the analysis and Braudel, Fernand. 1995. The Mediterranean and the Mediterra- creation of KOSs, it seems that their broad character can nean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. Siân Reynolds. 2 provide the creators only with some general guidelines. His- vols. Berkeley: University of California Press. Trans. of torical research is multidimensional, which is why the gen- Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe eral remarks presented in this article need to be supple- II. mented with in-depth theoretical and empirical analyses of Braudel, Fernand. 2019. Struktury codzienności: możliwe i nie- history; that is, there is a need to analyze thoroughly differ- możliwe, trans. Maria Ochab and Piotr Graff. Warszawa: ent branches of history, fields, and subfields. According to Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy. Trans. of Civilisation Tennis (2003), it is equal to diminish the extension of a do- matérielle, économie et capitalisme. main and to increase its intension. The basis for such an in- Castanha, Renata Cristina Gutierres and Dietmar Wolf- vestigation can be books and papers on theory and history ram. 2018. “The Domain of Knowledge Organization: of historiography, some of which have been reviewed in A Bibliometric Analysis of Prolific Authors and Their Section 2.0 of the paper. Moreover, historical works and Intellectual Space.” Knowledge Organization 45: 13-22. user studies can be conducted to supplement analysis. It ap- Chaves Guimarães, José Augusto and Natália Bolfarini pears that such a line of research can provide the basis for Tognoli. 2015. “Provenance as a Domain-Analysis Ap- creating user-friendly and domain-grounded KOSs in his- proach in Archival Knowledge Organization.” Knowledge tory. Organization. 42: 562-69. Cieloch-Niewiadomska, Joanna. 2019. “Introducing the Note National Library of Poland Descriptors to the Polish National Bibliography.” Cataloging & Classification Quar- 1. Many other disciplines use historical methods and ana- terly 57, no. 1: 37-58. doi: 10.1080/01639374.2019. lyze their subjects chronologically, e.g., musicology com- 1573774 prises historical musicology that focuses on the history Clark, Christopher. 2013. The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went of musical genres and life of composers, but this domain to War in 1914. New York: HarpersColllins. is distinct from the discipline of history due to its differ- Finney, Patrick. 2005. “What is International History?” In ent aims, traditions, and primary objects of inquiry. As Palgrave Advances in International History, ed. Patrick Fin- Richard T. Vann (2018) wrote about the history of the ney. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1-35. arts: “Despite essential differences, these forms of histo- 70 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 B. Włodarczyk. KABA Subject Headings and the National Library of Poland Descriptors in Light of Wojciech Wrzosek’s Theory …
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72 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments
Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments† Deborah Lee City, University of London, Department of Library and Information Science, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, England,
Deborah Lee is a visiting lecturer at City, University of London, where she leads the information organization module. She was awarded her PhD in library and information science in 2017 from City, University of London. Her thesis, entitled “Modelling Music: A Theoretical Approach to the Classification of Notated Western Art Music,” was supervised by Professor David Bawden. Her research interests include music classification, the the- ory and aesthetics of classification schemes, music as information and the pedagogy of cataloguing education. Deborah is also the Joint Acting Head of the Book Library and Senior Cataloguer at the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Lee, Deborah. 2020. “Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments.” Knowledge Organization 47(1): 72- 91. 73 references. DOI:10.5771/0943-7444-2020-1-72.
Abstract: This paper discusses the Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments. This classification system was originally designed for musical instruments and books about instruments, and was first published in German in 1914. Hornbostel-Sachs has dominated organological discourse and practice since its creation, and this article analyses the scheme’s context, background, versions and impact. The position of Hornbostel-Sachs in the history and development of instrument classification is explored. This is followed by a detailed analysis of the mechanics of the scheme, including its decimal notation, the influential broad categories of the scheme, its warrant and its typographical layout. The version history of the scheme is outlined and the relationships between versions is visualised, including its translations, the introduction of the electrophones category and the Musical Instruments Museums Online (MIMO) version designed for a digital environment. The reception of Hornbostel-Sachs is analysed, and its usage, criticism and impact are all considered. As well as dom- inating organological research and practice for over a century, it is shown that Hornbostel-Sachs also had a significant influence on the bibliographic classification of music.
Received: 27 May 2019; Revised: 4 June 2019; Accepted: X June 2019
Keywords: Hornbostel-Sachs, scheme, musical instruments, classification
† Derived from the article of similar title in the ISKO Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization Version 1.1 (= 1.0 plus details on electrophones and Wikipedia); version 1.0 published 2019-01-17, this version 2019-05-29. Article category: KOS, specific (domain spe- cific). The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments, as well as the editor, Professor Birger Hjør- land, for all of his insightful comments and ideas.
1.0 Introduction Its reach spreads throughout organology, and arguably Hornbostel-Sachs is sometimes seen as being synonymous The “Classification of musical instruments” by Erich M. with instrument classification. von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs (from here onwards, short- The article starts with an overview of the origins and ened to Hornbostel-Sachs) is arguably the most important history of Hornbostel-Sachs, placing the scheme within classification system for musical instruments. In fact, the the context of general developments of musical instru- scheme has played a significant role in the development of ment classification and discussing the original purposes of the domain in which it was created: “organology,” which is the scheme. Next, the mechanics of the scheme are ex- the study of musical instruments. First published in German plored, including its basic structure, atypical notation, war- in 1914, Hornbostel-Sachs has seen modifications and rant and typographical layouts, among other areas. An ex- changes throughout its history, but the scheme remains part ploration of the versions and translations of Hornbostel- of contemporary musical instrument discourse and practice. Sachs follows, highlighting the significance of the English While designed primarily to classify physical collections of translation of the scheme to its dissemination and discuss- musical instruments, Hornbostel-Sachs was redesigned in ing new versions of the scheme. This is followed by an the 2000s as an ordering system for digital information account of the reception of Hornbostel-Sachs, which con- about instruments. Hornbostel-Sachs’ originality centres siders its usage and criticism and culminates in an exami- upon its method of categorising instruments, its desire to nation of how Hornbostel-Sachs’ reach stretches beyond be universal in terms of musical culture, its borrowing of organology and instrument collections and becomes a cor- decimal notation from bibliographic classification and more. nerstone of bibliographic classifications of music. Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 73 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments
2.0 Origins and history 2.3 The germination of Hornbostel-Sachs
2.1 Instrument classification up to the late Hornbostel-Sachs was developed in the early twentieth nineteenth century century by Austrian and German music theorists and scholars, Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs (Katz It is important to consider how Hornbostel-Sachs fits into 2001; Brown 2001). The scheme was first published in the history of musical instrument classification. In the pre- German in 1914 with the title of the scheme given as “Sys- Medieval eras, key instrument classification ideas came from tematik der Musikinstrumente” (Hornbostel and Sachs the Old Testament of the Bible (especially Psalm 150), An- 1914). Note that this article uses the title of the scheme cient Greek ideas (in particular, works by Aristotle and Bo- “Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instru- etheius), and the Roman-era treatise of Cassidorus (Kart- ments,” which places the authors’ names in hyphenation in omi 1990). In the Medieval and Renaissance periods, discus- the title of the classification scheme, rather than just the sion centred on particular treatises, including those by translation “Classification of Musical Instruments.” As a Grocheo, Virdung, Zarlino, Praetorius and Mersenne (Kart- further justification for using this format of the name, omi 1990). Some theories dominated multiple time periods; “Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments” for instance, Kartomi (1990) claims that all writers on musi- follows (with one exception) the formulation of the cal instruments in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries scheme’s title as found in an article about the scheme by still referenced the Greek or Roman models of instrument Sachs in 1914, which calls it “Hornbostel-Sachs’sche Klas- classification. Ramey (1974) suggests that rather than a con- sifikation der Musikinstrumente” (Sachs 1914, 1056). As tinuously evolving discourse about instruments, the devel- well as the schedules, the 1914 scheme includes a detailed opment of instrument classifications and theorisation of in- introduction, which explains the design of the scheme and struments remained static from the seventeenth century for outlines what it was trying to achieve, and this introduction two hundred years. DeVale (1990) goes further still: she sug- is an important source in organology in its own right. gests that aside from adding the brass category, the basics of instrument classification in the western world were fun- 2.4 The purposes of Hornbostel-Sachs damentally the same from Cassidorus’ scheme in the sixth century through the next 1,300 years. The authors of Hornbostel-Sachs had clear ideas about the users and purposes of their scheme. Hornbostel and 2.2 Mahillon and the road to Hornbostel-Sachs Sachs (1961) were designing their scheme for musicolo- gists, ethnologists and curators of ethnological collections It is at this juncture that a seismic change took place. Ma- and cultural history. So, Hornbostel-Sachs was designed to hillon’s scheme (and corresponding catalogue) for the be a scheme for theoretical and for practical purposes. We Conservatoire royal de Musique de Bruxelles was pub- can also say that it is a knowledge organization system pri- lished in 1880 (Mahillon 1880; Jairazbhoy 1990a), and rad- marily designed for organising artefacts as opposed to ically altered the fabric of instrument classification in the mentefacts, using terminology used by the Classification western world. Mahillon’s scheme took the revelatory ap- Research Group (Gnoli 2018b). Note, organology is not proach of dividing the population of musical instruments mentioned in the introduction to Hornbostel-Sachs, as this into four, not three, categories, as had been the case for term was not in common use in the early twenthieth cen- hundreds of years. Furthermore, the top-level categorisa- tury (see DeVale (1990) and Kartomi (1990) for the history tion in Mahillon’s scheme divided instruments by how the and boundaries of organology as a domain). Another pur- sound was activated, rather than how the instrument was pose given for the classification scheme (Hornbostel and played. For a description of the categorisation of instru- Sachs 1961) is that it encourages researchers to find new ments including the categories used in Hornbostel-Sachs, links between instruments; so, Hornbostel-Sachs is ful- see Section 3.1. Hornbostel- Sachs uses and expands Ma- filling one criterion of being a scientific classification by hillon’s classification from thirty years earlier (Kartomi enabling new knowledge to be created through classifica- 1990), therefore, perpetuating the radical changes of Ma- tion (using the term “scientific classification” as way of hillon’s scheme. So, Mahillon’s scheme is the direct parent describing a knowledge organization system created from of Hornbostel-Sachs, and both these schemes are reac- within a domain (Mai 2011; Hjørland 2008; Lee, Robinson tions to the prevalent trends in instrument categorisation and Bawden 2018). that had developed up until the late nineteenth century.1 It is important to ask what problems Hornbostel-Sachs was attempting to solve. A key issue involves the culture of the knowledge being classified, and Hornbostel and Sachs (1961, 5) suggest that a classification that suits “one 74 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments era or nation may be unsuitable as a foundation for the utilised Mahillon’s four categories, they found issues with instrumental armoury of all nations and all times.” Fur- the logic used within each of Mahillon’s categories. There- thermore, one of the issues that the authors (Hornbostel fore, another purpose of Hornbostel-Sachs was to provide and Sachs 1961) had with Mahillon’s scheme was their be- what the authors considered to be a logical division and lief that it was led by European instruments. In contrast, structure of musical instruments, within a four-category Hornbostel and Sachs were attempting to create a classifi- system. cation that removed instruments from their corresponding cultures (Koch and Kopal 2014). Hornbostel and Sachs’ 3.0 The mechanics of the scheme attempts to create what DeVale (1990, 8) delineated as a “cross-cultural system” (in opposition to a “culture-spe- This section explores the mechanisms of Hornbostel- cific system”), and this was part of a general move in or- Sachs as a classification scheme. The 1914 version will be ganology from the late nineteenth century onwards. used as the baseline scheme, in its 1961 English translation, However, this brings to the fore questions about univer- unless otherwise stated. sality and musical instrument classification. The results of Hornbostel and Sachs’ efforts to be cross-cultural in cover- 3.1 Four categories age can be seen, for example, in decisions not to privilege instruments such as the violin or piano, which are especially A revolutionary aspect of Hornbostel-Sachs occurs at its associated with western art music. However, it is acknowl- highest level: the division of the universe of musical instru- edged that though this was their aim, Hornbostel and Sachs ments into four categories. Until the late nineteenth century, had their own specific temporal and cultural background western classifications of instruments were organised into that cannot be ignored. The disjuncture between Hornbos- three broad categories: wind, strings and percussion. Ma- tel-Sachs’ context-neutral design and the cultural-historical hillon’s 1880 scheme instead had four, not three, categories context of its creation (“wissenschaftshistorischen Entste- based around how the sound was made, and these categories hungszusammenhängen”) is articulated by Koch and Kopal were named “instruments autophones,” “instruments à (2014, 301). In DeVale’s (1990) continuums for analysing or- membranes,” “instruments à vent” and “instruments à ganological classifications, Hornbostel-Sachs could be con- cordes” (Mahillon 1880). sidered as mostly exogenous, arguably like any cross-cultural This quadrivium became the basis of Hornbostel-Sachs, classification system; the authors exist outside of the cul- albeit with some changes in nomenclature. First, Hornbostel tures of the majority of instruments covered by the scheme, and Sachs takes the neologism found in Mahillon’s scheme as an inevitable result of the scheme covering a variety of of naming a category of instrument using “method of different musical cultures. Therefore, for many classes in sound production” plus “phones,” and applies it to the other their scheme, Hornbostel and Sachs are imposing classifica- three categories; for example, “instruments à cordes” in Ma- tion on the instruments and the cultures that those instru- hillon’s scheme becomes “Chordophone” in Hornbostel- ments represent. Furthermore, recent knowledge organiza- Sachs. Note that the German terms for the category names tion discourse acknowledges the conceptual issues with uni- are given, so “Chordophone” is a plural in the 1914 original versality as a desired attribute of a knowledge organization German, which becomes “chordophones” once translated system, and the blurred definitions of the concept (see, for to English. Second, Hornbostel and Sachs prefer the term example Szostak 2014), as well as increasing awareness that “idiophone” rather than Mahillon’s “autophones”; the au- neutrality is not an attainable (or even always a desired) goal. thors were concerned that a category entitled “autophones” So, there is a tension between Hornbostel and Sachs’ ambi- might be confused with automatic instruments (Sachs tion of writing a cross-cultural scheme, and the reality of 1914). This decision was based on research by Sachs pub- cross-cultural instrument classification delivered through a lished in 1913 (Sachs 1914; Hornbostel and Sachs 1961). single scheme. Figure 1 shows the progression of the main categories over Another issue that Hornbostel-Sachs tries to resolve time. concerns the historical three-category system of classify- Note that there is some debate about the novelty of ing instruments. The authors describe the three traditional these four categories, which in turn could affect the per- categories of instruments as “illogical” and “inadequate,” ception of Hornbostel-Sachs as a disruption of classifica- and are complementary about the four categories used in tory norms: scholars have commentated that Mahillon’s Mahillon’s scheme (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961, 6) (A full and Hornbostel-Sachs’ four-category system appears to discussion of the four categories is found in Section 3.1. match the classification espoused in a fifth-century Indian of this article). So, the obvious question is why Hornbostel treatise, “Nātyasāstra,” attributed to Bharata (Jairazbhoy and Sachs did not just extend or develop Mahillon’s 1990a; Heyde 1977). Furthermore, Jairazbhoy (1990a) pos- scheme? One reason is that while Hornbostel and Sachs its that Mahillon would have been aware of “Nātyasāstra” Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 75 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments
Figure 1. The top-level categories in Hornbostel-Sachs and its antecedents.
and describes anomalies that strongly infer that Mahillon marily for western art music, the percussion instruments consciously borrowed the Indian four-category system. So, have far less importance than in the whole universe of music although the radical four-category system of Hornbostel- cultures; categorisng based on sound-production means that Sachs is credited to Mahillon, the origins of a four-cate- the privileging of instruments from one culture at the ex- gory system is not (only) a nineteenth century, European pense of other cultures is reduced, thus enabling Hornbos- invention. tel and Sachs’ universal intentions. However, although The four-category system did, however, break the con- Hornbostel-Sachs is noted for its four categories, a fifth cat- tinuum of European instrument classification in a number egory for electrophones becomes the standard structure in of ways. First, what could be called the “characteristic of later years—see Section 4.3. division” is different in the four-category systems of Ma- hillon and Hornbostel-Sachs from traditional three-category 3.2 Notation schemes. For example, both a gong and a drum are struck, so in a traditional three-part system are considered “percus- Hornbostel-Sachs is remarkable as it uses a decimal nota- sion;” however, in the four-category system, the fact that the tion (Gnoli 2018b, Section 3.1), and this feature alone gong’s sound is produced by the solid material of the gong makes it significantly different from its Mahillon parent- itself vibrating and the drum’s sound is produced by the age. While attributed by the authors of Hornbostel-Sachs stretched membrane of the drum vibrating means they as being a Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) notation would be placed in different classes (classed in membrano- (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961), a close look at Hornbostel- phones and idiophones respectively in Hornbostel-Sachs). Sachs makes it clear that it is not exactly DDC that has Second, the four-category system gives much more space to been used. Gnoli (2006) states that Hornbostel-Sachs uses what in older categorizations would be called “percussion” the European version of DDC, which is an authorised ver- instruments, and notably in Hornbostel-Sachs, sees the per- sion of DDC and the precursor to the “Universal Decimal cussion-equivalents appear earlier in the order of categories. Classification” (UDC) (Gnoli 2006). There are a number The prominence of idiophones and membranophones in of ways in which Hornbostel-Sachs adopts UDC notation Hornbostel-Sachs is no accident. In systems designed pri- rather than pure DDC. For example, the four base catego- 76 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments ries are given as “1,” “2,” and so on; yet, if this used DDC’s for the half-spike lute, which conceptually fits between the decimal notation, extra zeros would be added so that these spike-lutes (321.31) and necked lutes (321.32), he is faced categories would have the notation “100,” “200,” and so with a notational problem. Montagu’s (2009) solution was to on. In addition, the presence of a period every three digits add a new class of 321.31.5, to sit between 321.31 and also marks out Hornbostel-Sachs as adopting Euro- 321.32. This destroys the symmetry of having only 3 num- pean/UDC notation; for instance, Hornbostel-Sachs has bers between periods; also, the choice of “5” appears to be “211.212.2” for “sets of cylindrical drums” (Hornbostel representing thirty-one-and-a-half, rather than a class equal and Sachs 1961), which would have been written as in hierarchy to 321.31 and 321.32. Therefore, adding new “211.2122” (or similar with apostrophes) in DDC’s nota- classes is unideal in Hornbostel-Sachs due to its particular tion. application of decimal notation. Hornbostel-Sachs’ notation works by each new level of Another and related feature of Hornbostel-Sachs’ no- classification adding an extra digit to the right-hand side of tation is its expressivity. For instance, the class with nota- the notation (see Gnoli 2018b, Section 3.1, for more infor- tion “1” (idiophones) has only one digit and is a very broad mation on how decimal notations function). For example, category, whereas “111.141” (castanets) has six digits and “4” represents aerophones, “41” free aerophones, and represents a specific type of instrument (though as will be “411” displacement free aerophones (which includes the discussed below, not an actual instrument). However, as whip or sword-blade). There is also something interesting the classification scheme does not have the same number about the digits selected by Hornbostel and Sachs. For ex- of hierarchical levels between category and type of instru- ample, the aerophones are divided into three main types: ment for each type of instrument, as discussed in more free aerophones (41), wind instruments proper (42), and detail in Section 3.4, this means that the notation cannot trumpets (43). Note that the digits “1,” “2” and “3” have be fully expressive; for example “421.121.12” is a category been selected; this is in contrast to what we might expect with eight digits representing a specific type of end-blown to find in other decimal systems where three digits selected flute, while the three-digit “413” for “plosive aerophones” across the range from “1” to “9” might be used instead.2 also represents a specific type of instrument. So, while it is For an example of Hornbostel-Sachs notation, see Figure generally true that the number of digits represents some 2, which presents a selection of classes from aerophones broad idea of where you are within the hierarchy, there is with their corresponding notations. The same design can some variation for different areas of the scheme. be seen at every level of Hornbostel-Sachs; frequently, only the digits “1” and “2” are used, and there are very few 3.3 Arrangement within categories occurrences of digits over “4.” The impact of this choice is that it diminishes Hornbostel-Sachs’ hospitality: there is Hornbostel-Sachs (1961) has a different order of know- no room to insert a new category between existing catego- ledge within each of its four main categories. The authors ries in future versions, at least in a way that keeps the new selected the most appropriate divisions for each category category at the same level of notation as its siblings. So, rather than consistently apply the same criteria or order of when Montagu (2009) wishes to add a new high-level group these criteria across each of the four main categories (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961). Furthermore, Hornbostel and Sachs are concerned with placing too much emphasis on method of playing as a main dividing principle, which is the basis of Mahillon’s scheme: for example, if playing method is the primary way of dividing chordophones, then the plucked violin and bowed violin would go in very dif- ferent places, yet they are the same instrument (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961). Gnoli (2006) summarises the different orders within the four main categories as follows: while chordophones and aerophones are mostly concerned with morphology, the playing technique largely governs the or- dering of the idiophones and membranophones categories. The structure of the first two levels within each of the four main categories is shown in Figure 3, Figure 4, Figure 5 and Figure 6, and these figures highlight the inconsistencies in Figure 2. Selection of classes from aerophones demonstrating structure between the classes. Kartomi (1990) suggests that decimal classification (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961). Note, only Hornbostel and Sachs’ reason for forgoing logical division the first three levels are shown. was a pragmatic choice, where the complexities of reality Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 77 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments
Figure 3. The first two levels within the idiophones class, Figure 4. The first two levels within the membrano- extracted from Hornbostel and Sachs (1961). phones class, extracted from Hornbostel and Sachs (1961).
Figure 5. The first two levels within the chordophones class, Figure 6. The first two levels within the aerophones class, ex- extracted from Hornbostel and Sachs (1961). tracted from Hornbostel and Sachs (1961). 78 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments win out over classificatory niceness. However, the incon- 3.4 Individual classes sistency in ordering within categories is given as one of the main criticisms of Hornbostel-Sachs (for example, see The size of the chain in Hornbostel-Sachs between broad Wachsmann et al. 2001). category (for example, “idiophones,” “membranophones”) These points give some insight into the philosophical and lowest level class (for example, “slide trumpets,” “dou- foundations of Hornbostel-Sachs. This suggests that Horn- ble-skin stationary drums with friction-cord”) varies across bostel-Sachs adopts an ontological approach, where the the scheme. For example, “friction drum with whirling phenomena (the instruments) are considered to be the cen- stick” is at 232.2, showing only four levels of hierarchy, and tre of the classification scheme, and decisions about the hi- “free kazoos” is at 241, showing only three levels of hier- erarchical levels used in the scheme are driven by what is archy; conversely, the “without tuning noose” mono-heter- found in the real world of instruments. ochord music bow with resonator is at 311.121.221, show- The authors of Hornbostel-Sachs are particularly elo- ing nine levels of hierarchy. An example of the hierarchy quent about their choices for the terminology of know- leading from chordophones to the class 311.121.221 can be ledge-levels within each category. Hornbostel and Sachs seen in Figure 7. Figure 7 also demonstrates how the deci- (1961) decided not to formally label the levels within each mal notation adopted by Hornbostel-Sachs makes it simple category, despite their comment that labels of strata are to see the hierarchical pedigree of any class; for example, used in biological classification and in Mahillon’s scheme; one glance at the number 311.121.221 shows that it con- however, Hornbostel and Sachs (1961) do suggest infor- tains 311.121 (mono-hetereochord musical bow), meaning mal names for these levels, suggesting that the idiophones that 311.121.221 must be a mono-heterochord musical and so on would be called classes, followed by sub-classes, bow, because it has the (great grand-) parent class of orders and sub-orders. The authors’ comments mention- 311.121 included within it. ing biological classification are interesting as they could be These lowest levels of classes are not titled by names read as a link between organology and other scientific clas- of specific instruments. Instead, the lowest-level classes sifications. Furthermore, the deliberate omission of offi- have titles that are the shared characteristics of instru- cial terms for the levels within the hierarchies could be ments, which would reside in those classes. Specific instru- viewed as an expression of the confusion within music ments are given as selective examples, such as the hade, classification about how to appellate the chains between African lyre, violin, European flute, Ocarina, and so on. broad instrument categories and individual instruments. For example, class 321.322 is entitled “necked box lutes or For example, issues about which levels in the chain are cov- necked guitars,” with a note stating “violin, viol, guitar.” ered by the amorphous term of “instrument family” are This list only contains selected examples, and any instru- explored conceptually by Lee (2017c) in her discussions ment considered a necked box lute of necked guitar would about string ensembles, and in practical terms in a DDC be classed here, such as violas, cellos or the double bass (to working paper (Dewey Decimal Classification 2016). give some examples important to western art music).
Figure 7. Example of hierarchy in 311.121.221 (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961). Note, classes have been omitted which are not direct descendants of 311.121.221. Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 79 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments
These examples and notes will be examined in more detail instrument, or there is no evidence that the instrument in Section 3.7, which discusses typographical layout. ever existed. At least some of these examples, especially the friction sticks, might be explained by the authors’ 3.5 Coverage and warrant (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961) caveat in the introduction to the scheme: sometimes they assigned classes to simpler The “necked box lutes or necked guitars” example illustrates versions of a known instrument, because they assume this a number of important points about the coverage of Horn- earlier and simpler version existed, even if they do not bostel-Sachs. First, the authors’ intention of being culturally have evidence. So, the literary warrant of Hornbostel- universal is illuminated by this example, as even the typically Sachs is not just instruments that were known to have def- western instruments in this class are still only given as exam- initely existed, from the temporal perspective of 1914; in- ples rather than the title of the class. Second, this example stead, the literary warrant of Hornbostel-Sachs also in- shows how Hornbostel-Sachs does not distinguish between cludes instruments that were thought to have existed, from current and obsolete instruments; viols are usually associ- the temporal perspective of 1914. ated with music of the seventeenth century and earlier and were largely superseded by the violin, viola and cello, while 3.6 Extensions and alternatives violins and guitars are popular (in specific cultures) in the twenty-first century. This fits with Hornbostel-Sachs’ phi- Hornbostel-Sachs includes a number of extensions. These losophy to be for all times, as laid out in the scheme’s intro- extensions could be considered number-building, or even duction (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961) and also seen in the loosely as an analytico-synthetic feature of the scheme. tensions presented by each class representing both the cur- Furthermore, some alternatives are also offered. rent instrument and its evolutionary progression to get to There are two broad types of extension in Hornbostel- that form (Gnoli 2006). Furthermore, this treatment of Sachs. The first type involves optional additions to existing temporal existence of instruments also fits into Hornbostel- classes, which are different depending on the broad cate- Sachs’ purpose of organising collections of instruments, as gory of instruments. These additions are found at the end instrument collections usually contain many historical, “su- of each category, and are suffixes to the main classes. For perseded” instruments. example, you can add “with membrane glued to drum” to Literary warrant is another important aspect of under- any class within membranophones (Hornbostel and Sachs standing Hornbostel-Sachs, and literary warrant is taken as 1961). However, you can only add it to a class in the mem- a broad term to include all types of documents including branophones category; clearly, this addition would make objects such as musical instruments (Barité 2018). Horn- little sense to a class in chordophones or aerophones. To bostel and Sachs discuss whether instruments need to exist add this suffix, a dash is added to the regular class, and it to be included: “we have refrained from providing a sub- is possible in some cases to add multiple additions. The division containing no existing representative” (Hornbos- purpose of these extensions is to provide more detail to tel and Sachs 1961, 10). In other words, there is a literary existing classes. To some degree these extensions could be warrant for any class to be included in Hornbostel-Sachs. considered a light sort of synthesis, at least within the uni- This contrasts with Mahillon’s scheme (on which Horn- verse of any individual broad category of instruments bostel-Sachs is based), which includes categories for in- such as membranophones. struments which had not yet been invented (Jairazbhoy The second type of extension involves building a new 1990b, 82-83). class from two or more existing classes. The introduction However, the question of literary warrant is not quite to Hornbostel-Sachs (1961) gives an example of the mod- this straightforward. The Hornbostel-Sachs schedules sug- ern, western orchestral trombone, which has slides and gest that the scheme itself is less clear-cut than is implied valves; in Hornbostel-Sachs, the slide trombone is found in its introduction. First, there are a very small number of at 423.22 and the valve trombone is found at 423.23. classes where the example or note has the word “un- Hornbostel-Sachs (1961) says that this instrument could known,” suggesting that either specific instruments are un- be represented using both classes, with a plus between the known or the geographic location where such instruments two notations (423.22 + 423.23). A notational short-cut is are found is unknown. Examples include “132.1 (Individ- also offered: 4232.2 + 3. This shorthand notation works ual) friction sticks” (under Friction sticks) and “131.1 (In- by using the period to indicate the division between the dividual) friction sticks” (under friction plaques). digits that are being repeated (in this case, 4232) and those Second, there is one class, “421.121.311 with fixed digits which are not; so, this class reads 423.22 + 423.23, stopped lower end” (under stopped side-blown flutes) with the user alerted to the repeat of “4232” by the posi- which has the note “Apparently non-existent.” It is not ex- tion of the period. Changing the position of the period is plained whether there are just no extant exemplars of that an interesting variation on decimal notation, and is not 80 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments seen in schemes such as DDC. This type of extension sees tion and notes. The notes are varied, often containing ge- composite instruments intellectually represented as a com- ographic information about where the instrument is found bination of two types of instruments. This could be con- (for example, “China und Vorderindien” (Hornbostel and sidered as faceting, where the composite notation repre- Sachs 1914, 563)) or examples of specific instruments (for senting the composite instrument could be considered as example, “Violine, Gambe, Guitarre” (Hornbostel and a complex class created from the simple classes of the in- Sachs 1914, 580)). In the original German version of the itial instruments. This is taken further by the examples of scheme (Hornbostel and Sachs 1914), the scheme is laid bagpipes given in Hornbostel and Sachs (1961), and dis- out as a table, with the three columns labelled as follows: cussed in Ghirardini and Gnoli (2005): using the decimal Klassifikation (which contains the notation and title of point, brackets and colons (for example, 422-62:22 for a class), Charakteristik and Beispiele. The table is presented reed instrument with flexible air reservoir with exclusively in landscape form. clarinet pipes, or 422-62 : .2]1 for set of reedpipes with The tabular layout is not followed through to subse- flexible air reservoir with bagpipe of oboe), this quasi fac- quent versions (such as 1961, 1992 and 2011), nor are there eting can be used to specify the way sound is produced in any labels for the different types of information; instead, different parts of the instrument using the existing sched- the differentiation between notation/class and other types ules and extensions to build a more specific notation than of information is presented using typefaces and punctua- is listed in the schedules. tion. The 1961 and 2011 versions use bold typeface for the There is a third, and vaguer type of extension. For ex- notation and class titles, with roman typeface for the ample, the introduction (Hornbostel and Sachs, 1961) says “Charakteristik,” and italic typeface for the equivalent of that adding new subdivisions, principles or classes is also the “Beispiele” (The 1961 and 2011 versions are typo- acceptable. In other words, the classifier is free to change graphically very similar, apart from the significant spacing and extend the scheme at will. Consequently, Hornbostel- between “Charakteristik” and “Beispiele” in the 1961 ver- Sachs is theoretically infinite in its coverage, although the sion, and completely different family of typefaces used in limitations of decimal notation in base ten mean that the the 1961 and 2011 versions). The formatting in the 1961 scheme cannot be infinitely hospitable in terms of how and 2011 versions makes it relatively easy to distinguish the this infinite universe is notated. different types of information, even without Hornbostel Hornbostel-Sachs also permits alternatives. For in- and Sachs’ (1914) labels or tabular layout. stance, the bagpipes example (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961) The 1992 reproduction adopts a different typographical also shows how suffixes in the aerophones class are made layout from the original 1961 English translation. In the part of the main class, thus altering the order of elements. 1992 version, the scheme is presented in two unmarked This flexibility would be useful for curators and others se- columns of text, with the notation in the left column and lecting the most appropriate arrangement for their specific the other types of information in the right column. Class collection. However, this does have an impact on univer- titles are in bold, upper-case letters or italics, depending on sality, as it suggests Hornbostel and Sachs (1961) did not their hierarchy. The equivalent of the “Charakteristik” is in intend for their scheme to be used in the same structure at roman typeface, usually preceded by a colon. However, the different institutions and that the authors were not posit- equivalent of the “Beispiele” is also given in roman type- ing a singular order of instruments. face. Sometimes the Beispiele-equivalent is preceded by an m-dash, with an introductory phrase “found in” for geo- 3.7 Typographical layout graphical examples, and with other examples the Beispiele- equivalent is displayed in parenthesis. Furthermore, some It is important to consider how the information within a of the examples are located in a different place within the scheme is structured and labelled, as it illustrates the au- description of a class, as compared to the German original. thors’ structural intentions and is often used to communi- The overall effect of the 1992 typographic layout arguably cate these intentions to the schemes’ classifiers. The Horn- makes it more difficult to delineate the different types of bostel-Sachs typography is particularly interesting as dif- information than other versions. This could be interpreted ferent layouts of information are adopted in the German as a sign that the strong divisions found in the 1914 version original, English translation of 1961, English reprint of between the different types of information that constitute 1992 and 2011 updated version. (For more information the scheme, are not considered a core tenet of Hornbos- about these versions, see Section 4.) This asks important tel-Sachs (or at least, were not considered core by those questions about typographical meaning and its transmis- responsible for the 1992 version). The different types of sion across versions of schemes. information that make up the presentation of a classifica- Hornbostel-Sachs contains four types of information tion scheme could be considered key parts of the “verbal in the main schedules: the notation, title of class, descrip- plane” of a knowledge organization system (where the ver- Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 81 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments bal plane is an intrinsic part of a classification scheme and cessor, the Mahillon scheme; an account of the structure separate but related to the structural elements found in the of Hornbostel-Sachs and explanations for some of its notational plane (Gnoli et al. 2011)). These verbal planes structural features; an explanation of Hornbostel-Sachs’ are an important part of the knowledge organisation of notation; number-building and alternatives. So, as well as databases (Gnoli et al. 2011), which is especially interesting being a practical guide to using the scheme, the introduc- when considering the intended use of the 2011 version of tion also serves as Hornbostel-Sachs’ manifesto. Hornbostel-Sachs (see Section 4.4). The introduction to Hornbostel-Sachs is such an im- Another important factor is to examine the typographical portant source in its own right that not only is it quoted by representation of Hornbostel-Sachs’ hierarchy. The original numerous commentators on instrument classification, but German scheme used indentation to indicate hierarchy; for the English translation of the introduction is also re- example, 322.21 is set to the right of its parent class 322.2, printed in various “Grove” (the prominent encyclopaedia but to the left of its child, 322.211. However, the difficulties of music) resources. The introduction to Hornbostel- of presenting indentation within a column of a table may Sachs appears in the 1980 New Grove Dictionary of Music and be the reason that only the first few levels of the hierarchy Musicians and remains in the current version of this re- are indented. The 1961 and 2011 versions use a subtle form source, as an appendix to the entry on the classification of of indentation to indicate hierarchy, using the differences in instruments (Wachsmann et al. 1980, 2001), as well as ap- length of the decimal notation to indent the class names. pearing in the New Grove Dictionary of Instruments (Wachs- The 1992 scheme does not use indentation to represent hi- mann et al. 1984). This indicates the centrality of Horn- erarchy, which asks a question about whether hierarchy was bostel-Sachs to the development of organology; this is fur- considered an important aspect of Hornobostel-Sachs to ther discussed in Section 5.3, which places this discussion the editors of this version. All four versions also make some in the context of the impact of Hornbostel-Sachs. use of changes in typeface to represent different levels of hierarchy. The German original uses a bold weight for the 4.0 Editions, updates and revisions four main categories, and italic typeface for the fourth level; the 1961 and 2011 versions only differentiate the first level 4.1 Introducing updates from all the other levels, and do this using upper-case letters and type size; the 1992 English version uses bold weight for Hornbostel-Sachs was first published in 1914 under the ti- the four main categories, upper-case letters for the next level tle Systematik der Musikinstrumente: ein Versuch, within the down, and then italic typeface for all other levels. In conclu- German journal Zeitschrift für Ethnologie: Organ der Berliner sion, hierarchy is represented typographically in Hornbos- Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte. In tel-Sachs in various ways and comparing the different ver- other words, this seminal classification scheme was first sions illustrates different approaches to the importance of published in a journal for anthropology and ethnology, ra- visually representing the hierarchy of Hornbostel-Sachs, ther than being in a musical journal. Furthermore, the term such as the 1992 version forgoing the communication of “ein Versuch” suggests it was intended as a discussion doc- hierarchy through indentation. Furthermore, these varia- ument rather than the absolute version of a classification tions between different versions indicate that the visual rep- scheme (Montagu 2009). The publication language and resentation of hierarchy is not deeply imbued within Horn- subject area are seen by some commentators to have had a bostel-Sachs, as it is not transmitted in a consistent form be- negative effect on Hornbostel-Sachs. Baines and Wausch- tween versions. smann ([Translator’s introduction], Hornbostel and Sachs 1961), suggest that the German language and the subject 3.8 The introduction to Hornbostel-Sachs matter of the home journal hindered the accessibility of the scheme in its first fifty or so years. Similarly, Montagu Hornbostel-Sachs includes a substantial introduction writ- (2009) suggests that discussion about the proposed classi- ten by its authors. The introduction makes up a sizeable fication scheme was curtailed by the unfortunate timing of component of the scheme; for example, there are eleven- the scheme’s publication in 1914, when Europeans had and-a-bit pages of introduction in the 1961 edition, which other urgent matters to consider aside from the classifica- is the same size as the scheme itself. The introduction in- tion of instruments. cludes the following: an outline of why a systematic classi- After initial publication, Hornbostel-Sachs was subse- fication is needed and the purposes of the scheme; ideas quently adapted and altered. In fact, adapting Hornbostel- about being a classification for all cultures and this as a Sachs appears to have been prevalent even from the first driving force behind the creation of the scheme; the prob- years of the scheme: for example, Montandon produced lems of the incumbent three-category system; details an adaptation of the scheme in 1919, just five years after about, and a critique of, Hornbostel-Sachs’s direct prede- its original publication (Dournon 1992). 82 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments
4.2 Translations 4.3 New categories: introducing electrophones
Hornbostel-Sachs was translated into English for an issue A significant development sees the introduction of a fifth of the “Galpin Society Journal” in 1961. The translators, category of instruments. This category is first found in Gal- Baines and Wachsmann, describe the motivation for their pin’s (1937) book about European musical instruments, un- translation: the original German Hornbostel-Sachs is often der the title “electrophonic instruments.” Galpin’s (1937) quoted by those working with or researching instruments, book includes a discussion about instrument classification and has not been superseded in terms of usage ([Translator’s which discusses Hornbostel-Sachs and an outline of Gal- introduction], Hornbostel and Sachs 1961). Interestingly, pin’s classification scheme. Furthermore, the chapters of the Baines and Wachsmann ([Translator’s introduction], Horn- book are assigned to the broad categories of instruments bostel and Sachs 1961) acknowledge that modifications have including the new category “electrophonic instruments” been made to Hornbostel-Sachs between 1914 and 1961, (Galpin 1937). Galpin (1937, 30) acknowledges that this but they choose to translate the original 1914 text rather class is “entirely new and included here for the first time.” than any modified version. This is all the more remarkable Galpin (1937, 30) defines electrophonic instruments as “in- considering the development of a new class of electro- struments in which the sound-waves are formed by oscilla- phones in the 1930s (see Section 4.3). The translators tions set up in electronic waves.” However, the scheme that ([Translator’s introduction], Hornbostel and Sachs 1961) Galpin (1937) presents and discusses is an updated version were concerned about students having access to original of Galpin’s own 1900 scheme, which appeared between Ma- classification schemes as a source; this situates the original hillon’s scheme in 1880 and Hornbostel-Sachs in 1914. 1914 scheme as an important document in its own right, of The first appearance of the fifth category as part of such value that it should be studied in its frozen form nearly Hornbostel-Sachs appeared in 1940, in a history of musical fifty years later. This shows the pre-eminence of Hornbos- instruments by Curt Sachs (1940). Sachs (1940, 455) states tel-Sachs within the organology community, and also illumi- that there are “five main classes” of instruments, and there nates the versioning (to use the terminology of Tennis 2010) is a section for electrophones alongside the existing four cat- of the scheme by placing (retrospectively) the 1914 original egories in the “Terminology” chapter of the book. The as a distinct and self-contained document rather than part term “electrophones” is the typical title for instruments of of a continuum of minor adaptations and small updates. this nature, and this is the term adopted by the MIMO ver- In 1992, the scheme appeared in its English translation sion of Hornbostel-Sachs (see Section 4.4). However, the as part of an anthology of “reference aids” within an eth- boundaries of electrophones can be ambiguous (Kartomi nomusicology textbook (Hornbostel and Sachs 1992). 1990). For example, Bakan et al. (1990) discuss distinguish- Again, this inclusion places Hornbostel-Sachs as a cultural ing between “electrophones” and “electronophones” when work in its own right, presented as a canonical document of talking about the classification of electronic music instru- ethnomusicology. Whether the scheme appearing in a text- ments. The presence of the fifth category for electrophones book of ethnomusicology as opposed to being available in in the general Wikipedia article on Hornbostel-Sachs (Horn- a back issue of a key journal in organology would have had bostel-Sachs 2019) could be seen as evidence of the ac- much of an impact on availability, will not be explored, but cepted norm of Hornbostel-Sachs being considered a five- it is assumed that any availability issues for the 1961 edition category scheme. was resolved once older issues of the Galpin Society Journal Other new categories in Hornbostel-Sachs have also became available electronically. The 1992 reprint differs been suggested. For example, Olsen (1986) proposes a new from the 1961 version in terms of layout, typography, pagi- fundamental category for sound produced by using the hu- nation and the absence of the translators’ introduction, but man body as an instrument, called corpophones. Unlike not in the contents of the scheme or authors’ introduction. electrophones, “corpophones” do not (yet) seem to have However, there are other translations of Hornbostel- been adopted as a standard category. Sachs: for instance, the translation into Italian of the scheme and its introduction by Guizzi (2002), as well as 4.4 MIMO: a new version of Hornbostel-Sachs? translations into languages such as Catalan, Finnish and Spanish mentioned by authors commentating on Horn- There is one resource that has strong arguments for being bostel and Sachs (Kartomi 2001; Montagu 2009). The considered a truly distinct version of Hornbostel-Sachs, as translations are important to note when considering the opposed to just a new state (using the distinction found in universal intentions of Hornbostel-Sachs, and that trans- Tennis (2010)). A new version of Hornbostel-Sachs was lations are one aspect of considering the impact of a clas- published electronically in the twenty-first century, for use sification scheme (Lee 2015). by the Musical Instrument Museums Online (MIMO) pro- ject. The MIMO project’s purpose was to create “a single Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 83 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments access point to digital content and information on the col- also consider its direct descendant. Montagu’s version was lections of musical instruments held in a consortium of Eu- published in 2009, in the Polish music journal Muzyka.3 ropean museums” (Musical Instruments Museums Online Montagu (2009) uses typographical features such as crossing 2011, 1); to fulfil this aim, a new version of Hornbostel- out text and asterisks to indicate changes from the 1961 Sachs was created (Musical Instruments Museums Online translation of the 1914 scheme, to his new version. Further- 2011). According to the introduction to the scheme (Musical more, Montagu’s (2009) version builds on his previous re- Instruments Museums Online 2011), the main purpose of search and modifications to Hornbostel-Sachs from earlier this revision was to classify instruments that were invented years, such as his work with Burton in 1971 (Montagu and since the 1914 scheme was published, such as electro- Burton 1971). From this we can see that the MIMO version phones. From a knowledge organization perspective, this is a substantial revision, but its creation is part of a contin- comment is insightful: the purpose of the MIMO revision uum of scholarship through the twentieth and twenty-first was not to rethink the structure of instrument classification centuries, with Montagu a key creator of these develop- but predominantly to incorporate the new knowledge that ments. See Figure 8 for a visualisation of the MIMO scheme had been generated since the scheme was originally created. and some of its antecedents, which shows the types of rela- The MIMO version of Hornbostel-Sachs was created by tionships between the various instantiations. the “MIMO Working Group for Classification and The- Arguably the most significant change between the sauri,” chaired by Margeret Birley of the Horniman Mu- MIMO version and the original 1914 version of Hornbos- seum, London (Musical Instruments Museums Online tel-Sachs is the addition and development of the electro- 2011, 1). However, this version is closely related to another phones main category. The inclusion of electrophones was instantiation of the scheme: the revised version of Horn- inevitable, and had been missing from the English transla- bostel-Sachs by the organologist Jeremy Montagu (Musical tion in 1961 and 1992. The significant stages between Gal- Instruments Museums Online 2011). Therefore, to consider pin’s initial use of “electrophonic instruments” and the in- the MIMO version of Hornbostel-Sachs, it is imperative to clusion of an electrophones as a fifth category in the
Figure 8. The relationships between MIMO version of Hornbostel-Sachs and its antecedents. 84 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments
MIMO version are illustrated in Figure 9, although note changes do not in themselves resolve issues of using a hier- this figure only contains highlights of this development. archical structure, especially in an online age. For instance, The schedules of electrophones in MIMO are based on Weisser and Quanten (2011), writing at the same sort of the work of Maarten Quanten (Musical Instruments Mu- time as the MIMO revisions were published and dissemi- seums Online 2011). nated, argue for a different format and approach to Horn- The MIMO version also made structural changes in bostel-Sachs. They (Weisser and Quanten 2011) do not con- other categories. Examples given in the MIMO introduc- sider forcing the classifier down a single path based on initial tion (Musical Instruments Museums Online 2011) include vibration is satisfactory for all instruments. So, like countless expansions and renaming of part of kettledrums, a differ- others before them, Weisser and Quanten (2011) suggest a ent sort of division employed in the brasswinds and new new way of using Hornbostel-Sachs, with additions and categories in aerophones. Finally, the MIMO version was amendments. Therefore, the MIMO version is not an end- designed for a shared, digital environment and this has point, as the amendments, modifications and rethinking of meant changes to the notation; for example, the abbrevia- Hornbostel-Sachs keep on coming. tions in notation suggested by Hornbostel and Sachs in their introduction (Hornbostel and Sachs 1914) have been 4.5 Governance of Hornbostel-Sachs omitted. For more details about the developments en- sconced in the Montagu and MIMO versions, see the in- As a postlude, it is interesting to briefly consider the own- troductions to Montagu (2009) and MIMO (Musical In- ership and maintenance of Hornbostel-Sachs. The original struments Museums Online 2011). scheme was published in a journal, and the important 1961 The development of the MIMO version should not be English translation was also published within a journal and seen as the end of the variations, amendments and version- then is republished as a book chapter in 1992. Later ver- ing of Hornbostel-Sachs. Adding new classes and structural sions were published as papers by Montagu and then as
Figure 9. The relationships between MIMO version of Hornbostel-Sachs and its antecedents, including electrophones. Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 85 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments part of a working group for MIMO. So, there is no official many people use Hornbostel-Sachs, they are generally only ownership of Hornbostel-Sachs, other than the copyright using the first few steps or top few levels. This is illumi- of individual authors, translators and publishers. This nated by Ghirardini and Gnoli’s (2005) comments on the places Hornbostel-Sachs in contrast with modern biblio- usage of Hornbostel-Sachs, as they imply that using only graphic schemes such as DDC, UDC and the second edi- the first main classes of a scheme may be typical of a gen- tion of “Bliss Classification,” which have named editors, eral pattern of how classification schemes are used. In usually in conjunction with organisational structures of other words, many people are using broad ideas from management and governance. Perhaps the closest Horn- Hornbostel-Sachs, but there is little evidence from second- bostel-Sachs has come to such an arrangement is through ary literature that many are using the full classification the MIMO consortium working group, chaired by Marga- scheme. However, even with this cross-step it seems that ret Birley (Musical Instruments Museums Online 2011), there are conflicting accounts of Hornbostel-Sachs’ actual which worked collectively on modifying Montagu’s revised consumption when considering secondary accounts. version. Therefore, at least until the MIMO project, it So, in the absence of quantitative primary data about us- could be argued that there was no official governance of age in more traditional settings of collections of instru- Hornbostel-Sachs, and revision and maintenance was on ments, broader examples of types of usage will be analysed an ad-hoc basis, usually determined by research interest ra- instead to illuminate the different ways in which Hornbos- ther than through official review. tel-Sachs is consumed. First, Hornbostel-Sachs is used in a number of different published resources about musical in- 5.0 Reception of Hornbostel-Sachs struments. It can be used to organise lists of instruments; for instance, Blades (1982) includes a checklist of percus- The reception-related aspects of Hornbostel-Sachs are a sion instruments from a particular collection, and this list is significant part of this classification scheme. Lee’s (2015) organised using Hornbostel-Sachs, including Hornbostel- reception studies framework is used to delineate the differ- Sachs notation and extensions. This type of usage could be ent strands of reception, to consider Hornbostel-Sachs’ considered equivalent to a classified catalogue of biblio- consumption (usage), criticism and its Wirkung (the effects graphic items, such as the British Catalogue of Music and influence of the scheme). The reception of Hornbos- (Coates 1960). Hornbostel-Sachs is also used in ethnomusi- tel-Sachs will be considered from the dual perspectives of cology and organology, as a way of organising a group of its home domain (organology) and its impact on biblio- instruments found in the course of research. For instance, graphic classifications of music. Picken (1977) uses Hornbostel-Sachs to organise a list of instruments found during field research in Afghanistan. In- 5.1 Usage of Hornbostel-Sachs terestingly, there is also evidence of Hornbostel-Sachs used as a pedagogical tool. In “Musical instruments of the world: Establishing the usage of classification schemes is meth- an illustrated encyclopaedia” (1976), Hornbostel-Sachs is odologically difficult, as this information is rarely collected presented as a diagram in the encyclopaedia, as a represen- in a systematic fashion (Lee 2015). Discussions of con- tation of the world of instruments. In addition, the basic sumption of Hornbostel-Sachs in organology discourse categories of Hornbostel-Sachs are used to arrange the are mixed. On one hand, scholars describe Hornbostel- knowledge in this encyclopaedia, but note the encyclopaedia Sachs as a highly used classification scheme; for instance, does not use Hornbostel-Sachs’ notation or order of classes. it is labelled as “widely adopted” (Dournon 1992, 252) and This use of organisation system to organise a textbook is an “predominant” (Kolozali et al. 2011, 465), while Gnoli interesting example of KO in action, which perhaps could (2006) describes Hornbostel-Sachs as the most well- be related in part to Szostak’s (2018) development of KO known and used of organological schemes. A more recent systems as pedagogical tool for world history. source, Weisser and Quanten (2011, 122) say that “[Horn- Second, it is interesting to consider Hornbostel-Sachs’ bostel-Sachs] is still used by most musical instruments mu- usage in the digital age. Perhaps the most significant exam- seums and in large inventory projects such as the MIMO,” ple is the MIMO revision. This development of a new ver- and Koch and Kopal (2014) discuss its use at the Ethnol- sion of the classification scheme (see Section 4.4) was for ogisches Museum der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin and a very specific use: an online museum of instruments, other collections. On the other hand, Montagu and Burton where the new version is specifically designed to work in a (1971, 49) are not alone in stating that few organizations collaborative, digital environment. A second example of seem to use it to actually arrange their instruments. As little digital usage of Hornbostel-Sachs can be found in Wikipe- quantitative evidence is used to support either side of the dia. For instance, broad categories such as aerophones argument, we are left to inferences. Kartomi (1990) pro- have Wikipedia pages (List of Aerophones by Hornbostel- vides a possible explanation of the differing views: while Sachs number 2019) which list the classes in these catego- 86 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments ries, the associated Hornbostel-Sachs notation and exam- geregelten Charakteristika für die Ordnung von Instrumen- ples of instruments in those classes (also sometimes add- ten” (clear, regulated characteristics for the order of instru- ing extra examples not found in Hornbostel-Sachs itself). ments), suggesting that its usage can be ascribed to its posi- Such examples also make good use of hyperlinks to pro- tive, internal and structural qualities. vide what could be considered a digital, user-generated ver- However, negative comments also abound, especially sion of Hornbostel-Sachs. These lists also appear for the about specific aspects of the scheme. The inconsistency of other three categories (List of chordophones by Hornbos- how the four main classes (idiophones, chordophones, tel-Sachs number 2018, List of Idiophones by Hornbostel- membranophones and aerophones) are subdivided is a Sachs number 2018, List of Membranophones by Horn- noted disadvantage of the scheme; this can be seen in com- bostel-Sachs number 2018). (At the time of writing, the ments by Wachsmann (Wachsmann et al. 1980) and Kunst article for electrophones (Electrophone 2019) for electro- (described by Hood 1971). Other criticisms are noted, such phone does not contain a classified list of instruments with as the confusing layout instigated by the decimal notation corresponding notation, only information about this cate- (Jairazbhoy 1990b) and the treatment of borderline instru- gory.) Furthermore, some individual instruments have the ments (Kartomi 1990). Furthermore, cross-classification is “Hornbostel-Sachs classification” notation as a featured seen as an issue in Hornbostel-Sachs, as Kartomi (1990) also piece of metadata about the instrument in their Wikie- talks about issues with instruments that could live in two pedia entry, such as the flexatone (Flexatone 2018). These different places in the scheme (although this last criticism is examples show how Hornbostel-Sachs has transcended suggested as a general problem with hierarchical classifica- being a way of organising physical objects or printed in- tion rather than specifically with Hornbostel-Sachs). formation about instruments, and that Hornbostel-Sachs has been transformed for digital media and the digital age. 5.3. Effect and influence of Hornbostel-Sachs Finally, it is worth considering the use of Hornbostel- Sachs in the bibliographic sphere. Ghirardini and Gnoli The effect and influence of Hornbostel-Sachs (its “Wir- (2005) discuss their survey of library use of Hornbostel- kung”) within organology can be seen in a number of ways. Sachs: they find it is little used. However, Ghirardini and Examples already discussed in this article include the pres- Gnoli (2005) find that is Hornbostel-Sachs is used by one ence of the introduction as an appendix to articles on the library, for its books about non-western music. This high- classification of instruments in various editions of “Grove” lights the comparatively cross-cultural nature of Hornbos- (Wachsmann et al. 1980, 1984, 2001), the new versions and tel-Sachs compared to bibliographic classification schemes, translations of Hornbostel-Sachs in the twentieth and and also could be seen as a sign that the scheme’s cross-cul- twenty-first centuries and the numerous new instrument tural intentions are borne out in its reception. In addition, classification schemes in the twentieth and twenty-first cen- arguably Hornbostel-Sachs sees indirect usage in libraries turies that are adaptations of, or reactions to, Hornbostel- through its influence on the contents and structure of bib- Sachs. The latter type of Wirkung includes new schemes liographic schemes for music. This “Wirkung” is discussed created deliberately to attempt to resolve problems of in detail in Section 5.4. Hornbostel-Sachs, such as Sakuri’s scheme, which explicitly demonstrates its disagreement to Hornbostel-Sachs by in- 5.2 Criticism of Hornbostel-Sachs creasing the number of main categories (Dournon 1992). Lee (2014) has a longer discussion about these and other Criticism of Hornbostel-Sachs is historically mixed. In pos- types of Wirkung of Hornbostel-Sachs. itive criticism, labels such as “monumental” (Grame 1963, Another way of viewing the effect of the original scheme 138) and “best” (Hood 1971, 125, describing a comment by is to reconceive it as a historical document which charts the Kunst) are used. Furthermore, examples of Hornbostel and development of discourse about instruments and culture. Sachs in textbooks of music history such as Man’s Earliest Koch and Kopal (2014, 301) discuss how the scheme deals Music (Carlin 1987) could be seen as acts of criticism; in with the “exotischer” (exotic) and “primitiv” (primitive), and other words, knowledge of Hornbostel-Sachs, a classifica- suggest that the scheme is important to the study of scien- tion scheme, is seen as being crucial to knowledge of music tific history. So, the qualities of the scheme that impinge history. Specific reasons for Hornbostel-Sachs’ perceived Hornbostel-Sachs’ modern use, are the same aspects that goodness are less common, but include its intended multi- also add to its influence, by way of aiding the study of the cultural reach (Kartomi 2001). This shows how the cross- historical development of ethnomusicology, ethnology and cultural intentions of Hornbostel-Sachs might have been re- organology. alised in the execution of the scheme and appreciated by its Hornbostel-Sachs has also affected bibliographic classi- audience. In discussing the use of Hornbostel-Sachs in mu- fication schemes for music, as seen by bibliographic classifi- seums, Koch and Kopal (2014, 300) mentions its “…klar cations that have partially adopted Hornbostel-Sachs’s prin- Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 87 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments ciples, terminology and ideas. Conceptually, this means that 5.4.3 Flexible Classification a classification designed primarily for artefacts in the form of musical instruments is being transformed to classify The third example demonstrates a different type of Horn- mentefacts such as musical scores, and resources about mu- bostel-Sachs usage: using Hornbostel-Sachs ideas to struc- sical instruments.4 The scale of Hornbostel-Sachs’ infiltra- ture part of the schedules. The “Flexible Classification” tion into bibliographic classification is noteworthy. Lee (Pethes 1967) uses Hornbostel-Sachs especially in the per- (2017b) found that out of a group of fifteen bibliographic cussion part of the schedules.5 As well as using the Horn- classification schemes for music, seven made some use of bostel-Sachs terms “membranophones” and “idiophones,” Hornbostel-Sachs. In these examples, the level and types of these classes are also arranged in line with the Hornbostel- influence varies; sometimes the bibliographic schemes bor- Sachs broad categories. Within each of the classes, various row Hornbostel-Sachs’s terminology, while sometimes they Hornbostel-Sachs ideas relating to how the sound is made use its structure. Some examples of these influences are (for instance, struck, shaken and friction) are used to organ- given in the next section; information about the methodol- ize the classes, albeit the ideas are not employed in the same ogy of these investigations, and differences between implicit order as Hornbostel-Sachs. It is noteworthy that it is percus- and explicit factors, can be found in Lee (2017b). sion that gains the detailed, explicit Hornbostel-Sachs make- over in “Flexible Classification.” Bibliographic schemes typ- 5.4 Examples of Hornbostel-Sachs used in ically treat percussion instruments as being less important bibliographic classification than the other categories, which stems from the low im- portance attached to percussion within earlier periods of 5.4.1 Bliss Classification western art music (see Lee 2017b). So, we could see “Flexi- ble Classification” as a realisation in the bibliographic world The first example is taken from the first edition of Bliss of Hornbostel-Sachs’ cross-cultural aims. Classification (Bliss 1953). There is one Hornbostel-Sachs reference in this scheme, which comes in the VWT part of 5.4.4 UDC the schedules. This contains a class entitled “stringed instru- ments, chordophones;” so, the Hornbostel-Sachs category The fourth example is UDC, which has a fuller adoption of of chordophones is given as an alternative name for string Hornbostel-Sachs. UDC is unusual in adopting Hornbostel- instruments. There are no other signs of Hornbostel-Sachs Sachs’s four main categories as its structure, and the scheme usage in the arrangement or terminology of this scheme, includes a plethora of Hornbostel-Sachs terminology and showing how Hornbostel-Sachs can be used just as a pass- structural aspects. For example, like Hornbostel-Sachs, ing reference. UDC has no keyboard category; instead, individual types of keyboard instrument are scattered amongst the main cate- 5.4.2 DDC early editions gories. However, there are also ways that UDC does not fol- low Hornbostel-Sachs; for example, UDC’s classes are for The second examples come from the pre-twentieth edi- individual instruments rather than characteristics of instru- tions of DDC; in other words, the examples are taken from ments, and UDC does not adopt Hornbostel-Sachs’ order editions before the revolutionary changes wrought by the within the idiophones category. Therefore, UDC shows “Phoenix Schedule” for music (Sweeney et al. 1980). The how Hornbostel-Sachs can be a strong influence on struc- fifteenth edition of DDC, published in 1951, is the first ture, terminology and order of concepts, without the bibli- edition of DDC to use Hornbostel-Sachs terminology: it ographic scheme entirely replicating Hornbostel-Sachs. chooses to describe as “membranophones” what had pre- viously been labelled “drum” (Dewey 1951), and this label 5.4.5 DDC Phoenix Schedule and modern editions is maintained until the major changes of the “Phoenix Schedule.” In addition, the fifteenth edition of DDC also The fifth example is the “Phoenix Schedule” of DDC, uses the Hornbostel-Sachs term “electrophones;” how- which is the basis for the DDC music schedules for the ever, this term is dropped in the sixteenth to nineteenth twentieh edition onwards. For instance, Hornbostel-Sachs editions. In light of the revolutionary nature of the fif- terminology is used in the “Phoenix Schedule,” although it teenth edition of DDC, including its adoption of more deliberately sits alongside more conventional names for in- modern terminology (Comaromi 1976), these examples of struments and instrumental families; this again sets up the Hornbostel-Sachs terminology could be considered as a positioning of Hornbostel-Sachs as terminologically ad- reflection on the perceived standing and symbolism of vanced, with terms such as “strings” situated as the popular Hornbostel-Sachs. They position Hornbostel-Sachs as term. It is particularly insightful to consider the influence of equating to “modern” in the eyes of DDC’s authors. Hornbostel-Sachs on the “Phoenix Schedule,” when read- 88 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments ing the scheme alongside the “Phoenix Schedule” authors’ symbolism of Hornbostel-Sachs, showing how the scheme stated intentions to base their scheme on Hornbostel-Sachs signifies technical knowledge and modernity. Perhaps the (Methodologically, this can be seen as using part of a multi- only true new “version” of the scheme is the MIMO ver- plane approach by delineating different types of infor- sion, although examining the germination of this version mation about classification schemes (Lee 2017a)). One ex- shows a complex and intriguing web of influences and rela- ample is keyboard instruments. These are given their own tionships. The MIMO version is particularly exciting for category in the “Phoenix Schedule,” despite this negating showing how a scheme from 1914 designed to organise the fundamental feature of Hornbostel-Sachs, which has physical collections of instruments, can be significant, dom- four broad categories separated by the method of sound inating and versatile enough to be reimagined for a digital production (for a fuller account, see Lee 2017b). Another collection of instruments nearly a century later. Above all, example can be found in the inclusion and exclusion of clas- Hornbostel-Sachs is shown to be a central classification ses. While the authors of the “Phoenix Schedule” say they scheme for curating and studying instruments, as well as use Hornbostel-Sachs deliberately to create instrument playing a central role in musical instrument research and schedules that are a “value-free basis for the classification” practice. (Sweeney et al. 1980, xxii), so in other words will be less western-centric, actually many classes in Hornbostel-Sachs Notes that do not have any western exemplars are missing from the DDC “Phoenix Schedule.” 1. Kartomi (1990) discusses how Galpin’s 1900 scheme also utilises Mahillon’s four-category system, albeit with 6.0 Conclusion different names; however, as the next levels of hierar- chy within these categories did not follow Mahillon, and Hornbostel-Sachs is a highly significant classification within it is Mahillon that is mostly mentioned by Hornbostel the theory and practice of organology. The scheme drew and Sachs, Galpin’s 1900 scheme will not be discussed upon developments in instrument classification, such as Ma- further. hillon’s division into four categories, while purposefully de- 2. According to Gnoli (2018), a decimal classification is signing a scheme that moves away from single-culture, west- usually associated with ten divisions, so there is a ques- ern-centric structures of instrument classification. Further- tion about whether Hornbostel-Sachs’s notation can be more, the scheme was highly original in its borrowing of the called a “decimal notation” in the purest sense of the bibliographic idea of decimal classification, creating what term. the authors believed to be a culture-free notation as well as 3. Note that there is also, at the time of writing, an open a way of representing the hierarchy of the scheme within its access copy of this paper available from Montagu’s notation. While aiming to be universal in the cultures it cov- website dated from 2008, which is almost identical to ered, the extensions and alternatives offered by Hornbostel- the 2009 publication. For simplification, only the 2009 Sachs hint at strong localisation in the intended usage of the paper will be cited, as this is the published format. scheme. 4. Although, it should be noted that while primarily de- Exploring the versions of Hornbostel-Sachs shows the signed for the classification of instruments, Hornbos- establishment of the contents of the 1914 original as a mon- tel-Sachs was also intended by its authors to be used for ument of music and organology history. This is evident treatises and similar about instruments. from the translation of the original scheme nearly fifty years 5. “A Flexible Classification System of Music and Litera- later after it was published and the inclusion of a translation ture on Music” was written by the Hungarian music li- of the 1914 scheme in a late twentieth century anthology of brarian, Ìvan Pethes, based on the UDC schedules and key texts in ethnomusicology. However, this article has initiated by the International Association of Music Li- shown that the representation of classification information braries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML). by typographical means was not sacred, as this was generally The “Flexible Classification” aimed to be a universal not transmitted into translations or later versions. classification for music literature and scores, which An examination of the reception of Hornbostel-Sachs would bring together disparate classification practices highlighted some interesting contrasts between perception into one scheme but appears to have resulted in little and reality, especially in terms of its actual usage. While usage in libraries. Hornbostel-Sachs seemed to be used for arranging collec- tions of instruments in the twentieth century, scholars such References as Koch and Kopal (2014) have reservations about its suita- bility for this purpose. Furthermore, examining Hornbostel- Bakan, Michael B., Wanda Bryant, Guangming Li, David Sachs’ reach into bibliographic classification, illustrates the Martinelli and Kathryn Vaughn. 1990, “Demystifying Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 89 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments
and Classifying Electronic Music Instruments.” In Issues Gnoli, Claudio. 2006. “Phylogenetic Classification.” Know- in Organology, ed. Sue Carole DeVale. Los Angeles: Uni- ledge Organization 33: 138-52. versity of California, Los Angeles, 37-64. Gnoli, Claudio. 2018a. "Mentefacts as a Missing Level in Barité, Mario. 2018. “Literary Warrant.” Knowledge Organi- Theory of Information Science." Journal of Documentation zation 45: 517-36. 74: 1226-42. doi:10.1108/JD-04-2018-0054 Beghtol, Claire. 2003. “Classification for Information Re- Gnoli, Claudio. 2018b. “Notation.” Knowledge Organization trieval and Classification for Knowledge Discovery: Re- 45: 667-84. lationships between “Professional” and “Naive” Classi- Gnoli, Claudio, Philippe Cousson, Tom Pullman, Gabriele fications.” Knowledge Organization 30: 64-73. Merli and Rick Szostak. 2011. “Representing the Struc- Blades, James. 1982. A Checklist of the Percussion Instruments tural Elements of a Freely Faceted Classification.” In in the Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical In- Classification & Ontology: Formal Approaches and Access to struments. Edinburgh: Reid School of Music. Knowledge: Proceedings of the International UDC Seminar, 19- Bliss, Henry Evelyn. 1953. A Bibliographic Classification: Ex- 20 September 2011, The Hague, The Netherlands, ed. Aida tended by Systematic Auxiliary Schedules for Composite Specifi- Slavic and Edgardo Civallero. Würzburg: Ergon, 193- cation and Notation. New York: H.W. Wilson. 205. British Standards Institution. 2006. UDC, Universal Decimal Grame, Theodore C. 1963. Review of Classification of Musical Classification. 3rd ed. London: British Standards Institu- Instruments by Erich M. Von Hornbostel, Curt Sachs, An- tion. thony Baines and Klaus P. Wachsmann. Ethnomusicology 7, Brown, Howard Mayer. 2001. "Instrument." Grove Music no. 2: 137-8. Online. Guizzi, Febo. 2002. Guida alla Musica Popolare Italiana. 3: Gli Carlin, Richard. 1987. Man’s Earliest Music. New York: Facts instrumenti. Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana. on File. Heyde, Herbert. 1977. “Eine indische Klassifikation der Coates, Eric. 1960. The British Catalogue of Music Classifica- Musikinstrumente: Bemerkungen zu den Systematiken tion. London: Council of the British National Bibliog- von Bharata, Cassiodor, Hornbostel/Sachs, besonders raphy. Nārada.” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 34, no. 2: 148-52. Comaromi, John Phillip. 1976. The Eighteen Editions of the Hood, Mantle. 1971. The Ethnomusicologist. New York: Dewey Decimal Classification. Albany, NY: Forest Press. McGraw-Hill. DeVale, Sue Carole. 1990. “Organizing Organology.” In Hornbostel, Erich M. von and Curt Sachs. 1914. “Sys- Issues in Organology, ed. Sue Carole DeVale. Los Angeles: tematik der Musikinstrumente. Ein Versuch.” Zeitschrift University of California, Los Angeles, 1-34. für Ethnologie: Organ der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropolo- Dewey Decimal Classification. 2016. EPC Exhibit 139- gie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte 46: 553-90. S78.1: 785.6-785: Ensembles Consisting of Only One Instru- Hornbostel, Erich M. von and Curt Sachs. 1992. “Classifi- mental Group. [Exhibit for Editorial Policy Committee 6- cation of Musical Instruments.” In Ethnomusicology: An In- 7 June 2016, exhibit by R. Green]. Dublin, OH: OCLC. troduction, ed. Helen Myers. London: Macmillan, 444-61. Dewey, Melvil. 1951. Decimal Classification. 15th ed. Milton Hornbostel, Erich M. von and Curt Sachs. 1961. “Classifi- James Ferguson, chairman and ed. Lake Placid, NY: cation of Musical Instruments.” Trans. Anthony Baines Forest Press. and Klaus P. Wachsmann. Galpin Society Journal 14: 3-29. Diagram Group. 1976. Musical Instruments of the World: An Translation of “Systematik der Musikinstrumente. Ein Illustrated Encyclopaedia. London: Paddington. Versuch,” 1914. doi:10.2307/842168 “Electrophone.” 2019. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia. “Hornbostel-Sachs.” 2019. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipe org/wiki/Electrophone dia.org/wiki/Hornbostel%E2%80%93Sachs “Flexatone.” 2018. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/ Hjørland, Birger. 2008. “Classifying Madness: A Philo- wiki/Flexatone sophical Examination of the Manual of Mental Disor- Dournon, Genevieve. 1992. "Organology." In Ethnomusi- ders.” Knowledge Organization 35: 259-63. cology: An Introduction, ed. Helen Myers. London: Mac- Jairazbhoy, Nazir Ali. 1990a. “The Beginnings of Organ- millan, 245-300. ology and Ethnomusicology in the West: V. Mahillon, Galpin, Francis W. 1937. A Textbook of European Musical A. Ellis and S. M. Tagore.” In Issues in Organology, ed. Sue Instruments. London: Williams & Norgate. Carole DeVale. Los Angeles: University of California, Ghirardini, Cristina and Claudio Gnoli. 2005. ´”Zampogne Los Angeles, 67-80. e Libri sulle Zampogne: Classificazioni Diverse.” Bibli- Jairazbhoy, Nazir Ali. 1990b. “An Explication of the Sachs- otime 8, no. 3. http://www.aib.it/aib/sezioni/emr/bib Hornbostel Instrument Classification System.” In Issues time/num-viii-3/gnoli.htm in Organology, ed. Sue Carole DeVale. Los Angeles: Uni- versity of California, Los Angeles, 81-104. 90 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 D. Lee. Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments
Kartomi, Margaret J. 1990. On Concepts and Classifications of “List of Idiophones by Hornbostel-Sachs number.” 2018. Musical Instruments. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_idio Kartomi, Margaret J. 2001. “The Classification of Musical phones_by_Hornbostel%E2%80%93Sachs_number Instruments: Changing Trends in Research from the “List of Membranophones by Hornbostel-Sachs number.” Late Nineteenth Century, with Special Reference to the 2018. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_ 1990s.” Ethnomusicology: Journal of the Society for Ethnomu- of_membranophones_by_Hornbostel%E2%80%93 sicology 45: 283-314. Sachs_number Katz, Israel J. 2001. “Hornbostel, Erich M(oritz) von.” Mai, Jens-Erik. 2011. “The Modernity of Classification.” Grove Music Online. Journal of Documentation 67, no. 4: 710-730. doi:10.1108/ Kolozali, Sefki, Mathieu Barthet, Gyorgy Fazekas and 00220411111145061 Mark Sandler. 2011. “Knowledge Representation Issues Mahillon, Victor-Charles. 1880. Catalogue Descriptif & Ana- in Musical Instrument Ontology Design.” In ISMIR lytique du Musée Instrumental du Conservatoire Royal de Brux- 2011: Proceedings of the 12th International Society for Music elles: Précédé d’un Essai de Classification de Tous les Instruments Information Retrieval Conference, October 24–28, 2011, Mi- Anciens et Modernes. Ghent: C. Annoot-Braeckman. ami, Florida, ed. Anssi Klapuri and Colby Leider. Miami: Montagu, Jeremy and John Burton. 1971. “A Proposed University of Miami, 465-70. New Classification System for Musical Instruments.” Koch, Lars-Christian and Ricarda Kopal. 2014. “Klassi- Ethnomusicology 15: 49-70. fikation von Musikinstrumenten – Zum 100-jährigen Montagu, Jeremy. 2009. “It’s Time to Look at Hornbostel- Bestehen der Hornbostel-Sachs-Systematik.” Zeitschrift Sachs Again.” Muzyka: Kwartalnik Poświęcony Historii i Teo- für Ethnologie 139: 281-302. rii Muzyki 54, no. 1: 7-28. Lee, Deborah. 2014. “Webs of ‘Wirkung’: Modelling the In- Montagu, Jeremy. 2008. “It’s Time to Look at Hornbostel- terconnectedness of Classification Schemes.” In Know- Sachs again: Hornbostel-Sachs Reconsidered.” http:// ledge Organization in the 21st Century: Between Historical Pat- www.jeremymontagu.co.uk/Hornbostel-Sachs%20Re terns and Future Prospects: Proceedings of the Thirteenth Interna- considered.pdf tional ISKO conference, 19-22 May 2014, Krakow, Poland, ed. MIMO (Musical Instruments Museums Online). 2011. “Re- Wiesław Babik. Advances in Knowledge Organization vision of the Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical 14. Würzburg: Ergon, 200-7. Instruments by the MIMO Consortium.” Last modified Lee, Deborah. 2015. “Consumption, Criticism and Wir- 8 July. http://network.icom.museum/fileadmin/user_ kung: Reception-Infused Analysis of Classification upload/minisites/cimcim/documents/H-S_20classifica Schemes.” Knowledge Organization 42: 508-21. tion_20final_20version_20_282013_29_20without_20 Lee, Deborah. 2017a. “Conceptions of Knowledge about editorial_20markings-2.pdf Classification Schemes: A Multiplane Approach.” Infor- Olsen, Dale. 1986. “"Is it Time for Another - Phone?” SEM mation Research 22, no. 1. http://www.informationr.net/ newsletter 20, no. 4: 5. ir/22-1/colis/colis1648.html Pethes, Ìvan. 1967. A Flexible Classification System of Music Lee, Deborah. 2017b. “Modelling Music: A Theoretical Ap- and Literature on Music. Preprint ed. Budapest: Centre of proach to the Classification of Notated Western Art Mu- Library Science and Technology. sic.” PhD diss., City, University of London. http://open Picken, Laurence E. R. “Some Children’s Sound-Producing access.city.ac.uk/17445/ Toys and Other ‘Primitive’ Musical Instruments from Af- Lee, Deborah. 2017c. “Numbers, Instruments and Hands: ghanistan.” In Neue Ethnomusikologische Forschungen: Fest- The Impact of Faceted Analytical Theory on Classifying schrift Felix Hoerburger zum 60. Geburtstag am 9. Dezember Music Ensembles.” Knowledge Organization 44: 405-15. 1976, ed. Peter Baumann, Rudolf Maria Brandl and Kurt Lee, Deborah, Lyn Robinson and David Bawden. 2019. Reinhard. Regensburg: Laaber-Verlag, 177-89. “Modelling the Relationship between Scientific and Ramey, Michael. 1974. “A Classification of Musical Instru- Bibliographic Classification for Musi.c” Journal of the ments for Comparative Study.” PhD diss., University of Association of Information Science and Technology 70, no. 3: California Los Angeles. 230-41. doi:10.1002/asi.24120 Sachs, Curt. 1914. “Die Hornbostel-Sachs’sche Klassifika- “List of Aerophones by Hornbostel-Sachs number.” 2019. tion der Musikinstrumente.” Die Naturwissenschaften. 2, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aero no. 51: 1056-9 phones_by_Hornbostel%E2%80%93Sachs_number Sachs, Curt. 1940. The History of Musical Instruments. New “List of Chordophones by Hornbostel-Sachs number.” Yo r k : W. W. N o r t o n . 2018. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_ Sweeney, Russell, John Clews and Winton E. Matthews. of_chordophones_by_Hornbostel%E2%80%93Sachs 1980. 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of 780 Music Based on Dewey Decimal Classification and Rel- Wachsmann, Klaus, Erich M. von Hornbostel and Curt ative Index. Albany, NY: Forest Press. Sachs. 1984. “Classification.” In The New Grove Dictionary Szostak, Rick. 2014. “How Universal is Universality?” Know- of Musical Instruments, ed. Stanley Sadie. London: Macmil- ledge Organization 41: 468-70. lan, 407-10. Szostak, Rick. 2018. “Applied Knowledge Organization and Wachsmann, Klaus, Erich M. von Hornbostel and Curt the History of the World.” In Challenges and Opportunities Sachs. 1980. “Instruments, Classification of.” In The New for Knowledge Organization in the Digital Age: Proceedings of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie. Fifteenth International ISKO Conference, 9-11 July 2018, Porto, London: Macmillan, 237-45. Portugal, ed. Fernanda Ribeiro and Maria Elisa Cerveira. Wachsmann, Klaus, Kartomi, Margaret, Hornbostel, Erich Advances in Knowledge Organization 16. Würzburg: Er- M. von and Sachs, Curt. 2001. “Instruments, Classifica- gon, 52-7. tion of.” Grove Music Online. Tennis, Joseph. T. 2010, “Measured Time: Imposing a Tem- Weisser, Stéphanie and Maarten Quanten. 2011. “Rethink- poral Metric to Classificatory Structures.” In Paradigms ing Musical Instrument Classification: Towards a Mod- and Conceptual Systems in Knowledge Organization: Proceedings ular Approach to the Hornbostel-Sachs System.” Year- of the Eleventh International ISKO Conference 23-26 February book for Traditional Music 43: 122-46. 2010, Rome, Italy, ed. Claudio Gnoli and Fulvio Maz- zocchi. Advances in Knowledge Organization 12. Würz- burg: Ergon, 223-8.
92 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 Letters to the Editor
Letter to the Editor
DOI:10.5771/0943-7444-2020-1-92
Popularity of entries in ISKO Encyclopedia of Know- Dividing the former value by the latter, we got a visit ledge Organization rate v for every entry. Resulting values of v range between 0.89 and 17.36 visits per day per entry, with a mean of 4.11. The ISKO Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization (IEKO) was The ten most often visited entries are as shown in Table 1. launched in 2016 by Birger Hjørland, its Editor-in-chief, as There are many possible ways to explain these results. an official ISKO initiative; Claudio Gnoli joined soon as A first observation is that the most visited entries concern co-editor and web editor. Peer-reviewed articles are publi- very general topics in KO and the broader field of library- shed online at http://www.isko.org/cyclo/ then printed in and-information science (LIS)—as opposed to, for exa- the Knowledge Organization journal (Dextre Clarke 2017). mple, knowledge organization systems (KOSs) in specific Since 2018, the Web version of new entries includes a fields or biographical articles on individual KO authors. counter of independent visits provided by Digits.net; the This may reflect a use of IEKO in educational contexts, counter has also been progressively introduced for all previ- contributing to a greater awareness of the basics of our ously-published entries, keeping track of the date when the field among non-specialists. count has started. After a couple of years, such statistics of- Exceptions to this are the entries on Hornbostel-Sachs fer an interesting hint to assess which topics are the most and on the classification of psychology, which may have popular in our field. Obviously, this is not an objective mea- been largely used due to the popularity of the subject as sure of the absolute relevance of a topic or quality of a page: taught in specific KO courses or to the renown of their for example, an entry on a very specific topic can be expec- authors. In general, humanities may be of greater interest ted to be consulted less often than those on more general to the KO community than other covered fields, such as topics, yet still be a necessary component in the documen- physics or astronomy, although this hypothesis would need tation of knowledge organization (KO) concepts. further evidence. On 8 November 2019, we have tabulated the current The systematic index of IEKO is organized by broad value of counters for 46 IEKO entries. The other 11 ent- categories that are identified by capital letters (compatible ries available at that time have not been considered, as they with the Integrative Levels Classification (ILC) notational still had not had a counter for a period significant enough system for special and local schemes) and used in anchor (at least 40 days). Visits for an individual page ranged links. We have aggregated data on visit rates by such cate- between 113 and 9010. As these values are clearly biased gories and calculated the average v for each category and by the different age of each counter, we have weighed subcategory. Results are shown in Table 2. them by the number of days elapsed since the introduction As can be seen, general entries on the discipline itself of the counter (often, though not always, coinciding with (entry on “KO”) and adjacent disciplines (entry on “LIS”) the entry creation). Number of elapsed days ranged have by far the highest average v, confirming that users’ between 44 and 604. interests focus on introductory resources. Apart from this,
17.36 Knowledge pyramid: the DIKW hierarchy 14.83 Library and information science (LIS) 11.60 Knowledge organization (KO) 11.49 Classification 6.92 Hornbostel-Sachs Classification of Musical Instruments 6.91 Literary warrant 6.58 Citation indexing and indexes 6.27 Knowledge organization system (KOS) 6.17 Indexing: concepts and theory 6.13 Classification of psychology
Table 1. Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 93 Letters to the Editor
5.53 A KO: general and historical issues 13.21 AD Discipline and adjacent disciplines 1.68 AR Biographical articles 5.35 C Core concepts in KO 5.46 CC Theoretical concepts 4.16 CS Specific document types, genres and media 3.29 K Knowledge organization systems (KOS) 4.98 KA KOS general issues 5.21 KD KOS kinds 1.87 KG Specific KOSs, general/universal 2.85 KL Specific KOSs, domain/specific 2.90 KN KO in specific domains 2.87 KS Standards and formats for representing data 4.83 P Knowledge organizing processes (KOP) 2.48 R Methods, approaches and philosophies 2.09 T KO in different contexts and applications
Table 2. the average values for all broad categories do not differ Via Ferrata 1, 27100 Pavia, Italy very much. The low value for general KOSs can be explai-
Letter to the Editor
DOI:10.5771/0943-7444-2020-1-93
Databases should Keep Pace with the Needs of sci- on countries or regions has always been a hot topic. A large entific Exploration: “Nationality” should be added to number of results can be obtained when searching for a scientific Research Databases country, a region, developing country, or developed country in Google Scholar. The question arises: How do we consider The rapid development of science and technology has shor- the impact of those who work abroad on related research? tened the distances among people from different countries It is difficult to assess the specific impact of talents on and regions. Many people study or work abroad rather than national development and social progress. Even the most in their home countries. According to Decoding Global Ta- intuitive literature analysis work is also facing difficulties. lent 2018 (https://on.bcg.com/2tB3qy7), 57% of respon- A great deal of literature analysis is based on Science Citation dents expressed willingness to work abroad. Working ab- Index and Social Sciences Citation Index in the Web of Science road has become a global trend. At the same time, research database. However, it should be noted that the “Count- 94 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 Letters to the Editor ries/Regions Search” in the Web of Science database refers addition, a series of studies can be carried out and com- to the countries in which the authors work. There is no pared with existing studies to better understand social relevant nationality information in the Web of Science data- problems and promote global progress. base. Nationality information is crucial to the rigor and ac- curacy of relevant research. Do researchers manually coll- Therefore, I suggest that databases like Web of Science ect nationalities of so many unfamiliar people one by one? should include nationality-related items. It is not my o- It sounds impractical and absurd. pinion to determine the author's nationality one by one for Faced with such a problem, it is particularly necessary those articles that have been published. I do not want to to add nationality information to the scientific research bring trouble to the staff of databases and publishers. database, and it can bring the following benefits for future Rather, I suggest that the newly published studies contain research: “nationality” from a certain time in the future. And 3 years, 5 years or 10 years later, there will be enough samples for 1. Save time for relevant research staff. scholars to carry out a series of studies. 2. Manual processing in a study is often difficult to verify. Finally, it must be noted that not just the Web of Science If there are nationality-related items in the database, re- database that needs to be improved and not just the “nati- viewers or readers can easily and accurately verify the onality” problem that needs to be solved. I hope to attract findings when they have doubts. more innovative databases or other scientific research 3. The number of highly skilled talents working abroad tools through the “nationality” problem. With the pro- and their institutions in any field can be accurately and gress of the times, if the indicators in the database remain quickly obtained. That is to say, it can help us track spe- unchanged, they may not be able to keep up with the needs cific data about talents flow in any field of any country. of scientific exploration. A little change today maybe pro- The accurate data on the changes in people working ab- vides valuable contributions for future research. Why don't road will be easily obtained. The information about ta- we do that? lent flow obtained in such a way is certainly more accu- rate and helpful than the sample interview. What’s Guangyue Wei more, the cost of research will be reduced compared to Xidian University the troublesome interview survey. And surveys like De- Xian, China coding Global Talent 2018 will be easier and more con-
Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 95 Books Recently Published
Books Recently Published Compiled by J. Bradford Young
DOI:10.5771/0943-7444-2020-1-95
Asokan, G. 2020. Science of Language in Vedic Tradition: Pho- Jal, Murzban and Jyoti Bawane, eds. 2020. Theory and Praxis: netics, Grammar, Logic, & Epistemology. Delhi: Parima. Reflections on the Colonization of Knowledge. New York: Ballestro, John, ed. 2020. The Library’s Guide to Graphic Nov- Routledge. els. Chicago: ALA Editions. Jennex, Murray Eugene, ed. 2020. Current Issues and Trends Baumann, Benjamin and Daniel Bultmann, eds. 2020. So- in Knowledge Management, Discovery and Transfer. Hershey, cial Ontology, Sociocultures and Inequality in the Global South. PA: Information Science Reference. New York: Routledge. Ji, Meng. 2020. Translating and Communicating Environmental Bursten, Julia R.S. 2020. Perspectives on Classification in Syn- Cultures. Routledge Studies in Empirical Translation and thetic Sciences: Unnatural Kinds. New York: Routledge. Multilingual Communication. New York: Routledge. Chimakonam, Jonathan O. and Uchenna L. Ogbonnaya, Katerere, David R., Wendy Applequist, Oluwaseyi M. eds. 2020. African Metaphysics, Epistemology and a New Aboyade and Chamunorwa Togo, eds. 2020. Traditional Logic: Emerging Research and Opportunities. Hershey, PA: and Indigenous Knowledge for the Modern Era: A Natural and Information Science Reference. Applied Science Perspective. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press. Crowder, Jerome W., Mike Fortun, Rachel Besara, Lindsay McCain, Kevin and Kostas Kampourakis. 2020. What Is Poirier, eds. 2020. Anthropological Data in the Digital Age: Scientific Knowledge? An Introduction to Contemporary Episte- New Possibilities – New Challenges. Cham, Switzerland: mology of Science. New York: Routledge. Palgrave Macmillan. Mendoza-González, Ricardo, Huizilopoztli Luna-García Das, Asit Kumar, Janmenjoy Nayak, Bighnaraj Naik, and Alfredo Mendoza-González, eds. 2020. UXD and Soumen Kumar Pati, Danilo Pelusi, eds. 2020. Computa- UCD Approaches for Accessible Education. Hershey, PA: In- tional Intelligence in Pattern Recognition: Proceedings of CIPR formation Science Reference. 2019. Singapore: Springer. Olson, David L. and Desheng Wu. 2020. Predictive Data Fiori, Alessandro. 2020. Trends and Applications of Text Sum- Mining Models. 2nd ed. Singapore: Springer. marization Techniques. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Pernecky, Tomas, ed. Postdisciplinary Knowledge. New York: Fricker, Miranda, Peter J. Graham, David Henderson and Routledge. Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen, eds. 2020. The Routledge Hand- Wilson, Emma Annette, ed. 2020. Digital Humanities for Li- book of Social Epistemology. New York: Routledge. brarians. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Hirsh, Sandra and Susan Alman. 2020. Blockchain. Chicago: ALA Neal-Schuman.
96 Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 Index to Volume 46 (2019)
Index to Volume 46 (2019) No. 1, pp. 1-74; No. 2, pp. 75-155; No. 3, pp. 159-240; No. 4, pp. 243-333; No. 5, pp. 335-400; No. 6, pp. 401-489; No. 7, pp. 491-569; No. 8, pp. 571-669.
DOI:10.5771/0943-7444-2020-1-96
ALPHABETICAL INDEX Freeman, Graham and Robert J. Glushko. Organization, Not Inspiration: A Historical Perspective 1. Articles of Musical Information Architecture ...... 161
Bak, Greg, Danielle Allard, and Shawna Ferris. Frické, Martin. The Knowledge Pyramid: the DIKW Knowledge Organization as Knowledge Creation: Hierarchy ...... 33 Surfacing Community Participation in Archival Arrangement and Description ...... 502 Gomes, Pablo and Maria Guiomar da Cunha Frota. Knowledge Organization from a Social Perspective: Barité, Mario. Towards a General Conception of Thesauri and the Commitment to Cultural Diversity ...... 639 Warrants: First Notes ...... 647 Hauser, Elliott and Joseph T. Tennis. Episemantics: Bragato Barros, Thiago Henrique and Renato Tarciso Aboutness as Aroundness ...... 590 Barbosa de Sousa. Archival Science and Knowledge Organization: Mapping Methodological Johansson, Sandra and Koraljka Golub. LibraryThing Relationships ...... 493 for Libraries: How Tag Moderation and Size Limitations Affect Tag Clouds ...... 245 Broughton, Vanda. The Respective Roles of Intellectual Creativity and Automation in Representing Koraljka Golub. Automatic Subject Indexing of Text ...... 104 Diversity: Human and Machine Generated Bias ...... 596 Korwin, Wendy and Haakon Lund. Alphabetization ...... 209 Chen, Lielei and Hui Fang. An Automatic Method for Extracting Innovative Ideas Based on the Scopus® Kwaśnik, Barbara H. Changing Perspectives on Database ...... 171 Classification as a Knowledge-Representation Process ...... 656
Chen, Shu-Jiun. Semantic Enrichment of Linked Legendere, Ariadne. The Development of the Archival Materials ...... 530 Canadian Research and Development Classification ...... 371
Chen, Shu-Jiun. Semantic Enrichment of Linked Lin, Feng-Tyan. Drawing a Knowledge Map of Personal Authority Data: A Case Study of Elites in Smart City Knowledge in Academia ...... 419 Late Imperial China ...... 607 Lu, Wei, Xin Li, Zhifeng Liu and Qikai Cheng. How Clarke, Stella G. Dextre. The Information Retrieval do Author-Selected Keywords Function Semantically Thesaurus...... 439 in Scientific Manuscripts? ...... 403
Clavier, Viviane. Knowledge Organization, Data and Moeller, Robin A. and Kim E. Becnel. “Why on Earth Algorithms: The New Era of Visual Representations ...... 615 Would We Not Genrefy the Books?”: A Study of Reader-Interest Classification in School Libraries ...... 199 Coen, Gerard and Richard P. Smiraglia. Toward Better Interoperability of the NARCIS Classification ...... 345 Naskar, Debashis and Subhashis Das. HNS Ontology Using Faceted Approach ...... 187 de Mattos Souza, Rosale. The Representation of Archival Information in Controlled Vocabularies: Nikiforova, Aleksandra A. Soil Classification ...... 467 The Context of the Archival Institutions in Rio de Janeiro ...... 548 Quinlan, Emma and Pauline Rafferty. Astronomy Classification: Towards a Faceted Classification Scheme ...... 260 Dick, Steven J. Astronomy’s Three Kingdom System: A Comprehensive Classification System of Celestial Rafferty, Pauline. Disrupting the Metanarrative: Objects ...... 460 A Little History of Image Indexing and Retrieval ...... 4
Finnemann, Niels Ole. Web Archive ...... 47 Saarti, Jarmo. Fictional Literature, Classification and Indexing ...... 320
Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1 97 Index to Volume 46 (2019)
Sandy, Heather Moulaison and Andrew Dillon. 2. Brief Communications Mapping the KO Community ...... 578 Solc, Roman. Brief Communication: Some Critical Schöpfel, Joachim, Dominic Farace, Hélène Prost Notes on the Czech System of Evaluation of and Antonella Zane. Data Papers as a New Form of Research ...... 387 Knowledge Organization in the Field of Research Data ...... 622 Thorat, Rahul and Reinout van Brakel. Brief Communication: The Need for a National-Level Smiraglia, Richard P. Trajectories for Research: Working Group for Higher Education Research Data Fathoming the Promise of the NARCIS Classification ...... 337 in The Netherlands ...... 380
Smiraglia, Richard P. Work ...... 308 3. Features, Editorials, Etc.
Stuart, Emma. Flickr: Organizing and Tagging Annual Progress in Thesaurus Research? ...... 238 Images Online ...... 223 Broughton, Vanda. Emeritus Professor Ia McIlwaine: Tognoli, Natalia and José Augusto Chaves Guimarães. An Appreciation ...... 573 Provenance as a Knowledge Organization Principle ...... 558 Peer Review in 2018 ...... 3 Tognoli, Natália Bolfarini, Ana Célia Rodrigues, and José Augusto Chaves Guimarães Archival Knowledge: Sixth Annual “Best Article in KO Award” ...... 668 Conceptual Frameworks for Recent Terminology in the KO Domain ...... 522 Xiao, Guohua. Explainable AI: Linking Human and Machine ...... 398 Vancauwenbergh, Sadia and Hanne Poelmans. The Flemish Research Discipline Classification Standard: Xiao, Guohua. The Brain is a Knowledge Graph ...... 71 A Practical Approach ...... 354 4. Reviews Wang, Shenghui and Rob Koopman. Embed First, Then Predict ...... 364 Semantic Perception: How the Illusion of a Common Language Arises and Persists, Jody Azzouni. New York: White, Howard D. Patrick Wilson ...... 279 Oxford University Press, 2013. ISBN 9780199967407. 2015. ISBN 9780190275549. Ontology Without Xu, Liwei and Jiangnan Qiu. Unsupervised Multi-class Borders, Jody Azzouni. New York, NY: Oxford Sentiment Classification Approach ...... 15 University Press. ISBN 9780190622558. Reviewed by Matthew Kelly ...... 147 Yang, Li and Yejun Wu. Creating a Taxonomy of Earthquake Disaster Response and Recovery for 5. Books Recently Published ...... 72, 155, 240, 333, 400, 489, Online Earthquake Information Management ...... 77 569, 669
Zeng, Marcia Lei. Interoperability ...... 122 6. Other
Zhang, Chengzhi, Hua Zhao, Xuehua Chi and Erratum ...... 154 Shuitian Ma. Information Organization Patterns from Online Users in a Social Network ...... 90 Index to Volume 45 ...... 73
Knowl. Org. 47(2020)No.1
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KO KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION
Official Journal of the International Society for Knowledge Organization ISSN 0943 – 7444 International Journal devoted to Concept Theory, Classification, Indexing and Knowledge Representation
Scope Aims
The more scientific data is generated in the impetuous present times, the Thus, KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION is a forum for all those in- terested in the organization of knowledge on a universal or a domain- more ordering energy needs to be expended to control these data in a specific scale, using concept-analytical or concept-synthetical approaches, retrievable fashion. With the abundance of knowledge now available the as well as quantitative and qualitative methodologies. KNOWLEDGE questions of new solutions to the ordering problem and thus of im- ORGANIZATION also addresses the intellectual and automatic compi- proved classification systems, methods and procedures have acquired un- lation and use of classification systems and thesauri in all fields of foreseen significance. For many years now they have been the focus of knowledge, with special attention being given to the problems of termi- nology. interest of information scientists the world over. KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION publishes original articles, re- Until recently, the special literature relevant to classification was pub- ports on conferences and similar communications, as well as book re- lished in piecemeal fashion, scattered over the numerous technical jour- views, letters to the editor, and an extensive annotated bibliography of nals serving the experts of the various fields such as: recent classification and indexing literature. KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION should therefore be available philosophy and science of science at every university and research library of every country, at every infor- science policy and science organization mation center, at colleges and schools of library and information science, in the hands of everybody interested in the fields mentioned above and mathematics, statistics and computer science thus also at every office for updating information on any topic related to library and information science the problems of order in our information-flooded times. archivistics and museology KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION was founded in 1973 by an in- journalism and communication science ternational group of scholars with a consulting board of editors repre- industrial products and commodity science senting the world’s regions, the special classification fields, and the subject terminology, lexicography and linguistics areas involved. From 1974-1980 it was published by K.G. Saur Verlag, München. Back issues of 1978-1992 are available from ERGON-Verlag,
too. Beginning in 1974, KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION (formerly IN- As of 1989, KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION has become the TERNATIONAL CLASSIFICATION) has been serving as a common official organ of the INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR KNOW- platform for the discussion of both theoretical background questions LEDGE ORGANIZATION (ISKO) and is included for every ISKO- and practical application problems in many areas of concern. In each is- member, personal or institutional in the membership fee. sue experts from many countries comment on questions of an adequate Annual subscription 2020: Print + online (8 issues/ann.; unlimited structuring and construction of ordering systems and on the problems access for your Campus via Nomos eLibrary) € 359,00/ann. Prices do of their use in opening the information contents of new literature, of not include postage and packing. Cancellation policy: Termination within 3 months‘ notice to the end of the calendar year data collections and survey, of tabular works and of other objects of sci- entific interest. Their contributions have been concerned with Ergon – ein Verlag in der Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Wald- seestraße 3-5, D-76530 Baden-Baden, Tel. +49 (0)7221-21 04-667, Fax
+49 (0)7221-21 04-27, Sparkasse Baden-Baden Gaggenau, IBAN: DE05 (1) clarifying the theoretical foundations (general ordering theory/ 6625 0030 0005 0022 66, BIC: SOLADES1BAD science, theoretical bases of classification, data analysis and reduc- Founded under the title International Classification in 1974 by Dr. tion) Ingetraut Dahlberg, the founding president of ISKO. Dr. Dahlberg (2) describing practical operations connected with indexing/classifi- served as the journal’s editor from 1974 to 1997, and as its publisher (In- cation, as well as applications of classification systems and the- deks Verlag of Frankfurt) from 1981 to 1997. sauri, manual and machine indexing The contents of the journal are indexed and abstracted in Social Sci- ences Citation Index, Web of Science, Information Science Abstracts, INSPEC, Li- (3) tracing the history of classification knowledge and methodology brary and Information Science Abstracts (LISA), Library, Information Science & (4) discussing questions of education and training in classification Technology Abstracts (EBSCO), Library Literature and Information Science (Wil- (5) concerning themselves with the problems of terminology in gen- son), PASCAL, Referativnyi Zhurnal Informatika, and Sociological Abstracts. eral and with respect to special fields.