The fourth edition of this standard student text, Organizing Knowledge, incorporates extensive revisions reflecting the increasing shift towards a networked and digital information environment, and its impact on documents, information, knowledge, users and managers. Offering a broad-based overview of the approaches and tools used in the structuring and dissemination of knowledge, it is written in an accessible style and well illustrated with figures and examples. The book has been structured into three parts and twelve chapters and has been thoroughly updated throughout. Part I discusses the nature, structuring and description of knowledge. Part II, with its five chapters, lies at the core of the book focusing as it does on access to information. Part III explores different types of knowledge organization systems and considers some of the management issues associated with such systems. Each chapter includes learning objectives, a chapter summary and a list of references for further reading. This is a key introductory text for undergraduate and postgraduate students of information management.
Contents: Introduction; Part I Structuring and Describing: Knowledge, information and their organization; Formatting and structuring knowledge; Describing documents. Part II Access: Users and behaviour; Subjects as access points; Classification and order; Further concepts and tools for subject access; Access through author names and titles. Part III Systems: Knowledge organization in the digital environment; The evaluation and design of information retrieval systems; Organizing knowledge without IT; Management of knowledge systems; Index.
