The Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization

Citation

Bakewell, K.G.B. (2001), "The Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization", New Library World, Vol. 102 No. 3, pp. 111-115. https://doi.org/10.1108/nlw.2001.102.3.111.2

The aim of this book is stated on page ix as to synthesize the literature pertaining to the intellectual foundation of information organization in a language and at a level of generality that make it understandable to those outside the discipline of library and information science. On page xiv we are told that the book was motivated by the conviction that the intelligent organization of information is of paramount importance not only for the scholarly community but also for individuals, commerce and society in general.

I share the author’s view that information organization is not just a matter for the information community. Several years ago my book, How to Organise Information (Bakewell, 1984), also aimed at people outside the discipline of library and information science, was published and generally well received. I too tried to use non‐specialist language and I hope I was more successful than Professor Svenonius. Does the non‐specialist understand “As a means to explicate theory, model building reflects a trend wherein a database is conceptualized through a process of abstract formalization” (p. 32) and “The forming of work sets constitutes the prototypical act of information organization” (page 36)? I don’t.

The book is presented in two parts of five chapters each. In the first part, a discussion of information organization is followed by chapters on bibliographic objectives, bibliographic entities, bibliographic languages and the principles of description. The five chapters of the second part deal with work languages, document languages, subject languages and subject‐language syntax. Much attention is given to the Anglo‐American cataloguing rules and there is briefer coverage of such subject retrieval schemes as the Dewey Decimal Classification, the Library of Congress Subject Headings and the Preserved Context Index System (incorrectly called Preserved Context Indexing System). There is a detailed bibliography, which I was sorry to see did not include Hunter and Bakewell’s Cataloguing (1983). More serious is the absence of that great American classificationist Henry Evelyn Bliss. The omission of his Bibliographic Classification (Bliss, 1967) is particularly surprising in view of the attention given by the author to collocation, one of Bliss’s major principles.

There is some repetition. For example, we are asked on pages 12 and 37 if a film version of Hamlet contains the same information content as its textual counterpart.

The comment on pages 24‐25 that articles in periodicals are less suitable than books “for admittance into the enduring diary of humankind” because often their use is primarily for current awareness is nonsense. Another nonsensical statement appears on page 55. It is not true that “most languages are fairly underdeveloped in their pragmatics, an exception being the Dewey Decimal Classification”.

It is surprising that a book on information organization aimed at those outside the discipline of library and information science should not say something about book (or “back‐of‐the‐book”) indexing, since such people often need to compile their own indexes to reports etc. The index to this book is far from satisfactory with a number of errors, too many “strings” of page references and several omissions including Classification Research Group, fixed location, KWIC indexing, MARC, “see also” cross‐references, “see” cross‐references, thesauri, uncontrolled vocabularies and whole‐part relationship. There is a brief comment on indexing on page 46, but it is not indexed. The ISO standard on book indexing (ISO 999) is omitted from the bibliography and from the list of standards on page 59.

Three distinguished people describe this book on the dust jacket as timely, lucid, original and a highly significant contribution to the field. I wish I could agree. I feel that the late Chris Needham did what Professor Svenonius has tried to do far more successfully many years ago in his Organising Knowledge in Libraries (Needham, 1965). Chris really was lucid and original. What a pity he is no longer alive to revise his book.