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The purpose of this paper is to present the initial relationship between the Classification Research Group (CRG) and the Center for Documentation and Communication Research (CDCR) and how this relationship changed between 1952 and 1970. The theory of normative behavior and its concepts of worldviews, social norms, social types, and information behavior are used to characterize the relationship between the small worlds of the two groups with the intent of understanding the gap between early classification research and information retrieval (IR) research.

This is a mixed method analysis of two groups as evidenced in published artifacts by and about their work. A thorough review of historical literature about the groups as well as their own published works was employed and an author co-citation analysis was used to characterize the conceptual similarities and differences of the two groups of researchers.

The CRG focused on fundamental principles to aid classification and retrieval of information. The CDCR were more inclined to develop practical methods of retrieval without benefit of good theoretical foundations. The CRG began it work under the contention that the general classification schemes at the time were inadequate for the developing IR mechanisms. The CDCR rejected the classification schemes of the times and focused on developing punch card mechanisms and processes that were generously funded by both government and corporate funding.

This paper provides a unique historical analysis of two groups of influential researchers in the field of library and information science.

This article reviews the state of the art in automatic indexing, that is, automatic techniques for analysing and characterising documents, for manipulating their descriptions in searching, and for generating the index language used for these purposes. It concentrates on the literature from 1968 to 1973. Section I defines the topic and its context. Sections II and III consider work in syntax and semantics respectively in detail. Section IV comments on ‘indirect’ indexing. Section V briefly surveys operating mechanized systems. In Section VI major experiments in automatic indexing are reviewed, and Section VII attempts an overall conclusion on the current state of automatic indexing techniques.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new framework for representing music for information retrieval that emphasizes socio-cultural aspects of music.

Philosophical and theoretical concepts related to the nature of music, aboutness, musical works are explored as they inform how music is represented. Multidisciplinary perspectives on music information representation, classification, and retrieval provide insight into how information science can better accommodate music information within its disciplinary boundaries.

A new term, music information object (MIO), is presented and defined. Downie’s (2003) theoretical statements are reconceptualized into a theory of representational incompleteness and three meta-classes for music information object representation.

This new framework incorporates more dimensions of music representation than existing frameworks allow and can facilitate comparisons between classifications of MIO representations by music practitioners, scholars, and system developers.

The meta-classes form a much-needed theoretical framework for classifying and defining MIOs from any musical tradition for retrieval. This fills a gap in music information retrieval research, which lacks a theoretical framework that can accommodate musics from all traditions without attempting to organize them according to a western-centered understanding.

An assessment of B.C. Vickery's contribution to the development of classification for retrieval. This has been both practical and intellectual. On the practical side his work in the early CRG and elsewhere enhanced the status of classification for retrieval as a significant field of study. On the intellectual side he demonstrated the use of his own elaborated version of Ranganathan's facets for the purposes of western special libraries. He analysed the essential features of retrieval systems generally as the required framework within which classification could usefully play a part. The paper discusses some remaining ‘grey areas’ in faceted classification, classificatory fragments implicit in many thesauri, and the value for expository purposes of a mildly polemic approach to issues in classification.

The purpose of this paper is to share personal experience on the early stages of taxonomy construction, reflecting on the potential role of contextual classification techniques as applied by the records management profession as a tool in effectively organising information, resources and services within intranet and/or portal environments. The paper also aims to assess the additional benefits to be secured where linking content to business purposes can create or reveal new meaning.

The paper draws on experience, personal opinion, published literature and discussions with peers to assess the applicability of contextual classification as a tool to support taxonomy development.

The paper concludes that classification of information, resources and services within intranet and/or portal environments using a citation order of function, activity, task, sub‐task is likely to be of significant value, requiring further investigation to fully assess impact and applicability. Contextual classification receives much discussion in general records management terms, however its applicability in supporting portal and/or intranet development appears to receive little attention. The requirement to generate improvements in information retrieval from a host of on‐line services (of which taxonomy development is one example) is reinvigorating the role of the informational professional. Given the criticality of improving the management and retrieval of information it is desirable that stronger interdisciplinary links are established across the information profession to further develop “information retrieval” as a subject discipline.

The article suggests that the role of contextual classification to organise information, resources and services within intranets/portals requires further investigation and reflection to assess its applicability, value and impact. Initial findings and reflection of the application of contextual classification in the design of elements of a university portal taxonomy have proven to be successful, suggesting that wider discussion and reflection is now required. It is also suggested that the information profession take steps to build stronger interdisciplinary links to advance the development of information retrieval as a subject discipline.

This work aims to draw attention to information retrieval philosophies and techniques allied to the records management profession, advocating a wider professional consideration of a functional approach to information management, in this instance in the development of information architecture.

The paper draws from a hypothesis originally presented by the author that advocated a viewpoint whereby the application of records management techniques, traditionally applied to develop business classification schemes, was offered as an additional solution to organising information resources and services (within a university intranet), where earlier approaches, notably subject‐ and administrative‐based arrangements, were found to be lacking. The hypothesis was tested via work‐based action learning and is presented here as an extended case study. The paper also draws on evidence submitted to the Joint Information Systems Committee in support of the University of Abertay Dundee's application for consideration for the JISC award for innovation in records and information management.

The original hypothesis has been tested in the workplace. Information retrieval techniques, allied to records management (functional classification), were the main influence in the development of pre‐ and post‐coordinate information retrieval systems to support a wider information architecture, where the subject approach was found to be lacking. Their use within the workplace has since been extended.

The paper advocates that the development of information retrieval as a discipline should include a wider consideration of functional classification, as this alternative to the subject approach is largely ignored in mainstream IR works.

The aim of this article is to estimate the impact of faceted classification and the faceted analytical method on the development of various information retrieval tools over the latter part of the twentieth and early twenty‐first centuries.

The article presents an examination of various subject access tools intended for retrieval of both print and digital materials to determine whether they exhibit features of faceted systems. Some attention is paid to use of the faceted approach as a means of structuring information on commercial web sites. The secondary and research literature is also surveyed for commentary on and evaluation of facet analysis as a basis for the building of vocabulary and conceptual tools.

The study finds that faceted systems are now very common, with a major increase in their use over the last 15 years. Most LIS subject indexing tools (classifications, subject heading lists and thesauri) now demonstrate features of facet analysis to a greater or lesser degree. A faceted approach is frequently taken to the presentation of product information on commercial web sites, and there is an independent strand of theory and documentation related to this application. There is some significant research on semi‐automatic indexing and retrieval (query expansion and query formulation) using facet analytical techniques.

This article provides an overview of an important conceptual approach to information retrieval, and compares different understandings and applications of this methodology.

The suggestion that classifications for retrieval should be constructed automatically raises some serious problems concerning the sorts of classification which are required, and the way in which formal classification theories should be exploited, given that a retrieval classification is required for a purpose. These difficulties have not been sufficiently considered, and the paper therefore attempts an analysis of them, though no solutions of immediate application can be suggested. Starting with the illustrative proposition that a polythetic, multiple, unordered classification is required in automatic thesaurus construction, this is considered in the context of classification in general, where eight sorts of classification can be distinguished, each covering a range of class definitions and class‐finding algorithms. The problem which follows is that since there is generally no natural or best classification of a set of objects as such, the evaluation of alternative classifications requires cither formal criteria of goodness of fit, or, if a classification is required for a purpose, a precise statement of that purpose. In any case a substantive theory of classification is needed, which does not exist; and since sufficiently precise specifications of retrieval requirements are also lacking, the only currently available approach to automatic classification experiments for information retrieval is to do enough of them.

Knowledge can be created by drawing inferences from what is already known. Often some of the requisite information is lacking and has to be gathered by whatever research techniques are appropriate, e.g. experiments, surveys etc. Even if the information has all been published already, unless it is retrieved no inferences will be drawn from it and consequently there will exist some knowledge that is implicit in the literature and yet is not known by anyone. This ‘undiscovered public knowledge’, as it is termed by Swanson, may exist in the following forms: (i) a hidden refutation or qualification of a hypothesis; (ii) an undrawn conclusion from two or more premises; (iii) the cumulative evidence of weak, independent tests; (iv) solutions to analogous problems; (v) hidden correlations between factors. Methods of classification may also play a direct role in the creation of original knowledge. Novel solutions to problems may be discovered by generating different combinations of the basic features of the solutions, as is done in morphological analysis. Alternatively a natural classification may identify gaps in existing knowledge. This paper reviews previous work on producing knowledge by information retrieval or classification and describes techniques by which hidden knowledge may be retrieved, e.g. serendipity in browsing, use of appropriate search strategies and, possibly in the future, methods based on Farradane's relational indexing or artificial intelligence.

This paper considers the classifications produced by application of the single linkage, complete linkage, group average and Ward clustering methods to the Keen and Cranfield document test collections. Experiments were carried out to study the structure of the hierarchies produced by the different methods, the extent to which the methods distort the input similarity matrices during the generation of a classification, and the retrieval effectiveness obtainable in cluster based retrieval. The results would suggest that the single linkage method, which has been used extensively in previous work on document clustering, is not the most effective procedure of those tested, although it should be emphasized that the experiments have used only small document test collections.