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The purpose of this paper is to explore the representation of Kanaka Maoli (Hawaiian) Hula Dance in traditional systems of representation and organization.

This exploratory study analyzes the controlled and natural language vocabularies employed for the representation and organization of Hawaiian culture, in particular Hawaiian hula. The most widely accepted and used systems were examined: classification systems (Library of Congress Classification and Dewey Decimal Classification), subject heading systems (Library of Congress Subject Headings and authority files (Library of Congress and OCLC Authority Files), and citation indexing systems (Web of Science Social Sciences and Art and Humanities databases).

Analysis of various tools of representation and organization revealed biases and diasporization in depictions of Hawaiian culture. The study emphasizes the need to acknowledge the aesthetic perspective of indigenous people in their organization and presentation of their own cultural knowledge and advocates a decolonizing methodology to promote alternative information structures in indigenous communities.

This study contributes to the relatively limited scholarship on representation and organization for indigenous knowledge organization systems, in particular Hawaiian culture. Research suggests that access to Native Hawaiian cultural heritage will raise awareness among information professionals in Hawai’i to the beauty of Native Hawaiian epistemology.

New technologies have made the increased globalization of information resources and services possible. In this situation, it is ethically and intellectually beneficial to protect cultural and information diversity. This paper analyzes the problems of creating ethically based globally accessible and culturally acceptable knowledge representation and organization systems, and foundation principles for the ethical treatment of different cultures are established on the basis of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The concept of “cultural hospitality”, which can act as a theoretical framework for the ethical warrant of knowledge representation and organization systems, is described. This broad discussion is grounded with an extended example of one cultural universal, the concept of time and its expression in calendars. Methods of achieving cultural and user hospitality in information systems are discussed for their potential for creating ethically based systems. It is concluded that cultural hospitality is a promising concept for assessing the ethical foundations of new knowledge representation and organization systems and for planning revisions to existing systems.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the basics of semiotic analysis and concept theory that represent two dominant approaches to knowledge representation, and explore how these approaches are fruitful for knowledge organization.

In particular the semiotic theory formulated by the American philosopher C.S. Peirce and the concept theory formulated by Ingetraut Dahlberg are investigated. The paper compares the differences and similarities between these two theories of knowledge representation.

The semiotic model is a general and unrestricted model of signs and Dahlberg's model is thought from the perspective and demand of better knowledge organization system (KOS) development. It is found that Dahlberg's concept model provides a detailed method for analyzing and representing concepts in a KOS, where semiotics provides the philosophical context for representation.

This paper is the first to combine theories of knowledge representation, semiotic and concept theory, within the context of knowledge organization.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical analysis from an ethical perspective of how the concept of indigenous wayfinding and voyaging is mapped in knowledge representation, organization and discovery systems.

In this study, the Dewey Decimal Classification, the Library of Congress Subject Headings, the Library of Congress Classifications systems and the Web of Science citation database were methodically examined to determine how these systems represent and facilitate the discovery of indigenous knowledge of wayfinding and voyaging.

The analysis revealed that there was no dedicated representation of the indigenous practices of wayfinding and voyaging in the major knowledge representation, organization and discovery systems. By scattering indigenous practice across various, often very broad and unrelated classes, coherence in the record is disrupted, resulting in misrepresentation of these indigenous concepts.

This study contributes to a relatively limited research literature on representation and organization of indigenous knowledge of wayfinding and voyaging. This study calls to foster a better understanding and appreciation for the rich knowledge that indigenous cultures provide for an enlightened society.

This study aims to present a new framework for ethical creation and evaluation of multi-perspective knowledge organization systems.

Applying Held's understanding of the ethics of care, this paper proposes five operative criteria for ethical building and evaluation of multi-perspective knowledge representation and organization systems.

This paper argues that a carefully designed multipoint view of representation and organization conforms to the proposed ethical criteria and shifts concerns associated with the expectation of neutrality of library information professionals to the necessity to humanize and diversify the representation and organization of knowledge to build inclusive and equitable systems.

This paper presents multi-perspectiveness as key to ethical knowledge organization. The paper proposes a generic taxonomy of the main stages in the creation of multi-perspective knowledge representation and organization systems and demonstrates how to apply the proposed framework in each stage to ensure ethical outcomes.

After reviewing cultural heritage institutions; crowdsourcing initiatives and tension between univocal and multivocal views of those who interact with cultural expressions, this paper argues that to support vibrant and effective crowdsourcing communities while ensuring the quality of the work of crowdsourcing project volunteers it is essential to reevaluate and transform the traditional univocal, top-down approach to representation and organization. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This conceptual paper applies Foucault’s power–knowledge construct and theories of representation to the processes and practices employed in cultural heritage crowdsourcing projects.

Viewed through the Foucauldian lens, cultural heritage professionals are regarded as active parts of the power–knowledge relationship due to their direct engagement in the representation, organization and dissemination of knowledge, exercised not only through the traditional role of cultural heritage institutions as gatekeepers of knowledge but, more importantly, through the power of representation and organization of the cultural heritage.

This paper provides a theoretical understanding of cultural heritage crowdsourcing initiatives and proposes a framework for multivocal representation of cultural heritage expressions in which the voices of volunteers have the same validity as the voices of cultural heritage professionals.

The purpose of this chapter is to characterize knowledge organization (KO) as a field that is affected by geographic and diachronic variations in such a way that the recognition of a slanted KO could be considered an ethical option in the KO theory and practice. KO can be considered a dynamic social product that reflects a construction that is altered in space and time. Slants are inherent to any organization of knowledge and are manifested in multiple dimensions. There is a need to find a balance between the respect for the local specificities and the necessity of global access to information. Conceptual and terminological time and space slants in KO are presented. Examples of possible day-by-day searches are analyzed in order to evidence the different cultures that are involved in the different social-linguistic characteristics. The recognition of time and space as operational axes for an ethical approach to a slanted KO is important because: (a) it tries to intervene in represented and possibly disseminated biases that are practiced so far; (b) it recognizes the coexistence of diverse groups and communities, with local characteristics, meanings, and idiosyncrasies, that will need to communicate with each other in global information systems of information; and (c) it can promote an intercultural ethics of mediation, culturally warranted, in order to avoid cultural damages and to guarantee that descriptions can reflect the past while keeping an eye in the future, based on KOS whose functionality remains over time.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a graph-based representation approach for evolutionary knowledge under the big data circumstance, aiming to gradually build conceptual models from data.

A semantic data model named meaning graph (MGraph) is introduced to represent knowledge concepts to organize the knowledge instances in a graph-based knowledge base. MGraph uses directed acyclic graph–like types as concept schemas to specify the structural features of knowledge with intention variety. It also proposes several specialization mechanisms to enable knowledge evolution. Based on MGraph, a paradigm is introduced to model the evolutionary concept schemas, and a scenario on video semantics modeling is introduced in detail.

MGraph is fit for the evolution features of representing knowledge from big data and lays the foundation for building a knowledge base under the big data circumstance.

The representation approach based on MGraph can effectively and coherently address the major issues of evolutionary knowledge from big data. The new approach is promising in building a big knowledge base.

The purpose of this paper is to present descriptive characteristics of the historical development of concept networks. The linguistic principles, mechanisms and motivations behind the evolution of concept networks are discussed. Implications emanating from the idea of the historical development of concept networks are discussed in relation to knowledge representation and organization schemes.

Natural language data including both speech and text are analyzed by examining discourse contexts in which a linguistic element such as a polysemy or homonym occurs. Linguistic literature on the historical development of concept networks is reviewed and analyzed.

Semantic sense relations in concept networks can be captured in a systematic and regular manner. The mechanism and impetus behind the process of concept network development suggest that semantic senses in concept networks are closely intertwined with pragmatic contexts and discourse structure. The interrelation and permeability of the semantic senses of concept networks are captured on a continuum scale based on three linguistic parameters: concrete shared semantic sense; discourse and text structure; and contextualized pragmatic information.

Research findings signify the critical need for linking discourse structure and contextualized pragmatic information to knowledge representation and organization schemes.

The idea of linguistic characteristics, principles, motivation and mechanisms underlying the evolution of concept networks provides theoretical ground for developing a model for integrating knowledge representation and organization schemes with discourse structure and contextualized pragmatic information.

The conditions that domain analysis becomes an academic school of information science (IS) are mature. Domain analysis is one of the most important foundations of IS. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss metatheoretical and theoretical issues in the domain analytic paradigm in IS.

This paper conducts a systematic review of representative publications of domain analysis. The analysis considered degree theses, journal articles, book chapters, conference papers and other materials.

Domain analysis maintains that community is the new focus of IS research. Although domain analysis centers on the domain and community, theoretical concerns on the social and individual dimensions of IS are inherent in it by its using sociology as its important approach and socio-cognitive viewpoint. For these reasons domain analysis can integrate social–community–individual levels of IS discipline as a whole. The role of subject knowledge in IS is discussed from the perspective of domain analysis. Realistic pragmatism that forms the philosophical foundation of domain analysis is argued and the implications of these theories to IS are presented.

The intellectual evolving landscape of domain analysis during a quarter century is comprehensively reviewed. Over the past twenty-five years, domain analysis has established its academic status in the international IS circle. Being an important metatheory, paradigm and methodology, domain analysis becomes the theoretical foundation of IS research. This paper assesses the current state of domain analysis and shows the contributions of domain analysis to IS. It also aims to inspire further exploration.