Formalism in Knowledge Formalism in Knowledge OrganizationOrganization

Sergey ZherebchevskySergey ZherebchevskyLong Island University Long Island University

February 26, 2010February 26, 2010

Thematic Analysis of ISKO 10 Proceedings

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It can be argued that knowledge organization theories and rules have been widely discussed and a substantial body of academic literature regarding their conceptual and practical implications exists. Yet it is not immediately obvious if formalism and its role within the field of knowledge organization has been sufficiently discussed or scrutinized. This problem allows formulating the following research question:

Problem Statement

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How much attention does formalism

and its role in knowledge organization

receive within discipline discourse?

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Definitions The philosophical theory that formal

(logical or mathematical) statements have no meaning but that its symbols (regarded as physical entities) exhibit a form that has useful applications (WordNet Search 3.0).

Formalism is a means to represent the rules used in the establishment of a models of linguistic knowledge” (SILK, 2003).

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Guarino (1995) examines the influence of epistemological and ontological questions on constructing knowledge representation formalisms. He favors the use of formal ontological principles in building knowledge representation systems.

Members of the Orpailleur team (INRIA, 2006) define representation of knowledge as “a process for representing knowledge within a knowledge representation formalism, giving knowledge units a syntax and a semantics.”

Literature Review

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Terms Eight terms, deemed to be appropriate in discussion exploring the intellectual and theoretical issues and, eight other terms, seemingly appropriate for discussing methodological and formalistic concerns, were selected from The Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization (2000) by Elaine Svenonius.

Pilot Study

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Materials The 4 articles published in volume 35, N˚ 1 (2008)

of Knowledge Organization journal were searched.

Procedure Selected terms were searched using the “Find”

function available in the Microsoft Word application. Each desired term was entered in the “Find what” line one by one; all matching term variations regardless of their form, that is, noun, adjective, etc., were counted.

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Pilot Study Data Analysis

These data demonstrate a relative parity in the terms’ occurrence and is not supportive of the

initial expectations of the study.

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Pilot Study Summary All four reviewed articles were published in the same issue of the Knowledge Organization journal. Results arising from investigating such a small sample could

not be considered representative of the entire universe of published articles.

The last phase of this study, therefore, will analyze a different and much larger universe. A study of conference proceedings, usually representative of the diversity of scholarly interests, might well demonstrate results different from those found in the pilot study.

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MethodologyAn analysis of terms found in knowledge

organization literature Two sets of terms, six in each, were selected; one

set reflecting the intellectual and theoretical discourse, the other seemingly appropriate for discussing methodological and formalistic concerns.

Terms were selected from The Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization (2000) by Elaine Svenonius.

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Materials Advances in knowledge organization, the

proceedings of International Society of Knowledge Organization Conference (ISKO 2008) published in Microsoft Word format were searched to determine how frequently terms belonging to one set or the other occur. A total of 57 such articles were considered.

Procedure Selected terms were searched using the “Find”

function available in the Microsoft Word application. Each desired term was entered in the “Find what” line one by one; all matching term variations regardless of their form, that is, noun, adjective, etc., were counted.

ResultsExamining

ISKO

Proceedings

Examining ISKO ProceedingsIn 9 topical categories, 7 contain more intellectual/theoretical terms than methodological/formalistic and 2 contain more methodological/formalistic terms than intellectual/theoretical.

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Examining ISKO Proceedings

The average of intellectual / theoretical and methodological / formalistic terms found in 57 articles or in 9 categories is not calculated as not every article contains any of the terms; in addition, terms distribution varies widely from article to article and from category to category.

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Discussion Let us consider only categories containing

a significant number of articles, that is, the six categories (out of nine) that contain five or more articles.

Of these six categories, two comprise five articles each, one eight, one ten, and two 11 articles each .

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Within these most significant categories, the distribution of terms is skewed. The greatest overall number of terms,

whether intellectual/theoretical or methodological/formalistic, are found in two articles (out of five, eight, ten, or 11 respectively).

One article in each of the six categories falls into both of the reviewed subcategories, that is, each of these articles contains one of the greatest numbers of intellectual/theoretical terms as well as one of the greatest numbers of methodological/formalistic terms.

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The 12 articles containing the greatest number of intellectual/theoretical terms are written by 18 authors from 9 different countries: three from Europe, two from North America, two from South America, and two from Asia.

Similarly, the 12 articles containing the greatest number of methodological/formalistic terms are written by 18 authors from 8 countries; three from Europe, two from North America, two from South America and one from Asia.

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Conclusions

The skewed distribution of terms within categories indicates results that are generally supportive of the initial assumptions that formalism and its role, or in other words, the practical aspects of knowledge organization, receives less attention then intellectual and theoretical concerns.

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The results could be explained by the fact that the ISKO inclination is to explore theoretical rather than applied models and methods. An absolute majority of ISKO forum contributors are academics, that is, they work and conduct their research in an academic setting.

However, the results are not as pronounced as was expected. In most categories, the ratio between intellectual / theoretical terms and terms representative of methodological / formalistic concerns is 60/40.

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One way to test the validity of these findings and determine whether they represent a general trend within the field of knowledge organization or if they apply to ISKO only is to investigate further, for instance, by analyzing the proceedings of a different but related forum.

It may also be interesting to see if the same ratio of theoretical to methodological contributions can be found in the proceedings of another discipline only peripherally relating to knowledge organization, for instance, cognitive psychology.

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Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Dr. Smiraglia for the invaluable guidance and assistance provided during this research project.

References Guarino, Nicola. 1995. Formal Ontology, Conceptual Analysis and Knowledge Representation. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 43 (5-6; Nov/Dec).INRIA, Institut National De Recherche En Informatique Et En Automatique, Team Orpailleur. 2006. Activity report, ed. by Lorraine. Knowledge discovery guided by domain Knowledge. http://ralyx.inria.fr/2007/Raweb/orpailleur/uid11.htmlInternational ISKO Conference, Clement Arsenault, and Joseph T. Tennis. 2008. Culture and identity in knowledge organization: proceedings of the tenth International ISKO Conference, 5-8 August 2008, Montreal, Canada. Advances in knowledge organization, v. 11. Wurzburg: Ergon. KO, KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION. 2008. Official Quarterly Journal of

the International Society for Knowledge Organization 35(1). SILK. 2003. http://portal.bibliotekivest.no/ terminology.htmWordNet Search 3.0. http://wordnet.princeton. edu/perl/webwn?s=

formalism Svenonius, Elaine. 2000. The intellectual foundation of information

organization. Digital libraries and electronic publishing. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.