Theoretical foundation of Knowledge Organization: “Positivism” versus “pragmatism”. Invited speech Sunday Oct 28, 2007 VIII ENANCIB in Salvador, Bahia,

Theoretical foundation of Knowledge Organization: “Positivism” versus “pragmatism”.

Invited speech Sunday Oct 28, 2007 VIII ENANCIB in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.

Birger Hjørland

2

Introduction

LIS discourses (Perspectives: modern, Western)

•on users ("user oriented" and "cognitive approaches"),

•on technology ("systems oriented approaches"),

•on the library as institution ("the institutional approach") or

•on management perspectives (e.g., "information management")

while a bibliographic perspective focusing on documents and information resources, their description, organization, mediation and use is almost absent, although this is what the , although this is what the field is all about.field is all about.

3

The Bibliographic Paradigm

The term “bibliographic paradigm' has only been used negatively

– As a contrast to something better.

– As a part of "the systems-oriented perspective" (or "physical paradigm") in LIS

– As opposed to user-oriented paradigms.

Why is this the case?

4


“[T]raditionally library and information services have focused on sources and technology and in doing so have developed sophisticated systems for collecting, organizing and retrieving sources and have applied information technology to provide extensive access to vast sources of information.” [Kuhlthau, 1993].

“User education has, therefore, concentrated on manipulative skills.

This bibliographic paradigm has underplayed the cognitive aspects of the information process that highlight understanding and meaning. “ (Henri & Hay, 1994). .

5


Librarianship, documentation and information science are about: documents, their selecting, organizing and retrieval in relation to satisfying the needs of the users.

Perhaps, what is meant by Henri & Hay is that it is not enough to regard documents and information resources isolated from the needs of the users.

If, as Henri & Hay wrote above, librarians are too isolated from a school's mainstream curriculum, the most important sources to teach may be unknown to the librarian, why they may “fall back” on certain “sacred documents” considered universally relevant.

6


It would be very wrong, I believe, if LIS-professionals “give up” the focus on documents and information resources because of the difficulties mentioned above.

To focus on “user studies” or “cognitive studies” is not an alternative. However, it seems like this is, nevertheless, what often happens.

According to Nahl (1996, 2003) a “user-centered revolution” entered our field around 1970. The term “user-centered” is however very ambiguous when used about approaches to LIS.

Empirical studies of users can not in any way substitute for empirical studies of documents.

7


On the CoLIS6 conference Sanna Talja & Jenna Hartel (2007) made some very interesting points about the so-called user oriented paradigm. They seriously challenged the traditional dualism between user-oriented and systems oriented approaches in LIS

My own view is that whether LIS investigates "users" or "systems" the dominating understanding has been "positivist", ahistorical and decontextualized. Users have been considered as biological beings more often that as cultural and specialized beings.

Hermeneutical, historical, sociological and critical perspectives may potentially be much more fruitful.

8

“Positivism” and “pragmatism”

In my opinion the tendency within LIS has always been dominated by a view of knowledge, which may be labeled “positivist”. This is a difficult concept, but I understand it as a tendency (or an ideal) to rely on observations and logic only, disregarding context, values, interests, historical development and socio-cultural issues.

“Positivism” as I understand it is also a tendency to neglect the reading of relevant literature. Background knowledge is a vague concept and the ideal of being well read is considered less important than to do “empirical” studies. Of course nobody will admit this, but it is often visible in actual behavior. (Such an ideal is of course a double paradox in a field devoted to libraries and information).

9

“Positivism” and “pragmatism”The alternative view may be termed ”pragmatic” or ”critical”. It also relies on observations and logic, but do not consider observations as given, but as a acts done by persons in given socio-cultural contexts. Observations are theory-laden and not just objective, mechanical recordings.

Thus observations and logic must be made on the basis of contextual knowledge as well as based on values and on goals.

As researchers it is important that we consider our own points of view in the context of other points of view. The “information” we study is also more or less a merge of different points of view.

10


The proper understanding of this view of knowledge is in my opinion extremely important, but not something you learn just because I briefly mention it.

LIS professionals have to read texts in the theory of science by authors such as Popper, Kuhn, Habermas, Gadamer, feminist scholars and others, develop a consistent view and apply this view as your glasses no matter what intellectual activity you are involved with.

Thus in my opinion this should be mandatory stuff in all LIS educational programs.

11


There is a natural connection between a bibliographical paradigm in LIS focusing on documents and literatures on the one side, and on the other side more hermeneutic, sociological and critical views on knowledge. This is indicated in the following quotes by Paling and McKenzie:

"Bibliography provides a compelling vantage from which to study the interconnection of classification, rhetoric, and the making of knowledge. Bibliography, and the related activities of classification and retrieval, bears a direct relationship to textual studies and rhetoric. [ . . .].

12


A striking similarity to problems raised in rhetoric and which spring from common concerns and intellectual sources is demonstrated around Gadamer's notion of intellectual horizon. Classification takes place within a horizon of material conditions and social constraints that are best viewed through a hermeneutic or deconstructive lens, termed the "classificatory horizon." (Paling, 2004).

". . . bibliography is the discipline that studies texts as recorded forms, and the processes of their transmission, including their production and reception . . . I define 'text' to include verbal, visual, oral, and numeric data . . ." . (McKenzie, 1999, 12).

13

“Positivism” and “pragmatism”Thus, what is needed in LIS is an approach which considers “documents” and “information” as well as “systems”, institutions and users as more or less “structural coupled” by social, cultural and subcultural and domain specific processes.

This should also be an approach, which considers the functions of knowledge, information and documents, and which considers the interests, goals and values of all actors, including, of course the functions and values of both public libraries and scientific communication systems.

14

Knowledge Organization (KO)

[Narrow sense] (KOP)knowledge organizing processes classificationindexinglabeling summarizing etc.

[Broad sense] (KO) knowledge organizationabout different disciplines and discourses, languages, conceptualizations.

KO theories in the narrow field are deeply dependent on influences from the broader field.

knowledge organizing systems (KOS)

• Classification systems, • Thesauri• Ontologies • Any form of controlled vocabulary

related to information retrieval.

15

Knowledge Organization (KO)

Recently I made some observations and comments on the UDC-classification system:

Hjørland (2007). "Arguments for 'the bibliographical paradigm'. Some thoughts inspired by the new English edition of the UDC" Information Research, 12(4) paper colis06. http://informationr.net/ir/12-4/colis/colis06.html

http://informationr.net/ir/12-4/colis/colis06.html

16

UDC – History and status

UDC may be considered a sacred document within librarianship, and related to "the bibliographic paradigm".

First edition of UDC was published more than 100 years ago (1905-1907).

Based on the Dewey Decimal Classification, but it was expanded in order to serve as the organizing system for a planned world bibliography of all documents (including articles).

17

UDC – History and status

UDC has played an important role as a classification system in research libraries in many countries around the world. It is still very much used. Some nations use the system in their national bibliographies.

Why are systems like the UDC not forming part of a strong bibliographic paradigm within LIS?

18

UDC in crisis

A first kind of crisis

Cranfield studies of the late 1950's, which found that UDC (along with other similar systems based on "human indexing") did not contribute to improve information retrieval in electronic databases.

These studies are very important in the tradition labelled "information science" (with "information retrieval" as an important sub-discipline).

This conclusion from the Cranfield studies may be only a statistical generalization that neglects some kinds of questions for which systems like UDC might be superior.

19

UDC in crisis

It is said that the people responsible for UDC-classification in the Cranfield experiments felt that the experimental questions disqualified tasks for which the UDC might be superior. Alternative experiments were never conducted.

Since then classification researchers have been rather invisible in, for example, bibliometric maps of LIS.

We may thus say that the UDC, like classification in general, has never been important in the part or tradition of our field derived from "information science" (which has mostly been interested in "free text" retrieval as opposed to any form of "controlled vocabulary)."

20

UDC in crisis

In spite of this first crisis, the practical use of the system has so far not declined !

Another crisis in the 1980s related to the maintenance and further development of the system.

Connected to a more general uncertainty in the library communities concerning the future role of knowledge organizing systems (KOS) such as the UDC.

21

UDC in crisis

The middle of the 1980s was the heyday of artificial intelligence. Concepts such as "intelligent agents" for individualized information retrieval were often thought to make traditional KOS superfluous.

Investment in the maintenance and development of KOS may have suffered without proper basis in research:

The mere suspicion that KOS systems were obsolete was strongly demotivating for further investment of time, energy and intellectual efforts in construction.

22

UDC in crisis

Research itself may have suffered because many students and researchers within LIS did not engage themselves in specific contributions to the improvement of such KOS.

Instead they engaged themselves in other kinds of studies, some of which may be productive in the development of alternative kinds of KOS. Other kinds of studies simply seem to have lost their relation and relevance to LIS.

It has been somewhat depressing to follow how the concrete interests and contributions to classification of subject literatures have declined within LIS.

23

UDC in crisis

In my CoLIS6 paper I mentioned missing concepts in the index of UDC-2005 and regard them as a symptom of a crisis within LIS. I shall not repeat these examples here.

UDC represented once a dream of a cumulative project to map knowledge, providing a better overview of knowledge and possibility to identify just the knowledge we need for a particular purpose.

It may have been based on some naïve premises (to be presented below), but still having an important kernel worth working for.

24

Theoretical progress in Knowledge Organization

It is somewhat ironic that the most used tool for KO in libraries today is the DDC first published 1876. More than hundred years of research and the development of other kinds of KOS has not resulted in making DDC obsolete. For example, the BC2 is generally considered theoretically more advanced, but is difficult to use in practice.

Most of the English-language books are pre-classified with the DDC by the Library of Congress.

It is, however, thought provoking that classification systems developed later and generally thought more advanced are not able to compete efficiently.

25

Theoretical progress in Knowledge OrganizationSystems like UDC, DDC and Bliss may all be criticized for their “universalist” assumptions:

“While unitary documentary languages ensure a maximum of mutual understanding [. . .], they do so by legitimizing a particular ideological and sociopolitical worldview, and by silencing other meanings, voices, and ways of knowing [. . .]. Unitary documentary languages embody a belief in the existence of a unified body of knowledge. They express a belief in the possibility to capture reality isomorphically in “information,” and presuppose a neutral ground from which to judge the truth-value of different theories.”

(Tuominen; Talja & Savolainen, 2003).

26


Any controlled vocabulary represents a ‘prescriptive’ or ‘normative’ KOS.

[Positivist view]normative vocabularies represent “neutral”, “objective” solutions, that simply provide more efficient information systems.

[Pragmatic view] any controlled vocabulary tends to favour some kinds of queries, while relatively making other kinds of queries more difficult to answer.

27


This understanding also applies to systems such as Google and systems based on “relevance feedback”!

A search engine will always favor some kinds of questions and answers and relatively disfavor some kinds of interests and values. A core concern in, for example, Danish public libraries, should thus be: From our perspective, which kinds of questions and answers should have priority? A search engine – or any kind of KOS – should support the goals, values and interests of the system for which they are designed. This is not just a question of technical efficiency.

28


Consider the use of statistical methods of measuring “similarity” between papers in order to retrieve information. There are many “similarity measures” and they do not provide the same results (cf. Schneider & Borlund, 2007a+b). How should a similarity measure be tested and selected?

Objective, empirical data are not enough. We may apply such methods, interpret the outcome, modify the measures iteratively and in the end find some patterns that seem to be robust. In this process, however, we are using knowledge of what is important and meaningful:

29


Let us consider a simple example of what a controlled vocabulary typically does: Mills & Ball (2007) mention that the concept of “arts” is ambiguous, it is used both about visual arts (or just paintings), or it used broadly about visual art, music, literature.

A book titled “French art” could be just about paintings, or it could include music and literature as well. In order to make it possible to search separately for both kinds of books, the BC2 have different classes for each of these meanings of the term “arts”.

30


Apparently this is simple a neutral logical improvement and this example tends to justify what we termed “the positivist view”: That a controlled vocabulary simply improves retrievability in a neutral way. The pragmatic view has to demonstrate that such kinds of logical improvements are not always desirable, that some queries benefit from them, but other kinds of queries may suffer, and that it is necessary in the design of controlled vocabularies to consider what kind of queries the systems should give priority to.

31


One may argue that the meaning of the word “art” is connected to theoretical views of art, which also implies cues on how to retrieve the literature that is relevant from a certain theoretical perspective: Semantic relations are theory-dependent. In the words of Fast; Leise & Steckel (2002):

“A controlled vocabulary is a way to insert an interpretive layer of semantics between the term entered by the user and the underlying database to better represent the original intention of the terms of the user”

32


The question then is: From what perspective, with what kinds of justification, do LIS-professionals provide such an interpretative layer?

One part of the answer might be that different groups use the word “art” in different ways. When literatures produced by those groups are merged, the words become homonymous.

The information specialist, with an overview of these mixed meanings is in a position to make them univocal.

33


Another part of the answer might be that the pragmatic understanding seeks the meaning of words not in the past, but in the future, what can be accomplished by the speaker by preferring one meaning for another.

Any library or database is a part of an organization with a given purpose (whether explicated or not) and this purpose is the key to the justification of such an interpretative layer as done by controlled vocabularies.

34


Controlled vocabularies have normally been developed to specific databases and/or collections. A given database and collection is a tool, that is designed to support certain tasks and functions.

The pragmatic theory of knowledge seeks the criteria for selecting and describing informative objects in the goals that they are intended to support. The widespread ideology of objectivity and neutrality and universal solutions may be counterproductive in developing our field.

35


This insight, however, is just what makes the dream of a cumulative work like the UDC somewhat naïve:

Different purposes and interests in different social systems need different kinds of classifications.

One reaction to this insight may be a skeptical attitude towards all kinds of controlled vocabularies.

Another reaction has been a tendency to develop many specific “information languages”, which tends to make interoperability worse, not better.

36


Information specialists look at the paper in the context of the other papers in a given collection/database. If qualified, it is possible to add value, to add structure and semantic information to bibliographic records and to develop KOS that are supporting the activities done by the author producing the information.

This activity is by principle a kind of meta-study of the domain, for example, a historian would describe the development of a field, for example, relating concepts to different theories and traditions within a field.

37


Let us consider literary history as an example. Such a history is always “subjective”, it is always reflecting its author, its time and a certain world-view. It may be, for example, “traditional” of “feminist”. Because of this it is considered valuable by many people.

Such a work on literary history in reality classifies the single books and labels them in ways, which are not usually parts of the books themselves (e.g. by genres such as “romanticism” or “magical realism”). Such labels are useful for some information needs, although not for all.

38


A controlled vocabulary can do the same kind of job:

Provide conceptual access to documents not already accessible in this way (and tools such as histories and controlled vocabularies may serve each other, they are both instruments for the study of, e.g. fiction, as well as products of such studies).

39

Semantics

Any kind of knowledge organizing system (KOS) is:

a selection of concepts with indication of, first of all, their semantic relations.

I believe we should avoid reification and essentialism when we speak about, for example, thesauri.

A thesaurus is a kind of KOS that may be further developed and in this process lose its identity compared to other kinds of KOS, or as I prefer: semantic tools.

40

Semantics

The essence of KO is thus:

1) To identify and define terms and concepts

2) To provide information about those terms and concepts, essentially different kinds of semantic relations.

In order to understand its own theoretical basis must KO develop proper theories on those issues.

41

Semantics

In general I find KO informed by problematic semantic theories. They are too positivist and too little hermeneutic. We have lots of thesauri, but historical dictionaries (e.g. in the tradition of Begriffsgeschichte) are almost unknown in our field.

Begriffsgeschichte is based on the view that: •the meaning of a term develops historically•many meanings exist •meanings are related to different theories and ideologies etc.

Also concepts such as Harris’ concept of intralingual heterogeneity seems important.

42

Semantics

Semantic relations, such as synonymy are not a question of neutrality or objectivity, but of goals and consequences. Let us consider an example:

Are “library science” and “information science” synonymous?

Clearly some authors do consider them as synonyms, while other argue they are not. Only by developing an argument can this issue be solved. Until it is solved and some consensus is reached, the best thing would be to describe the different views (a la historical dictionaries).

43

Conclusion

It is important to reconsider “the bibliographic paradigm” in LIS. Studies of literatures cannot be substituted by, for example, studies of users.

Some of the criticisms raised against this view may be related to problematic philosophical premises: The bibliographic paradigm does not necessarily imply a positivist description of documents, but may imply a consideration of what documents can do, and how LIS can support documents in doing important tasks, i.e. a critical and pragmatic perspective.

44

Thank you for your attention!

45

References

Feinberg, M. (2007). "Hidden bias to responsible bias: an approach to information systems based on Haraway's situated knowledges" Information Research, 12(4) paper colis07. Available at

http://InformationR.net/ir/12-4/colis/colis07.html

46

References

Hjørland, Birger (2007). Arguments for 'the bibliographical paradigm'. Some thoughts inspired by the new English edition of the UDC. Information Research, 12(4) paper colis06. http://informationr.net/ir/12-4/colis/colis06.html

47

References

Schneider, Jesper W. & Borlund, Pia (2007a). Matrix Comparison, Part 1: Motivation and Important Issues for Measuring the Resemblance Between Proximity Measures or Ordination Results. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(11), 1586-1595.

Schneider, Jesper W. & Borlund, Pia (2007b). Matrix Comparison, Part 2: Measuring the resemblance between proximity measures or ordination results by use of the mantel and procrustes statistics. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(11), 1596-1609.

48

References

Talja, S,. Hartel, J. (2007). "Revisiting the user-centred turn in information science research: an intellectual history perspective" Information Research, 12(4) paper colis04. Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/12-4/colis/colis04.html

Documents

Theoretical foundation of Knowledge Organization: “Positivism” versus “pragmatism”. Invited speech Sunday Oct 28, 2007 VIII ENANCIB in Salvador, Bahia,