Knowledge Organization

The implementation of the 2018 Vietnam General Education Curriculum has brought significant changes to teaching and learning methods in Vietnam. To adapt to these changes, teachers and students require information systems that more effectively support information search and promote effective teaching and learning. This study focuses on developing a physics ontology (PhyOntology) and a corresponding semantic search tool (PhyOwlSearch), tailored to textbooks and related educational materials. We leveraged Physics textbooks and the General Physics Dictionary of the Vietnamese Education Publishing House as the basis for proposing the new ontology. The first step was to manually develop an ontology, including the concepts and the fundamental relationships between these concepts (called BaseOntology). The second step was to build a corpus to expand the BaseOntology and then develop it further using the pattern-based approach (called PhyOntology). Subsequently, a semantic search engine (PhyOwlSearch) was developed based on PhyOntology and data collected from virtual sources. PhyOntology offers comprehensive coverage by capturing key concepts and their interrelationships from the General Education program, showing most of the physical connections between these concepts. The ontology-based semantic search engine enables students to access overlapping notions of knowledge (i.e., establishing knowledge relationships in search results). The system uses PhyOntology, creates indexes, and returns accurate search results that meet the demands of self-learning and teaching.

Biography digital storytelling is a narrative method rooted in reconstruction and deduction, designed to achieve the associative, semantic, situational, and visual representation of biographical content. Drawing from narratology theory, this research explores an ontology-based implementation pathway for biography digital storytelling through four key stages: selection and characteristics analysis of storytelling materials, extraction and semantic association of storytelling elements via ontology, clustering biographical themes and connecting narrative threads using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), and visualizing the biography through structured storylines. The study aims to deepen the mining of biographical knowledge, enable creative interpretation of storytelling content, and more effectively convey the biographical subject’s spirit, offering both an innovative technical approach and theoretical perspectives on biography digital storytelling.

Amid ongoing technological advances and their effects on the information cycle, this research examines how Knowledge Organization engages with Big Data technologies and analyzes the metatheoretical perspectives within this scientific domain. A bibliographic review of books and e-books, along with scientific articles from databases such as LISA, Scopus, Web of Science, and BRAPCI formed the theoretical framework. The empirical analysis focused on thematic content, theoretical influences (citations), and metatheoretical perspectives in the selected literature. The results show that technological developments significantly influence scientific practice in Information Science and Knowledge Organization. Nonetheless, their inherently social orientation fosters research that addresses both technological and societal concerns, providing insights into the Big Data context. The study concludes that managing large volumes of data today requires not only technological and semantic innovation but also a democratic approach—one best led by Information Science and Knowledge Organization in collaboration with disciplines such as Computer Science, Mathematics, and Statistics, underpinned by human and social guidelines.

The paper aimed to analyze the thematic growth and topical evolution of the intellectual structure in Knowledge Graphs (kGs) during 2013–2023. This applied research used an analytical and descriptive method, co-word techniques, scientometric indicators, and social network analysis. A web-based interface of Bibliometrix, Python, Microsoft Excel, VOSviewer, UCINet, and SPSS was used for descriptive bibliometric study, data analysis, and network structure visualization. China was the most prolific country. Nine major topic clusters were identified based on the co-occurrence network. The most mature and mainstream thematic cluster was the ‘application of knowledge-based systems’. Six clusters were identified in the network structure: ‘knowledge graph’, ‘knowledge engineering’, and ‘knowledge discovery’ as niche themes, and ‘ontology’, ‘semantic web’, and ‘linked data’ as basic themes. Moreover, six main cluster evolutions during 2021–2023 were identified: ‘ontology’, ‘natural language processing’, ‘machine learning’, ‘protein’, and ‘knowledge engineering’, and ‘knowledge graph’.

This article discusses the development of an unpublished classification of the arts, Beeldleer (Iconology) that its creator Henry van de Waal (1910–1972) described as a tool with the title ‘Globus Iconographicus’ for mapping and organizing knowledge of visual and non-visual arts. Explorations of the archives of art and literature historian Van de Waal reveal the role that cartographical methods and the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) played in the design of a catalogue system of topographical prints and drawings of Leiden University Library and ultimately in the development of his classification systems of the arts, Iconclass and his hardly known Beeldleer. I claim that Beeldleer has potential value as a classification of the (making of) global art beyond the canon of Western art history and for mappings with non-visual art forms. This will be demonstrated by applying Beeldleer to classify the work of the Sámi artist and environmentalist Britta Marakatt-Labba (born 1951). Finally, I will argue that the publication on the Semantic Web of this incomplete and sometimes outdated classification, preferably in ontology design patterns, might still be relevant for knowledge organization of (digital) art history. In particular, for its syntactic qualities, Beeldleer could play a crucial role in contextualizing the (pre-) preliminary results of experiments with computer vision and artificial intelligence.

This paper describes the procedures for reviewing the Flemish Research Discipline Standard (Vlaamse OnderzoeksDiscipline Standaard, VODS) 2018 and developing the updated VODS 2023. The background, scope, principles, and consultation process are described, and an overview of the key changes are presented. The scope of the review was to remain aligned with current research practices and international standards and remain appropriate for statistical and reporting purposes. The VODS 2023 includes new discipline codes that were not present in the previous version. Some codes have been decoupled or merged compared to the VODS 2018 version. Some codes have been removed in the VODS 2023 because they have become obsolete. A discussion is included on how to improve the review process for future updates.

This article presents bibliography as a field of study. It consists of several traditions, of which enumera-tive (or “systematic”) bibliography is considered most important in relation to information science, but at the same time tends to be rejected as a scientific or scholarly field by other bibliographical traditions. It is about making, using and evaluating bibliographies, which list all kinds of publications. Analytic, descriptive and textual bibliography are other subfields, which are important for establishing the identity of a given document (is the Hamlet that scholar A is reading the same Hamlet that scholar B is reading?) and for providing critical editions of important works. Historical bibliography (with the sociology of text and book history) is yet another subfield, a very broad one that lacks coherence, but which provides important perspectives on the functions of different kinds of publications. In the UNISIST model, bibliographies are consid-ered secondary kinds of publications (based on primary literature and a prerequisite for tertiary literature). From the Library of Alexandria (c. 285- BC) to Google (and Google Scholar) it has been a utopian dream to establish universal bibliographical control, to make all publications relevant for those needing any special set of them. To optimize visibility and retrievability of documents is an important task for information science, related to the goal of bibliographical control, and to literature- and information searching in bibliographic and full-text databases. A theoretical view on (enumerative) bibliography was suggested by Margaret Egan and Jesse Shera in 1952, in which a new field called “social epistemology” was seen as a “parent” discipline for the study of bibliography. This view is critically examined in this article, and it is suggested that Shera’s 1951 characterization of social epistemology represents a better foundation for bibliography.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in three women worldwide has experienced some form of physical or sexual violence. In Brazil, in 2022, about 30% suffered some form of gender-based violence, with the number of women's homicides (4,034) surpassing that of femicides (1,437). Misclassified crimes? In 2015, Law 13,104 amended article 121 of the Brazilian Penal Code, establishing femicide as a qualifying circumstance for the crime of homicide (when the act occurs against the woman because of her female sex condition). Having Infor-mation Science as a basis for promoting the development of methodologies and strategic solutions, conceptual and technical treatments on this phenomenon are necessary. Aiming to contribute guidance for typifying crimes of violence against women in filling out the National Risk Assessment Form (FNAR) and Police Report (BO) through Knowledge Organization Systems, it was based on Araújo and Lima (2018), who suggest semantic enrichment of ontologies through text corpus comparison, and applied METHODOE (Methodology for Domain Ontology Enrichment) by Araújo (2021), consisting of 5 steps. GSSO – Gender, Sex, and Sexual Orientation Ontology, Thesaurus for Gender and Wom-en's Studies, Women Thesaurus, and Thesaurus on Violence against Women and Girls were used as a basis. The result was the OntoVDFcM ontology, to be used in filling out FNAR and BO forms, reducing errors, identifying or preventing crime more assertively, and contributing to more precise statistics, enabling investment of more time and money in protective, preventive, supportive, educational actions, and mainly, in more effective public policies.

Historically, library materials about diverse identities have often been subject to what Gough and Green-blatt (1992) term “systemic bibliographic invisibility,” the use of “outmoded, prejudicial, inadequate, or inappropriate terminology” (61) within bibliographic records to describe an item’s contents. Using such terminology within subject metadata can make materials challenging to find within a library’s catalog, restricting users’ access to the materials and the ideas they contain. Prior work has demonstrated that folksonomies like LibraryThing may better represent the multiplicity and fluidity of marginalized identities. In this study, we analyze the subject metadata associated with a corpus of picture books read during drag storytimes, comparing the inclusion of different types of subject metadata found in bibliographic records from the Library of Congress catalog and LibraryThing. Specifically, we analyze the use of terms that explicitly describe various facets of human difference and those that refer to diverse elements within the books in more generalized or implicit terms within the bibliographic records of picture books that include depictions of LGBTQIA+ characters and/or themes, BIPOC characters, and characters with disabilities, developmental differences, and chronic illnesses. LibraryThing records contained a higher prevalence of subject metadata types across nearly all book categories, indicating that users assign more of a variety of types of subject metadata than do professional catalogers. Implica-tions for the discoverability and accessibility of children’s materials depicting marginalized identities are discussed.

Information institutions and systems have the goal to en-sure access to information and records, support research, preserve and disseminate memory, promote accountability and encourage reading and cultural activities. For that, pro-fessionals construct, maintain and apply knowledge organi-zation systems in a given context, space and time, taking into account the diversity of knowledge domains, users’ needs and reflecting on their own agency. It is a global concern of KO to create alternatives to pro-mote spaces for the appropriate representation of knowl-edge domains and user communities’ needs, mainly the ones...

Sort of People: Considerations About the Ontogeny of Autism in the DDC, 1942-2023 traces the ontogeny of autism within the Dewey Decimal System, from the 14th to the 23rd editions. This period marks significant shifts in the psychiatric understanding and societal attitudes toward autism, reflecting the broader dynamics of neurodiversity recognition, the conceptualization of autism as a spectrum, and the influential role of autistic self-advocacy. The study draws on interdisciplinary sources and theoretical frameworks, including Ludwig’s ‘restricted malleability’ and Hacking’s ‘interactive types’ to critically analyse how changes in scientific, political, and social landscapes have influenced the organization of literature on autism in library classification systems. Methodologically, the paper employs a detailed historical review of DDC editions alongside an analysis of literature concerning the classification of various marginalized groups as well as medical, philosophical, and disability advocacy literature to map the shifts in autism's classification. This approach highlights how the language and structure of classification systems both reflect and shape societal attitudes to-wards autism. The analysis also considers the impact of autistic self-advocacy on challenging and reshaping these classifications, emphasizing the importance of language and representation in the struggle for autistic integration and visibility. The implications of this study extend be-yond the specific case of autism classification. It contributes to ongoing debates on the politics of knowledge organization, the role of libraries and classification systems in either perpetuating or challenging societal norms, and the importance of incorporating marginalized perspectives in the creation and dissemination of knowledge. The author is diagnosed autistic.

The situation of many indigenous cultures in Australia, North, Central, and South America can be described as one of marginalization or minorization. Subject representation of Indigenous knowledge constitutes one of the contemporary crossroads since, through it, the predominant mentalities of classificationists, classifiers, and indexers are revealed, and this can consolidate hegemonic visions or propose appropriate alternatives to the cultural particularities of Indigenous peoples. From a critical perspective, this work aims to contribute to the systematization of the growing literature on indigenous warrant in KO. The methodology offers quantitative and qualitative data as results of the application of six categories of analysis. The most significant scientific production on the Indigenous issue in KO has come from Canada, the United States, and Australia since 1971. In Latin America, publications only began in 2023, particularly in Brazil. We identified two possible paths to improve the subject representation of the area: adaptation of pre-existing schemes or the creation of new knowledge organization systems specialized in Indigenous culture. Cultural hospitality and indigenous warrant are two relevant tools to guide solutions to improve the subject representation of native cultures. Among other conclusions, from the KO, progress was made in the hierarchy of indigenous knowledge, and there was a need for these cultures to impose their ways of categorizing, naming, and relating things. The urgency of promoting academic production on the subject in Latin America is highlighted, considering the historical and contemporary dimension of its great indigenous civilizations throughout its terri-tory.

Objective: It aims to map, analyze thematically, semantically, and discursively the articles published in the area of Knowledge Or-ganization within the five published volumes of the events of the International Society of Knowledge Organization Brazil (ISKO-Brasil) and the eight volumes of the North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization (NASKO). Methodology: The methodology used was to survey pre-established pivot statements of the scientific production published in the annals of both events with the help of Sketch Engine software as a tool and approach 6 – Historical studies of structures and services of information in domains, 8 – Epistemological and critical studies of different paradigms, assumptions and interests in domains, 10 – Studies of structures and institutions of scientific and professional communication in a domain, from Hjørland (2017), and 13 – Discourse analysis of domain analysis as a methodological contribution, from Smiraglia (2015) and Barros (2023). Results: The survey yielded 131 articles for ISKO-Brasil and 132 documents for NASKO. It was found that, even though the two corpora analyzed are within ISKO's scope, there are divergences regarding the understanding of concepts, as well as their relationship with the epistemological discussion of the area and convergences concerning the concepts of 1) Domain Analysis; 2) Organ-ization Systems; 3) Concept Theory; 4) Classification Systems. Conclusion: The analysis made it possible to envision Knowledge Organization as a theoretical and applied area based on Concept Theory and Domain Analysis.

In this paper, I argue that the most provocative work in critical knowledge organization is happening at the level of process. I present three persistent assumptions about knowledge organization work and current provocations that challenge them. First, that systems should be seamless and not reveal the work behind them. Second, that systems should achieve a single authorial voice through consistency, precedent, and patterns. Third, that knowledge organization systems are best applied with minimal interpretation on the part of the worker. The provocations against each of these assumptions come from current and highly regarded work in the field, indicating greater respect and visibility for the processes behind knowledge organization systems.

The 2019 United Nations General Assembly declared that the years of 2022 to 2032 will encompass the International Decade of Indigenous Languages. Within this context, information Science (IC) and knowledge or-ganization (OC) play a central role in the construction of policies and actions aimed at preserving indigenous lan-guages. As such, our research aimed to diagnose, make propositions, and run preliminary tests in an Institutional Repository (IR) of a Brazilian Federal University. More specifically, this work regards the inclusion of metadata to represent indigenous scien-tific production. The main operations in this study included the creation and adaptation of metadata fields in the Dublin Core scheme. These were to specifically indicate indigenous collective authorship, indigenous names in an authorship, summaries in indigenous language, keywords in indigenous language, and title in indigenous language. The methods were literature review, applied research, and an experimental research. The implementations made in RI enabled, even if on a preliminary basis, the institution's repository as a robust instrument for archiving and accessing scientific information. It is also a means for preservation, visibility, appreciation, and respect for indigenous languages and knowledge, which are currently threatened.

Recent years have seen considerable growth of online multimedia databases, largely due to digitization processes in different sectors of society. Knowledge organization and representation strategies were used to qualify and enrich data and metadata from different types of documents and ensure persistent and interoperable online information structures. This study aimed to propose an ontological reference model to systematically organize metadata that describes multimedia documents based on different contexts and needs. The proposed model was based on the NeOn methodology and aimed to encompass the functional and nonfunctional requirements for the construction and reuse of ontology classes obtained by merging and aligning previously analyzed multimedia ontologies. This resulted in a comprehensive conceptual-ization to organize multimedia metadata for application contexts that deal with the semantic annotation of information entities produced and consumed in the web of data (Semantic Web). We concluded that advances in developing conceptual reference models for representing multi-media documents are the result of interdisciplinary efforts that drive progress in the production and use of more consistent and coherent metadata aimed at facilitating the cross-referencing, interconnection and aggregation of online information sources.

Traditionally, the selection of concepts and terms within a knowledge organization system (KOS) has served to reflect a socially constructed but majority opinion on language and therefore represent the perspectives of dominant groups. Members of a marginalized group cannot be expected to share a vocabulary with members of the dominant group, and as such, when utilizing a KOS the onus falls on the marginalized user to master two dis-crete sets of terminology: 1) spontaneous uses of language that reflect a worldview as expressed by the marginalized group(s) to which they belong, and 2) that terminology “translated” into terminology the user believes will be used by the KOS (i.e., the terminology of the dominant cultural worldview). In this conceptual paper, we elucidate complexities of socially-driven uses of terminology through the application of the concept of code-switching: the movement between languages or ways of speaking that individuals may utilize in a variety of social situations. After further defining code-switching we then identify situations in which individuals may be seen as engaging in this practice. We proceed to apply the concept to the language used by both KOS and users of KOS, highlighting the particular barriers this brings into focus for members of marginalized communities. Finally, we consider the implications of code-switching for marginalized users as they navigate KOS, and empha-size the importance of work to ease the ability to transition between codes going forward.

Controlled vocabularies are widely used in Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS); however; they are criticized for perpetuating biases, being slow to change, and not reflecting the language of many groups and cultures. This paper examines and challenges these criticisms by identifying five forms of vocabulary control in use today (minimal control, passive control, post hoc control, flexible control, and rigid control), and studying their effect on the subject indexing and subject tagging processes from the perspective of novice indexers and taggers. The study uses a mixed methods approach, including a survey, a think-aloud protocol that was employed while participants indexed and tagged documents, and a retrospective interview, to better understand participants’ actions, thoughts, and reactions during the indexing and tagging process. The study explores how controlled vocabularies make indexers and taggers feel controlled, in control, or out of control while they index and tag; measures how different forms of vocabulary control affect coextensiveness between aboutness statements and indexing terms; and analyzes how these experiences inform the criticisms of controlled vocabularies, particularly in relation to how vocabulary control aids and hinders racial and social justice in indexes. The study finds that the form of vocabulary control has a significant effect on the subject indexing and subject tagging processes, including an effect on participants’ feelings of control during the processes, an effect on how participants trans-formed concepts during subject representation, and an effect on how participants navigate complex issues related to racial and social justice.

The social stigmatization affecting patients with serious mental disorders, as well as the evolution of patients’ right to information, calls for a more inclusive approach to the production of concepts in classifications. Failing to do so, medical classifications (International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) appear to be a tool of epistemic injustice: patients are the object of a diagnosis that eludes them and hinders care. The interplay between medical concepts and their interpretation by society has an impact on both the patient’s social integration and the way he or she is cared for. For example, a patient classified as schizophrenic will be considered incurable from the outset. In this context, encyclopedic bibliographic classifications can provide the hermeneutical resources needed to think differently about severe mental disorders. This study shows how 3 encyclopedic classifications sheds light on the link between the medical representation of illness and the patient’s integration into society. The difference between the representation of the same concept in the Medline medical subject headings and in universal classifications is also highlighted. The findings are then compared with an analysis of the French media over the period 2019-2023 related to representations of mental disorders. An evolution in representation is evident, even if stigmatizing interpretations remain quite present. Bibliographic knowledge organization systems need to address these issues.

This paper traces the impacts knowledge organization systems have upon what can be known through them, the identities they create or deny, and the resulting structure of reality they uphold. We conceptualize classi-ficatory systems of record to frame classification schemes, knowledge organization practices, and knowledge or-ganization systems as central mechanisms for achieving institutional consensus. We define onto-epistemic injustice as a harm to knowers accomplished simultaneously through what they can or cannot know (epistemic harm proper) and also through what thereby does or does not exist (ontological harm). Whereas epistemicide is the destruction of the ability to know, onto-epistemicide is the concomitant destruction of the ability to become. Onto-epistemicide is the cumulative and compounding result of onto-epistemic injustices. Blending insights from document phenomenology with prior examinations of epistemic injustice, we undertake two comparative descriptive case studies examining how the consensus making processes of classificatory systems of record result in onto-epistemic injustice: A) The Med-ical Subject Headings from the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM-MeSH) and B) The Digital Collections from the Alabama Depart-ment of Archives and History (ADAH). In locating documental experiences of knowing and non-documental experiences of becoming, our onto-epistemic injustice analysis reveals the outcomes in these cases extend beyond harming the ability to know. Rather, knower’s identities and most worryingly their ability to become are simultaneously at stake. While classification and factmaking are necessary components for structuring and recreating social reality, it shouldn’t be harmful to real people.

This study examines the historical perception of knowledge organization systems (KOS) as reinforcing oppressive regimes and epis-temicides, particularly regarding issues such as race, gender, sexuality, and feminist studies. Drawing on the concepts of social differentiation, intersectionality, and decoloniality, it explores the complexities and challenges encountered in developing these systems within a context marked by the pervasive influence of technologies like artificial intelligence, semantic interoperability, alignment, and governance in emerging knowl-edge networks. Furthermore, it proposes an experimental process to operationalize intersectionality and decoloniality as pivotal dimensions in defining the structuring warranty employed in constructing KOS. This involves integrating these perspectives into the development pro-cesses while considering the interconnectedness among various forms of oppression and inequality and recognizing the imperative to decolonize knowledge and underlying power structures. Subsequently, the implementation stages of the COEXISTENCE – Thesaurus of Intersection-ality and Decolonial Issues: Black Studies, Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies are outlined, followed by an analysis of the constraints and potentials of the experimental instrument devised and the approach adopted in its implementation.

Terminology used in dementia care is fiercely contested. Advocates, health care providers, and researchers often have divergent perspectives on how aspects of dementia can and should be described. We created the Behav-iours in Dementia Toolkit – a free, online library of resources available at behavioursindementia.ca – to equip health care providers and care partners with important health information to better understand and compassionately re-spond to changes in mood and/or behaviour that often accompany dementia. To centre the personhood of those living with dementia within our online library, we created an emergent metadata schema to support the information needs of our diverse audiences, which included people with lived experience of dementia, care partners, and multi-disciplinary health care providers (e.g., allied health, nurses, and doctors, care aides, etc.). This was an iterative pro-cess that utilized a combination of methods including a usability study, card sort activity, environmental scan, in-ternal metadata brainstorming exercise, working group discussions, consultations with various stakeholders, and real-world application of the metadata description process. Our approach leveraged interdisciplinary expertise from the library and information studies, knowledge mobilization, dementia health care, and user experience fields, in addition to the lived experiences of people with dementia and their care partners. This interdisciplinary expertise was formative in shaping the dimensions of metadata development and to ultimately create and apply clear, accurate, inclusive, and intuitive terminology for diverse end-users. Creating a robust schema meant negotiating an unresolvable tension between labelling behaviour changes to enhance the navigability of the collection and avoiding pathologizing these behaviours and perpetuating stigma. Our approach was to re-frame symptoms of behaviours in dementia (also called behaviours and psychological symptoms of dementia or BPSD in the clinical world) to focus on observable changes in mood or behaviour. This created space to move away from a focus on care partners’ or health care providers’ reactions to or discomfort with specific behaviours; it also allowed us to step away from interpreting normal human behaviours and emotions as deviant. By contextualizing the changes of mood and behaviour for the person living with dementia, we can affirm their holistic personhood and resist reducing them to a set of symptoms. This approach confers dignity, agency, and hope to people living with behaviours in dementia. This case study describes the process and outcomes of navigating the complexity of creating, refining, and implementing person-centered ter-minology in the context of the Behaviours in Dementia Toolkit. We illustrate how we grappled with the scope, nature, meanings, and assump-tions of terminology about moods, behaviours, and symptoms associated with behaviours in dementia, and the decisions we undertook that guided us to our eventual launch version of the website. We also delve into the inner workings of our online library that are interwoven through-out the seamless and intuitive design of our end-users’ experience of the Toolkit website. Through this, we demonstrate that our design and end-to-end development of the Toolkit are anchored in the practice of person-centered approaches at their core, and that these values are em-bedded with thoughtfulness and careful consideration. As a result of our findings, we suggest the exploration and further theoretical develop-ment of the concept of person-centered warrant. We also share how lessons learned from moving beyond stigmatizing terminology to human-izing, person-centered terminology may be adapted to future projects in other contexts across the library and information, health care, and knowledge mobilization fields, and beyond.

This article details the Anglo-American library cataloging tradition. Cataloging is a knowledge organi-zation process through which resources are represented in the context of a catalog. Emerging from the work of individual libraries in the United Kingdom and United States in the mid-nineteenth century, modern Anglo-Amer-ican cataloging practices have undergone continuing development over the course of almost two centuries, largely through a succession of widely implemented descriptive standards. They have come to represent a distinct, coherent tradition that has grown in influence beyond English-speaking settings to exert a global impact on contemporary knowledge organization. While standardization and internationalization have both played a part in establishing the influence of the Anglo-American cataloging tradition, other trends have carried significant impact as well, including technological development and increasing cooperation among libraries. This article explores the meaning, development, and implications of Anglo-American library cataloging through an examination of its historical, practical, and theoretical foundations, along with a consideration of current and emerging developments related to this tradition.

Definitions serve a range of purposes, including providing meaning to a term, describing the characteristics of an object being de-fined, eliminating any ambiguity about the meaning of a term, demonstrating the etymology of a word, and so on. However, scholars hold differing opinions on everything from the necessity of definitions to the very existence of definitions. This disagreement is evident in various definition theories, types, and methods. This article aims to provide a tentative definition of blockchain using the Aristotelian method of definition, after thoroughly examining existing definitions in the literature. Many publications were collected from multiple databases to achieve this, and non-peer-reviewed literature was excluded. Subsequently, definitions were extracted from the literature using a semi-auto-mated method, creating a mini corpus of definitions, which was then analyzed. During the analysis, it was observed that authors employ eleven class terms and several distinguishing characteristics to define blockchain. However, ten of the class terms were deemed unsuitable based on the analysis, and the definition was ultimately made on the concept of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT). Nevertheless, the proposed definition is presented as tentative due to the absence of a precise definition for DLT and the ongoing evolution of blockchain. In the field of information systems, defining concepts logically is a rare occurrence caused by professionals' unfamiliarity with communication and logic principles. This study aims to provide a tentative definition of blockchain that will enable interested parties to have a consistent understanding of the term and lay the groundwork for future definitions in this domain.

There is burgeoning interest in decolonizing the library catalog to recognize and remove longstanding bias. This article takes a step back and examines how theories about human classification from antiquity informed 18th and 19th century ideas of race and ethnicity and how these ideas became embedded in Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). It explores the evolution of DDC with respect to these subjects across four editions and over the course of 130 years, reflecting on DDC’s presentation of changing dominant societal views. Finally, the article acknowledges the role librarians play in tending to the values of knowledge organization and our need to continually evaluate the impact of our work on the production, organization, and distribution of knowledge.