Organising Knowledge: An Introduction to Managing Access to Information (4th edition)

Citation

Bawden, D. (2009), "Organising Knowledge: An Introduction to Managing Access to Information (4th edition)", Library Review, Vol. 58 No. 2, pp. 139-141. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530910936961

When a book achieves a fourth edition, it is reasonable to assume that the authors are doing something right. In the case of this book, is it providing a useful textbook, albeit in a subject where there are several alternatives. Its earlier editions appeared in 1987, 1992 and 2000, respectively, and this new edition appears to have been extensively revised.

The publishers and authors do not mince words in describing the purpose of this book, noting is as “this standard student text” and “a key introductory text for undergraduate and postgraduate students of information management”. It is commendable that no attempt is made to claim a unrealistically wide audience for the book, but it would be a pity of it were ignored by practitioners, who might appreciate its clear explanations if they have to deal with thesauri, taxonomies and the like. It might also be a useful resource for continuing professional development courses on these topics. The “textbook” aspect comes through in the provision of lists of “learning objectives” for each chapter, with concluding summaries and reference lists again on a chapter‐by‐chapter basis. However, the worst excesses of over‐designed textbooks are avoided, and the book is clearly written. Appropriately enough, it has a detailed index.

The book takes a wide arena, encompassing all aspects of cataloguing and resource description, classification, subject analysis and their instantiation in various information systems. This breadth means that the authors cannot go into great detail on any particular aspects, but they generally do enough to get their point across, while keeping a balanced treatment. The book is divided into three main sections, though some topics occur throughout the book in various contexts; in general, returning for another look at them is likely to be helpful rather than irritating.

The first section deals with the basics: the nature of information and documents themselves, and some general concepts of information organisation and the description of documents. There is a nod, seemingly obligatory in books of this kind, to reasons why Google is not enough; however, I doubt that the reasons given here, sensible though they may seem to the library community, would convince a cynical member of the “Google generation”.

The second section, which the authors regard as the core of the book, deals with access to information. Starting with a consideration of users and their behaviour, it moves on to the well‐worn paths of subject retrieval and controlled languages, facet analysis and thesauri, classifications and taxonomies and author/title access through catalogues. Much of this has a slightly old‐fashioned feel, but the treatment is thorough and logical.

The third section deals with systems, and describes and exemplifies how the principles are put into practice. Covering all everything from portals to digital libraries, search engines to quality gateways, citation indexes to records management systems, and also including knowledge management systems, and some material on evaluation, this is a particularly rapid run through a bit area; but again balance is kept nicely. A chapter on “organising knowledge without IT” – which covers printed indexes, paper filing systems, back of the book indexes and the like – is a nice corrective to the assumption that all information organisation is digital nowadays. Indeed, the authors might have done even more to show how many of the idiosyncrasies of knowledge organisation tools, from cataloguing codes to thesaurus standards, are in fact hang‐overs from the pre‐digital world.

A very useful textbook, then, but one which will have to compete with several other texts covering all of knowledge organisation, as well as numerous books on the detailed aspects; cataloguing, classification, metadata, thesauri, etc. In particular, it will be compared with Chowdhury and Chowdhury (2007), with Taylor (2004) and with Svenonious (2000); respectively a newly published text, an established text, and a “classic” source book. It is hard to say which is best; all are good, and are likely to preferred by students and other readers on grounds of style and appearance as much as for any better reason. As someone who teaches this subject at postgraduate level, I consider myself lucky to have such a good range of texts to rely on.