This paper explores the system of categories that is used to classify articles in Wikipedia It is compared to collaborative tagging systems like this http URL and to hierarchical classification like the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) Specifics and commonalitiess of these systems of subject indexing are exposed Analysis of structural and statistical properties (descriptors per record, records per descriptor, descriptor levels) shows that the category system of Wikimedia is a thesaurus that combines collaborative tagging and hierarchical subject indexing in a special way

Collaborative thesaurus tagging the Wikipedia way

To organize information, librarians create structures. These structures grow from a logic that goes back at least as far as Aristotle. It is the basis of classification as we practice it, and thesauri and subject headings have developed from it. Feminist critiques of logic suggest that logic is gendered in nature. This article will explore how these critiques play out in contemporary standards for the organization of information. Our widely used classification schemes embody principles such as hierarchical force that conform to traditional/Aristotelian logic. Our subject heading strings follow a linear path of subdivision. Our thesauri break down subjects into discrete concepts. In thesauri and subject heading lists we privilege hierarchical relationships, reflected in the syndetic structure of broader and narrower terms, over all other relationships. Are our classificatory and syndetic structures gendered? Are there other options? Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice (1982), Women’s Ways of Knowing (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986), and more recent related research suggest a different type of structure for women’s knowledge grounded in “connected knowing.” This article explores current and potential elements of connected knowing in subject access with a focus on the relationships, both paradigmatic and syntagmatic, between concepts.

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How We Construct Subjects: A Feminist Analysis

Relationships in the Organization of Knowledge

The maintenance of semantic consistency between numerous heterogeneous electronic product catalogues (EPC) that are distributed, autonomous, interdependent and emergent on the Internet is an unsolved issue for the existing heterogeneous EPC integration approaches. This article attempts to solve this issue by conceptually designing an interoperable EPC (IEPC) system through a proposed novel collaborative conceptualisation approach. This approach introduces collaboration into the heterogeneous EPC integration. It implies much potential for future e-marketplace research. It theoretically answers why real-world EPCs are so complex, how these complex EPCs can be explained and articulated in a product map theory for heterogeneous EPC integration, how a semantic consistency maintenance model can be created to satisfy the three heterogeneous EPC integration conditions and implemented by adopting a collaborative integration strategy on a collaborative concept exchange model, and how this collaborative integration strategy can be realised on a collaboration mechanism. This approach has been validated through a theoretical justification and its applicability has been demonstrated in two prototypical e-business applications.

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Collaborative conceptualisation: towards a conceptual foundation of interoperable electronic product catalogue system design

Facet analysis

SUMMARY After a period of experiment and evolution in the 1950s and 1960s, a fairly standard format for thesauri was established with the publication of the influential Thesaurus of Engineering and Scientific Terms (TEST) in 1967. This and other early thesauri relied primarily on the presentation of terms in alphabetical order. The value of a classified presentation was subsequently realised, and in particular, the technique of facet analysis has profoundly influenced thesaurus evolution. Thesaurofacet and the Art & Architecture Thesaurus have acted as models for two distinct breeds of thesaurus using faceted displays of terms. As of the 1990s, the expansion of end-user access to vast networked resources is imposing further requirements on the style and structure of controlled vocabularies. The international standards for thesauri, first conceived in a print-based era, are badly in need of updating. Work is in hand in the UK and the USA to revise and develop standards in support of electronic thesauri.

Stella Dextre Clarke

Papers

The Thesaurus: A Historical Viewpoint, with a Look to the Future