Three Creative Tensions in Document Interpretation Theory Set as Evidence of the Need fora Descriptive Informatics

Describes three tensions in the theoretical literature of indexing: chief sources of evidence indexing, process of indexing (rubrics and methods), and philosophical position of indexing scholarship. Following this exposition, we argue for a change in perspective in Knowledge Organization research. Using the difference between prescriptive and descriptive linguis- tics as a metaphor, we advocate for a shift to a more descriptive, rather than the customary prescriptive, approach to the theo- retical and empirical study of indexing, and by extension Knowledge Organization.

Experientialist Epistemology and Classification Theory: Embodied and Dimensional Classification

What theoretical framework can help in building, maintaining and evaluating networked knowledge organization resources? Specifically, what theoretical framework makes sense of the semantic prowess of ontologies and peer-to-peer sys- tems, and by extension aids in their building, maintenance, and evaluation? I posit that a theoretical work that weds both for- mal and associative (structural and interpretive) aspects of knowledge organization systems provides that framework. Here I lay out the terms and the intellectual constructs that serve as the foundation for investigative work into experientialist classifi- cation theory, a theoretical framework of embodied, infrastructural, and reified knowledge organization. I build on the inter- pretive work of scholars in information studies, cognitive semantics, sociology, and science studies. With the terms and the framework in place, I then outline classification theory s critiques of classificatory structures. In order to address these cri- tiques with an experientialist approach an experientialist semantics is offered as a design commitment for an example: metadata in peer-to-peer network knowledge organization structures.