Sources of Change for Modern Knowledge Organization Systems

TL;DR

This paper reviews traditional and new sources of change in Knowledge Organization Systems, highlighting challenges and proposing considerations for their design and management in complex, collaborative environments.

Contribution

It catalogs new sources of change for KOSs, including automated and cooperative development, and discusses implications for system design and management.

Findings

Traditional change sources include institutional and standards shifts.

New sources involve automated extraction and collaborative efforts.

Implications for KOS management are discussed.

Abstract

Knowledge Organization Systems (e.g. taxonomies and ontologies) continue to contribute benefits in the design of information systems by providing a shared conceptual underpinning for developers, users, and automated systems. However, the standard mechanisms for the management of KOSs changes are inadequate for systems built on top of thousands of data sources or with the involvement of hundreds of individuals. In this work, we review standard sources of change for KOSs (e.g. institutional shifts; standards cycles; cultural and political; distribution, etc) and then proceed to catalog new sources of change for KOSs ranging from massively cooperative development to always-on automated extraction systems. Finally, we reflect on what this means for the design and management of KOSs.