1. The teaching of KO in Higher Education DOES IT DO THE JOB? ROLES, SKILLS, FUTURE Sylvie Davies Robert Gordon University s.davies@rgu.ac.uk 14 th March 2016 1

2. Sources  CILIP - Professional Knowledge and Skills Base (PKSB)  M. Hudon (2010; 2011)  Knowledge Organisation Competence Self-Assessment (2015)  KO competence framework (2016)  L. Robinson and D. Bawden (2010)  J. Morgan and D. Bawden (2006) 2

3. CILIP Professional Knowledge and Skills Base (PKSB) 3 16 HE departments accredited by CILIP Only 6 provide KO working knowledge

4. KO competence framework (2016) IKO - Singapore 4 KOS projectsUser analysis Content analysis Managing systems Developing KO structures & frameworks

5. Course objectives It is significant to note the rarity of objectives focusing on subject analysis (as a cognitive process) or on the use of technology, as if instructors believed that these skills were acquired by instinct or osmosis rather than by actual learning and practice. Hudon, 2011 5 understanding appreciation awareness evaluate be confident

6. 6

7. How is KO expressed in IM/ILS courses? 7

8. What to make of these representations?  KO is multi-disciplinary, even inter-disciplinary  Difficult to identify the driving discipline(s)  Difficult to identify core element(s)  Confusion between KO systems and their field of applications (metadata, interlinked data, digital libraries, visualization etc…) 8

9. The problem with multi-disciplinarity …in the design of courses 9 Multi-disciplinarityIntegrationInvisibility Multi-disciplinarityScattering Visibility out of IM context

10. Interactions with IT  As in integral tools (IR systems)  As complementary tools (thesaurus management systems, databases)  As learning tools (Elearning, WebDewey) 10

11. Students – mostly postgraduates  Varied academic and professional backgrounds  mainly from art/humanities and social sciences  They tend to join generic courses  Digital natives – a challenge?  Students are aware of need to organise information formally But…  They don’t seem to embrace IT  They struggle with terminology 11

12. Theory versus Practice  Education versus training  10 years ago theory was highly valued by academic AND employers (Morgan and Bawden, 2006)  And today?  Initiation to real world of work via:  Scenario in assessment  Case-studies  Placement  Visiting speakers 12

13. Options  ‘Spread’ KO in a landscape of diverse applications  Enhance visibility of KO  Neglect of core skills?  Focus on the core skills ‘the discipline of organizing’ (J.GlushKo)  Subject/domain analysis  Vocabulary control  Structural work transferrable skills ? 13

14. Subject/Domain Analysis - Challenges  Ability to work at conceptual level  between abstraction of the work and the specific single item  ‘attachment’ to format  Loss of expressivity in language  acronyms  abbreviations  usage of nouns at the expense of syntax  compound expressions 14

15. Vocabulary control - challenges  Poor knowledge of language as a tool of expression  at the lexical level  at the syntactical level  The problem of naming  concepts  relationships  distinction between names and identifiers 15

16. Structural Work - challenges  Logical reasoning  ‘is a test’  Consistency in building hierarchies  Consistency in applying principles of division  Ordering versus clustering  Graph theory 16

17. Points of discussion  How to handle multi-disciplinarity?  Should we re-define KO?  Should we focus on core skills?  How much IT?  Should CILIP re-consider criteria of accreditation?  Others? 17

18. References Glushko, R.J., ed. 2013, The discipline of organizing. MIT Press Hudon, M. 2010. Teaching classification, 1990-2010. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 48 (1) pp. 64-82. Morgan J., Bawden D., 2006. Teaching knowledge organization: educator, employer and professional association perspectives. Journal of Information Science. 32(2) pp. 108-115. Moore, M. and Tall, K., 2016. Building competence for knowledge organisation Thomson Reuters 30 OLC 27 Robinson, L., Bawden, D., 2010. Information (and library) science at City University London; 50 years of educational development. Journal of Information Science. 36(5), pp. 631-654 Pattuelli, M.C., 2010. Knowledge organization landscape: a content analysis of introductory courses. Journal of Information Science. 36(6) pp. 812-822 18