| Integrative Levels Classification | project | ILC2 schedules | developing schedules | how it works | people | references |
Some relevant proposals regarding the future of knowledge
organization emerged during the
8th conference of the ISKO Spanish chapter, which took place in
the beautiful, lively atmosphere of the town of León, between
18 and 20 of April 2007 (as usual, Ágnes Hajdu Bárat
took nice photos of
the whole conference).
These proposals are here labeled as "the León manifesto", and can be summarized in the following points:
The León conference was devoted to "Interdisciplinarity and
transdisciplinarity in the organization of scientific knowledge". It
was opened by María José López-
Huertas, the current president of ISKO, with a keynote
address on "Multidimensional knowledge management in the knowledge
organization systems" (in Spanish). Its abstract, published in the proceedings of the conference, is as
follows:
The arrival of new ways of studying reality, as a consequence of postmodernism and the complex thinking, gave place to a new knowledge, that may be called multidimensional knowledge, and its variants multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity that cannot be understood, represented nor organized within the traditional indexing and retrieval systems based on disciplines. An analysis is done showing how the Library and Information Science field has reacted to this problem, and proposals that try to solve the inadequacy between the multidimensional knowledge and the indexing and retrieval tools are explained.
In the initial survey of recent trends in knowledge, López- Huertas observes [p 5] that "a perspective change like the one proposed for inter- and transdisciplinarity is going to deeply affect some of the models, claims and methods traditionally established". The inadequacy of existing KOS to treat interdisciplinary knowledge has already been observed and emphasized by several authors, including Clare Beghtol [Knowledge organization, 25: 1998, p 1-12], who has made reference to the focus on phenomena in JD Brown's Subject Classification.
To cope with this "need of making disciplinary boundaries permeable" [p 11], recent KO research seems to be developing three possible strategies:
The third solution includes the use of facet analysis to express
interdisciplinary themes [Beghtol cit.], as well as Gnoli's proposal
[Proc' 9th ISKO conference, 2006, p 11-18] "having as its aim the
foundation of bases for the creation of a universal non-disciplinary
faceted classification. To this purpose, he reuses concepts of wide
tradition in classification research such as phenomenon, facet,
integrative levels, as well as predicate logic" [p 11-12]. Other
explorations have been carried out by López-Huertas herself in
applying domain analysis to an interdisciplinary domain like women
studies.
"All these [studies] represent advances, however more investigation is necessary in order to reach a model which corresponds to the real dynamics of interdisciplines as a whole, rather than considering them as a sum of parts, and, starting from here, to suggest actual methods of representation and organization", López-Huertas concludes [p 22].
This open problem was especially addressed the day after in the session on "Implications of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity for knowledge representation". The session was opened by Sylvie Davies with some exploratory considerations on how to organize information science itself in an interdisciplinary context, again making use of facet analysis ("Mediating knowledge across the activity of information science").
Then, Mela Bosch presented her paper, co- authored with Claudio Gnoli and Fulvio Mazzocchi, on "A new relationship for multidisciplinary KOS: dependence" [p 399]:
Most existing knowledge organization systems (KOS) are
based on disciplines. However, as research is increasingly
multidisciplinary, scholars need tools allowing them to explore
relations between phenomena throughout the whole spectrum of
knowledge. We focus on the dependence relationship, holding between
one phenomenon and those at lower integrative levels on which it
depends for its existence, like alpinism on mountains, and mountains
on rocks. This relationship was first described by D.J. Foskett in
the context of CRG's work towards a non-disciplinary scheme. We
discuss its possible status and representation in three kinds of KOS:
thesauri, classification schemes, and ontologies. In thesaural
structures, dependence could be one of the subtypes of associative
relationships (RT), which should be defined according to several
authors in order to enrich their semantic functions. In
classification, it could act together with hierarchy as a structuring
principle, providing a way of connecting and sorting main classes
based on integrative levels. In ontologies, it could be defined as a
dependsOn direct slot, expressing the fact that through
it a class does not inherit all properties of the other class on
which it depends. We argue that providing search interfaces with
cross-disciplinary links of this kind can give users more adequate
tools to examine the recorded knowledge through creative paths
overcoming some limitations of its canonical segmentation into
disciplines.
This paper is part of the Integrative Levels Classification research project, referred to by López-Huertas above and described in this website. Gnoli et al. conclude observing that "most KOS justify their disciplinary structure by the assumption that users, while searching for information, will follow the disciplinary organization they are familiar with. This may be an effective way to reproduce the literary warrant faithfully. However, the function of KO is not only to represent the existing literature, but also to suggest new paths of research through the discovery of relations in published knowledge. To the latter purpose, cross-disciplinary relations must be representable and made searchable. Projects like Szostak's and ILC go in this direction" [p 406].
The session was indeed completed by Rick Szostak's
paper on "Interdisciplinarity and the classification of scholarly
documents by phenomena, theories, and methods", as summarized in its
abstract [p 471]:
The paper argues that information science can best serve the needs of interdisciplinary scholarship (which is of increasing importance) by developing universal classifications of the phenomena studied by scholars and the theories and methods applied by scholars. Present systems of document classification are grounded in disciplinary terminology and thus serve interdisciplinary scholarship poorly. The second part of the paper outlines the importance of the recommended type of system of classification, the limitations of present systems, and the effects of this limitations on interdisciplinary scholarship. The third part argues that such a system of classification is feasible, and that it is best developed through a combination of induction and deduction.
After discussing the need for interdisciplinary classification, it is remarked [p 474-475] that "the (until recently) independent efforts of Szostak – drawing on the study of science literature – and Gnoli and colleagues [...] – drawing on the information science literature – have produced similar and entirely complementary approaches to the development of a universal classification of phenomena. While these schemes are in their early stages, the broad outlines are clear, and efforts to classify some literatures have been successfully undertaken (see especially the ISKO Italy website noted just above). Though not itself an effort at document classification, Szostak [A schema for unifiying human science, Susquehanna UP, 2003] established that the arguments of hundreds of works from across the human sciences could be classified in terms of a simple but universal classification of phenomena. While much more remains to be done, enough has been accomplished to establish the feasibility of the endeavor."
In conclusion [p 476], "this paper is in some sense a manifesto for a radically new approach to document classification. It is both highly desirable and feasible to classify scholarly documents in terms of a universal classification of phenomena, theories and theory types, and methods. If information scientists develop the sort of classifications suggested above, they will greatly facilitate interdisciplinary scholarship. Many scholars at present understand the value of interdisciplinary scholarship but hesitate to engage in this because of its challenges. Given that specialized and interdisciplinary scholarship are mutually supportive, greater efforts toward interdisciplinarity will markedly enhance the quality and productivity of the scholarly enterprise as a whole. In other words, information scientists can at this historical moment have a huge and beneficial impact on the future course of scholarship by developing classifications that facilitate interdisciplinary analysis."
In the concluding discussion, the organizer of the León conference, Blanca Rodríguez Bravo expressed her interest and agreement with the contents of the whole session.
One newly developing, faceted, non-disciplinary general
classification scheme, like those wished by various authors, is that
described in this website (ILC). Its unities of classification are
phenomena, considered as neutral objects of knowledge, independent
from any approach or viewpoint by which they can be treated.
Phenomena can be freely combined to give a faceted notation. Among
the possible facets, some can account for the theories
(04) and methods (03) to be represented
according to Szostak:
uu finance uu04x finance studied by theory X uu04y finance studied by theory Y uu049z finance studied by theories of type Z uu03b finance studied through observational method uu03o finance studied through statistical analysis mq03b animals studied through observational method mq03o animals studied through statistical analysis mq04y03o animals studied by theory Y through statistical analysis
A user searching, for example, for "statistical analysis" will
query the system by notation 03o, and retrieve "finance
studied through statistical analysis", "animals studied through
statistical analysis", and "animals studied by theory Y through
statistical analysis". The classification of theories and methods,
and their expression in ILC notation, are now expected to be
developed better by the integrated effort of Szostak and Gnoli.
In personal discussion during the León conference, it was realized that the general need remarked by López-Huertas can be well addressed by the mentioned research projects, including work on the listing and classification of theories and methods, and on the classification of phenomena and the representation of all dimensions by a freely-faceted notation. These ongoing researches find thus their place in the larger picture that has been described here as the León manifesto.
[The text above has been later published in Knowledge organization, 34: 2007, 1, p 6-8.]
Dear Claudio, Rick and everybody, first, thank you very much for the "manifiesto", for the interest and time that you put in writing this text. So, the main objective of the conference has been fulfilled: to awake interest and discussions on the conference theme among us. I am very much glad about it I hope that people collaborate with inputs on the ideas that you developed in the text.
I agree with the manifesto content. I hope you had a good time in León and also a good trip.
Before much time passes, I would like to share with you something that I have been thinking lately. As you can recall I mentioned in León a comment made by Ia McIlwaine where she distiguished between interdisciplines and specialties in the way of being so (multidisciplinarity?). She also said that facets are good for the latter cases. Now the question: facets fit in multidisciplinary knowledge characterized by approaching the topic from different angles, but do they fit as well in real interdisciplines characterized by having created a new organic reality, different from the external disciplines interacting within the interdiscipline? Personally, I do not have clear how facets can represent well real interdisciplines, although they can do well in multidisciplinary approaches.
At first glance, I would imagine that any interdiscipline can be analyzed like any other object by a (new) set of facets, using as a guide the grid of general categories (PMEST or analogous). But probably we should check it with a real example... Maybe a case of interdiscipline is gender studies, while a case of multidisciplinarity is horses in zoology + horses in military science?
By the way, just in these days I have presented within the 7th program of the European Community a project for the implementation of a thesaurus on complexity (UNIMULThes: Unitas Multiplex Thesaurus: a conceptual map of the complexity domain). Consider that complexity – I insist on this aspect which I know better – invites us not only to overcome the disciplinary boundaries, but to an idea of knowledge where the idea of the "fundamental place of observation" disappears. Complexity has thus two aspects: a phenomenic and an epistemic one. If the project is also to include the implications of complex thinking to KO, I think this should be kept in account.
[One relevant reference:] MP Satija, Extension of two-phased subjects in the Colon Classification, Herald of library science, 18 (4), Oct 1979, p 344-348. Abstract: Interdisciplinary studies have made multi-phased subjects inevitable. Briefly deals with their provision in several classification schemes. Colon Classification is equipped through its phase relation to deal precisely with such subjects, but there are only 2 phases in a complex class. Through a logical extension of the phase relation rules, however, the class number for a complex class of any order may be synthesised in Colon.
I have been contacted by Russian classificationist AA Shpackov, pointing me to his Universal Classification. Although very few information on it is available in English (an outline is published in JASIS, 43: 1992, 10, p 679), it seems that it also takes phenomena as the primary classsification unit, and research approaches as a separate aspect: "On the base of the classiology the Universal Classification (UC) of all matter forms (objects) and their attributes (phenomena, laws, sciences and practices) is made" (The [Universal Classification] as a basis for the library language of subject presentation and search of documents in 21st century, Crimea 1995 LIS conference).
Your analyses and proposals strike me very much. I would like to go deeper in some questions, even in connection with my current study on folksonomies. If I understand it correctly, your investigation tries to give a well-structured, scientifically careful answer to the problem (also at the origin of folksonomies, according to someone) of the rigidity of taxonomies/classifications, as well as indexing languages based on controlled vocabularies. Although the shift you propose from traditional disciplines to phenomena and theories is not entirely clear to me, I find anyway that the conceptual path is really interesting and rich of possible implications.
I am still a bit perplexed about using the term phenomenon for these instances (to me, phenomenon is a manifestation, something which happens). But the overall idea is clear. Some time ago, I also expressed doubts about keeping a disciplinary approach, though my analysis was based on the belief in the arrival (or the presence) of new way(s) of knowledge.
From the world to the classifier:
Which should take preference? Most people write about phenomena from their own disciplinary viewpoints, so the overall subject of a report may be (sub)disciplinary. But the same phenomena can be used or studied by many disciplines, which will need information on the phenomena wherever they are reported. So to represent the originating context of a report we need disciplinary classification, but to reveal its detailed content we need phenomenal (??)
General documentary classifications are organised into main classes that are often called "disciplines", perhaps because we think of them as the knowledge domains studied in an academic setting. But such classes as Mining and Education are, in the first instance, not domains studied but activities pursued, by the mining industry and by teachers. Only secondarily do they become objects of academic study. I find it helpful to replace the idea of disciplines with that of "fields of human activity", activities in which people engage practically and are then led to study and write about.
There is at present a feeling among classificationists that "instead of disciplines, the basic units of a new knowledge organisation system should be phenomena of the real world as it is represented in human knowledge". These are the words of a "manifesto" issued at the recent Leon conference. In most general classifications, phenomena are embedded within each main class - e.g. chemicals and their reactions within Chemistry, people and their behaviour within Psychology and Social science. The argument is that all phenomena should be separated out to form a series of new main classes, and the old disciplines relegated to a minor role. The draft of a classification of this type, the Integrative Levels Classification (ILC), has been constructed by Claudio Gnoli, and I have benefited much from studying his work. I have also found helpful the Broad System of Ordering developed by Eric Coates and others.
My feeling is that phenomena should indeed be separated out, but that parallel to that listing there could be a second listing of human activities. Phenomena I take to be (our knowledge of) entities, their properties and interactions, that exist in nature (from elementary particles and forces up to the world ecosystem, or the cosmos), in society (from individual people up to the human community), and as human artefacts. But the human activities of investigating natural and social entities, of undertaking personal and social actions, and of manufacturing artefacts of all kinds, are equally needed in a documentary classification.
Clearly, such activities are in some sense also phenomena of the world, but I think we can distinguish them from the phenomena already defined, as being a set of human points of view from which other phenomena may be approached. Any given documentary report, although it usually deals with phenomena, does so from the viewpoint of a particular activity, so both aspects are needed in order to state its "subject". Each listing can then be searched independently, and any phenomenon can be linked to any activity. That is to say that, potentially, the viewpoint of one particular activity can be directed to any or all phenomena, and any one phenomenon can be the object of attention from many or all viewpoints.
The idea of natural phenomena is very familiar -- they are, after all, what natural scientists investigate, experiment on, theorise about. They are usually set out quite clearly in such "disciplinary" classes as Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geology, Astronomy and so on, and it is relatively easy to extract them into separate listings at a series of levels . The ILC lists entities that are at the levels of (elementary) particles, atoms, molecules, bulk matter (e.g. solids, liquids, gases), celestial objects, rocks, landforms, cells, organisms, (biological) populations and communities. Each entity has characteristic properties, its structure may be known, it has particular interactions with other entities and behaves in certain ways. The properties, interactions and behaviour of entities at the same level are similar in nature.
Physics recognises a variety of different types of property and behaviour that natural objects may display: mechanical, thermal, optical, electrical, magnetic, surface. We also recognise biological properties such as toxicity. Organisms have characteristic properties and behaviour such as anatomy, physiology, sensitivity, nutrition, reproduction, genes, metabolism, development, ageing, illness, death. Populations of organisms (species) have habitats and evolve. Biological communities have interspecies interaction, predation, food chains, symbiosis, parasitism, and so on.
Most of these phenomena are wholly "natural". Yet some kinds of atom, many chemical molecules, many materials that take the form of "bulk matter", some landforms, breeds of domesticated plants and animals, some habitats, are man-made. We no longer live in a natural environment - should we include such man-made products as "phenomena"? After all, they have the same kinds of characteristic as their natural counterparts.
Next we have people, with not only biological but also behavioural characteristics, perceptions, concepts, thoughts, speech, attitudes, emotions, desires, values, goals, plans, and more. People cooperate and form social groups of various kinds - families, tribes, cities, nations, work teams, clubs, associations, and also may be grouped by characteristics, such as ethnic, linguistic, religious, political, urban, rural, handicapped, etc. All such phenomena are described in Psychology and Sociology.
So overall, the Phenomena classes would list what is known to exist in the world, the entities and their characteristics.
In contrast, the Activity classes would list in what ways [humankind] interact[s] with phenomena (both natural and other people), seeking to understand them and to direct and use them to meet human needs. These human needs might be summarised as: food and nutrition, clothing and adornment, housing and furnishings, good health, satisfying work, leisure and recreation, sports and games, tourism and travel, good environment, artistic insight, moral support, security and personal protection, knowledge. There are also secondary needs, e.g. for processes, tools (physical and mental), machines and materials used in satisfying the primary needs. Areas of human action to meet these needs might be summarised as:
[These comments have later been developed and published by the author in "The structure of subject classifications for document retrieval", 2008.]
I found the work being done in th[is] framework very useful, and I subscribe to the principles outlined.
Many of my interests are centred around explication and representation of different view points in documents, and classification schemes and similar tools as knowledge production devices. As for the first interest, with some my colleagues here in Bilkent, we were discussing how to represent different perspectives in Wikipedia and wikis. These are collective works, however, different voices tend to be subdued under one authorative interpretation, usually. We were discussing how to preserve multiplicity of views in such documents.
"Classification of "entities", "objects" or "persons" that may be used for various types of scientific or administrative KO purposes, are most likely to have a simpler structure than classifications that will be created for the organization of literature about these "entities", "objects" or "persons". Classifications created to mediate recorded knowledge, i.e. library and documentary classifications, ought to reflect the multifaceted nature of the way the knowledge is recorded and communicated:
In addition, subjects and scientific phenomena often interact and the nature of these interactions and relationships may be the content of a document."
"When knowledge disciplines and sub-disciplines are the primary principle of organizing knowledge, phenomena and associated entities and processes will be subsumed to the aspect of discipline, and we are then dealing with a perspective or aspect classification system. In this kind of classification a single phenomenon will appear in any discipline or field of knowledge in which it may be the subject of study. For instance, the concept of "fish" will be listed in the subdivision of zoology, sport, and agriculture.
When the primary principle of organization of knowledge is phenomena, i.e. when the knowledge structure lists phenomena followed by aspects/disciplines of their treatment, such a scheme is called a classification of phenomena. In such a classification, for instance, "fish" would be the "main class" and subclasses would be zoology, agriculture, sport.
In information and documentation, however, we do not deal with entities or phenomena as such but rather with the literature about them. Hence, the same concepts or phenomena may be studied in many fields of knowledge. A "fish" can be analyzed in zoology, animal husbandry, the food industry, sport or cooking. Document indexing aims to group similar contents in the way books are likely to be sought and it is assumed that, for instance, a nutritionist looking for "fish cooking recipes" will not necessarily be interested in books on fishing, growing fish or the sport of fishing. Collecting all books about "fish" on a single library shelf does not seem to make sense in practice. Hence, although in the past there were libraries organized according to a classification of phenomena (for example, Subject Classification of Brown) this principle of organization is recognized as ill-suited for library users [Ranganathan, Library classification on the march, in The Sayers memorial volume, Library Association, 1961, p 72-95]. Thus, nowadays most of the widely used documentary classifications are disciplinary, i.e. aspect classifications." (On the nature and typology of documentary classifications and their use in a networked environment = El profesional de la información, 16: 2007, 6, p 580-589)
I agree that classifications of objects can be simpler than classification of subjects including relationships between different objects. But I think that a good system should allow to express both, according to the needs. For example, AAT is used both for libraries and for objects in the UK national art museum (FACET project). The key requirements is that objects and their relationships be expressed with a consistent expressive notation, possibly with a fixed notation for each concept.
Also, it may be true that "collecting all books about fish in a single library shelf does not seem to make sense in practice". But the example is a bit too generic. If we take a more specific concept, like "pikes", it will become relevant to extract from a database all combinations of "pikes" with any other class, eg "aquaculture -- damages by pikes" as well as "pikes -- behavioural ecology".
Anyway, even in a phenomenon classification, like the ILC experimental draft, there will be a variety of distinct classes including fish at different integrative levels, such as organisms, aquaculture, food, sport, etc., so not all documents about fish will be listed together, though they will be retrievable through synthetic notation. In the terms you describe, UDC and ILC are not going towards directions so different, apart for the structure of their main classes.
In my mind this is the difference between two purposes in information retrieval: searching (what? where?) and browsing (where? what?) and normally both can be achieved by disciplinary classifications. For browsing and in order to save your time you require discipline/field orientated display -- hence discipline orientated structure. For searching one uses verbal representation. This is why classifications have subject-alphabetical index/relative index and syndetic structure to link distributed relatives. So if you use Dewey or UDC you can search for "pike" and you will get all the documents related to "pike" no matter in which discipline they are... and your result list will be systematically ordered.
I believe that there is plenty of room for improvement of UDC by extracting, linking and consolidating phenomena designation. This can be maybe achieved through adding descriptor/thesaurus index to the UDC. One of the biggest problem in UDC is duplication of concepts across disciplines, using different notational representation.
A few weeks ago, I met on the net the ILC project. It was for me quite a revelation. For years I was looking for a library classification system that would fit the aims of classification.
In fact, what does the librairian want with a classification system ? He (she) wants a system to place a book on a shelf. What criterion to choose ? In fact, if it is only to place and pick books, thanks to the computer-based systems, it would be possible to choose size, or date of arrival. But, who use the system ? First the librairian, but mainly the reader, the researcher. And the interest is that just beside the one book searched are books on the same subject. So, in fact the question : What is the subject, what is the same subject ? And your answer is also mine. A subject (object, entity, etc.) is neither first defined by a discipline nor by a point of view.
My ideas about classification and document analysis come from my own pratice as a high-school librairian and for years as an indexer of reviews and magazines for the main indexing service in the school system in France. My reflexion itinerary went through Van Slype, "Linguistique et documentation", manual of UDC, thesaurus and terminology principles, linguistics and inter-linguistics, Ranganathan, James Duff Brown and Clare Beghtol, CRG and BC2, FAT-HUM and new class 2 of UDC, and, finally, ILC.
I had during those few past weeks e-mail correspondance with Claudio Gnoli, to whom I sent some of my previous tries [plan de classification 2]. But some questions remain, or appear when I go further in ILC. Some principles that could be applied and some remarks (not classified):
jU and tnU) : better to avoid unlike (quasi-) synonymsz as to add a new set of letters could be a good idea, but it is too much used here)004 or 009 and my own list of "forms" or carrier or media[Arguments against and in favour of interdisciplinary classification, including the theses of the León Manifesto, are discussed in recent and coming issues of Journal of documentation:
I just discovered, through a review paper by Éric de Grolier (BBF 33: 1988. 6. p 468-489), that Robin A.B. Bonner already proposed non-disciplinary classification, while discussing a project of classification of community information in the proceedings of the 4th International study conference on classification research, Augsburg, 1982, Indeks, Frankfurt 1982, p 227-234. His argument is very close to the situation of present-day government websites: when someone wants what to do e.g. when his/her spouse dies, she/he is not interested in disciplinary information, but in practical information ranging across political sciences, religion, psychology, economics, medicine, etc. The CRG discussed Bonner's classification.
The same review paper mentions Martin Scheele's Universal Faceted Classification, of which only the first volume would have been published, that "represents likely the most advanced attempt to build a classification by phenomena, not by disciplines anymore, on the basis of the theory of integrative levels". Scheele's works: [The Universal Facet Classification (UFC): a modern system for the classification of knowledge, in German], Medizinische Welt, 28: 1977, 38, p 1526-1529; Ordnung und Wortschatz des Wissens, Guntrum, Schlitz/Hesse 1977; Automatic indexing of titles and keywords on the basis of a model for an overall thesaurus of knowledge, International classification, 10: 1983, p 135-137.
So it seems that certains ideas are flying around here and there, like our dandelion seeds, only waiting to be organized and developed...
[Edited a traslation into Slovene of the Manifesto, published in the printed journal "Library news" of the National and university library of Ljubljana.]
At the UDC Seminar 2009 just held in The Hague, I saw several authors supporting ideas similar to those of the Manifesto. Keynote speaker Dan Brickley observed that "ontologies can model books or the world" and we seem to need both, as besides books and papers we face "increasing quantities of base factual data": so we should have "thing-oriented ontologies mixed with discipline-oriented subject classifications". Felix Boteram and Jessica Hubrich observed that perspective relationships are needed in knowledge organization systems, in order to distinguish between eg parrots as pets vs. as organisms. Volker Weiland personally informed me about his progress in applying the phenomenic approach to the organization of a private library, while Philippe Cousson (now in the ILC project) presented a paper about a phenomenic version of UDC in his high-school library. I myself discussed phenomena as a better unit for KO in my paper "Classification transcends library business". A distinction between phenomena ("objects") and aspects ("subjects"), with expression of both in library catalogues, is also supported by Maria Teresa Biagetti: "For a document dealing with heresy (arianism, catharism, and so on), the object could be heresy [...] a document could present a critic speech about heresies, from a catholic point of view, for instance, and the subject could be catholic orthodoxy. This could safeguard pertinence" (Pertinence perspective and OPAC enhancement, proc. 11th ISKO Conference, Ergon, 2010).
At the 2nd ISKO UK conference in London, well-known expert in knowledge management Patrick Lambe supported theses agreeing with the Manifesto: "To conduct their work more effectively, to question their assumptions, to innovate across disciplinary boundaries, and to create new ways of working, scholars need to become more aware of the knowledge organization work they do, and they need to be able to design and adapt their knowledge organization practices to support their knowledge goals."
The book "Transdisciplinarity revealed: what librarians need to know" by Victoria Martin (Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited, 2017), aimed at practicing librarians, reprises the Leon Manifesto and variously cites its authors. There is a chapter on the possibility of universal classification that reprises much of what has been said in "Interdisciplinary knowledge organization" (Springer, 2016). The first half of the book surveys the literature on transdisciplinarity, and the second half looks at how librarians should aid transdisciplinary research or make sure there are no gaps in their collection because of disciplinary focus.
Melissa Adler ("Disciplining knowledge at the Library of Congress", KO 39: 2012. 5. 370-376) sees disciplines as an imposition of power, and argues that "social tagging seems to disregard conventions of disciplinarity and allows much more diversity of representations".
RODRÍGUEZ BRAVO Blanca & ALVITE DÍEZ M.a Luisa, eds.; La interdisciplinariedad y la transdisciplinariedad en la organización del conoscimiento científico = Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in the organization of scientific knowledge: actas del VIII Congreso ISKO-España: León, 18, 19 y 20 de Abril de 2007; Universidad de León. Secretariado de Publicaciones: 2007
The León manifesto / [Claudio Gnoli, Rick Szostak ; Ágnes Hajdu Bárat: photos] — ISKO Italia <http://www.iskoi.org/ilc/leon.php> : 2007.04.23 - 2018.01.11 - [leon.htm until 2011.07.19]