The Discipline of Organizing

by Jess Hemerly (Contribution by), Murray Maloney (Contribution by), Kimra McPherson (Contribution by), Vivien Petras (Contribution by), Ryan Shaw (Contribution by), Erik Wilde (Contribution by), Rachelle Annechino (Contribution by), J.J.M. Ekaterin (Contribution by), Ryan Greenberg (Contribution by), Michael Manoochehri (Contribution by), Sean Marimpietri (Contribution by), Matthew Mayernik (Contribution by), Karen Joy Nomorosa (Contribution by), Hyunwoo Park (Contribution by), Alberto Pepe (Contribution by), Daniel D. Turner (Contribution by), Longhao Wang (Contribution by)

Overview

Organizing is such a common activity that we often do it without thinking much about it. In our daily lives we organize physical things -- books on shelves, cutlery in kitchen drawers -- and digital things -- Web pages, MP3 files, scientific datasets. Millions of people create and browse Web sites, blog, tag, tweet, and upload and download content of all media types without thinking "I'm organizing now" or "I'm retrieving now."This book offers a framework for the theory and practice of organizing that integrates information organization (IO) and information retrieval (IR), bridging the disciplinary chasms between Library and Information Science and Computer Science, each of which views and teaches IO and IR as separate topics and in substantially different ways. It introduces the unifying concept of an Organizing System -- an intentionally arranged collection of resources and the interactions they support -- and then explains the key concepts and challenges in the design and deployment of Organizing Systems in many domains, including libraries, museums, business information systems, personal information management, and social computing. Intended for classroom use or as a professional reference, the book covers the activities common to all organizing systems: identifying resources to be organized; organizing resources by describing and classifying them; designing resource-based interactions; and maintaining resources and organization over time. The book is extensively annotated with disciplinary-specific notes to ground it with relevant concepts and references of library science, computing, cognitive science, law, and business.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780262313988
Publisher:	MIT Press
Publication date:	05/17/2013
Series:	The MIT Press
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	560
File size:	5 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert J. Glushko is Adjunct Full Professor in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the coauthor (with Tim McGrath) of Document Engineering: Analyzing and Designing Documents for Business Informatics and Web Services (MIT Press).

What People are Saying About This

Scott Abel

This book is long overdue. Robert Glushko demystifies the discipline of organizing things, making the case for a unified approach to the way we arrange things and the information about them. This book is not only jam-packed full of extremely practical advice, it's a fascinating read loaded with examples from all walks of life. A must-read!

Ron Day

This is a wonderfully executed book that represents a significant new way, in both form and substance, of thinking about knowledge representation within an expanding interdisciplinary field. It is an ideal introduction to the conceptual and technical problems of knowledge representation that will serve library and information professionals and those in many other professional fields. It provides an exemplary model for rethinking the core library and information curriculum toward an inevitable, broader, and more inclusive information discipline.

James C. Spohrer

The Discipline of Organizing is an innovative synthesis of library science and computer science that is both of fundamental interest and entirely practical. It is a must-read for all students, faculty, and practitioners who aspire to be better designers of product and service systems.

Don Norman

A masterful piece of work.

From the Publisher

"A masterful piece of work." — Don Norman, author ofLiving with Complexity and The Design of EverydayThings

"This book is long overdue. Robert Glushko demystifies the discipline of organizing things, making the case for a unified approach to the way we arrange things and the information about them. This book is not only jam-packed full of extremely practical advice, it's a fascinating read loaded with examples from all walks of life. A must-read! — Scott Abel, TheContent Wrangler, Inc.

" The Discipline of Organizing is an innovative synthesis of library science and computer science that is both of fundamental interest and entirely practical. It is a must-read for all students, faculty, and practitioners who aspire to be better designers of product and service systems." — James C. Spohrer, Director, IBM UniversityPrograms Worldwide

"This is a wonderfully executed book that represents a significant new way, in both form and substance, of thinking about knowledge representation within an expanding interdisciplinary field. It is an ideal introduction to the conceptual and technical problems of knowledge representation that will serve library and information professionals and those in many other professional fields. It provides an exemplary model for rethinking the core library and information curriculum toward an inevitable, broader, and more inclusive information discipline." — Ron Day, Associate Professor, School of Library andInformation Science, University of Indiana

Editorial Reviews

10/01/2013
Have you ever organized your books, CDs or DVDs, food pantry items, files on your computer, or bookmarked websites? If so, though the activity may have felt like second nature to you, what you were actually doing, according to editor Glushko (Sch. of Information, Univ. of California, Berkeley; coauthor, Document Engineering: Analyzing and Designing Documents for Business Informatics and Web Services), was creating an "Organizing System—an intentionally arranged collection of resources and the interactions they support." Here, Glushko pulls together contributions from scholars, information analysts, and technology experts to introduce the concept of an organizing system and explain the fundamental goals and challenges in the design and setup of such systems, using libraries, museums, businesses, and other organizations to illustrate how these systems are created. Entries cover such topics as selecting and organizing resources, theories of categorization, classifications (faceted and computational), and forms of resource descriptions (e.g., XML, JSON, RDF). Each chapter concludes with six types of endnotes: citation, LIS (library and information science), computing, CogSci (cognitive science), law, and business. Additional resources include a glossary and companion website. VERDICT This ambitious and well-written book provides a foundation of the theory and practice of organizing. It is highly recommended to library and information science academics who incorporate the concept of organizing or organization into their courses.—Susan E. Ketcham, Long Island Univ. Post Lib., Brookville, NY

Library Journal