Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization

by Elaine Svenonius

Book Overview

Instant electronic access to digital information is the single most distinguishing attribute of the information age. The elaborate retrieval mechanisms that support such access are a product of technology. But technology is not enough. The effectiveness of a system for accessing information is a direct function of the intelligence put into organizing it. Just as the practical field of engineering has theoretical physics as its underlying base, the...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262194333
• ISBN13: 9780262194334
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
• Length: 255 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

The Bible of Metadata

I keep this book close to me at work and usually stick it in my laptop case when I leave for home. It is my bible for metadata. The first time I read it, I carefully underlined passages with a fine light pencil. Now I've tossed book decorum to the winds and use highligher pens! To mention just one general topic, Elaine Svenonius grapples with all of the key issues that trained librarians face when cataloguing digital materials. She also covers controlled vocabularies from several perspectives, and understands the challenges/difficulties of applying standard "book" classifications to rich media collections. That it took me a long time to get through this book has nothing to do with her style -- Elaine Svenonius writes clearly, often beautifully -- but rather with the amount of information and the mind-expanding concepts, which I still mull over as I wrestle at work with asset management.

Heavy going, but worth the effort

I think that a lot of people who work in information technology tend to think that the problems that we have with things like web-based search and retrieval are unique to Internet search engines and catalogue databases. I know that I've been working in the field while lacking an adequate sense of the historical basis of information organization.Svenonius breaks information organization down into ideology (purposes and principles), the formalization of the processes involved in information organization, knowledge based on research, and key problems that need to be solved. It's information that's very useful for anybody who is involved with organization of information-- even for people like me who work more on the technical than conceptual side of content management systems.