On the razor's edge: between local and overall needs in knowledge organization

Abstract

This is a 27-slide presentation made at ISKO 2004 (International Society for Knowledge Organization) in London, UK. Recent projects in subject indexing and classification at K.U.Leuven University Library (Belgium) aim to give new impulses to knowledge organization within the institution. While in recent years a lot of attention was given, and with good reason, to the technical and administrative integration of e-sources, less energy was invested in organizing the content of traditional and electronic collections. Nevertheless, presenting information sources in a content-structured way remains a core task of our University Library. This paper focuses on some experiments with subject search interfaces at K.U.Leuven University Library and situates them in a new policy for knowledge organization, which tries to find a balance between local and overall needs.