Vidensorganisation: Skal bibliotekarer organisere al information på Internettet?

Abstract

A first year library school student suggested that in the future librarians should index "all information" on the Internet. This article takes this statement as its point of departure for a discussion about what knowledge organization means, what librarians do today, and what their education should prepare them for in the future. It also analyses what library and information science implies and how it should be further developed. The article presents two basic issues: Bibliographical control and Document representation and shows how these issues are related through the concept of relevance.

Two different ways of approaching these problems are presented. On the one hand there is a rationalist approach based on centralized bibliographical control and indexing in mutually exclusive and exhaustive classes. On the other hand there is a more organic approach based on selecting and indexing for different user groups and needs. The article presents historical and theoretical approaches. It shows how different kinds of organizing information is carried out by many different professions, at several parallel levels (including mechanical indexing). The article concludes that there are no fixed limits to the scope of library education, but that it is important to respect the expertise of other professions and to consider what the specific basis is for the LIS profession.