Theoretical Perspectives in KO Speakers

Birger Hjørland is Professor Emeritus in knowledge organization at the Royal School of Library and Information Science at University of Copenhagen and was previously professor at University College in Borås (2000-2001). He holds an MA in psychology and PhD in library and information science. Prof. Birger was a research librarian at the Royal Library in Copenhagen 1978-1990, and taught information science at the Department of Mathematical and Applied Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen 1983-1986. He is chair of ISKO Scientific Advisory Council and a member of the editorial boards of Knowledge Organization, Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology and Journal of Documentation. He is editor-in-chief of ISKO Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization. His h-index on 2017-02-11 is 41 in Google Scholar and 23 in Web of Science.

Title of Birger's class: Search Engines and Knowledge Organization (or why we still need Knowledge Organization)

Claudio Gnoli has been an academic librarian since 1994, currently at the Science and Technology Library, University of Pavia, Italy. He has taught various courses and lessons on classification and knowledge organization, including a recent invited lecture at the KO Research Group, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. He is a specialist in classification and facet analysis on both the theoretical plane and its application to the development of classification systems based on disciplines (UDC editorial board) or based on phenomena (Integrative Levels Classification research project). He is co-author of Interdisciplinary Knowledge Organization (Springer, 2016); a chapter author in K. Golub's Subject Access to Information (Libraries Unlimited, 2014) and of numerous papers in academic journals; and web editor of the ISKO Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization. His book Introduction to Knowledge Organization was published by Facet in July 2020.

Title of Claudio's class: Disciplines and phenomena in Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS)

Martin White is Managing Director of Intranet Focus Ltd. which he founded in 1999. He has carried out over 100 intranet projects in the UK, Europe, North America and the Middle East, run workshops on intranet management and enterprise search management and keynoted at many conferences around the world. He has been a Visiting Professor in the Information School, University of Sheffield since 2002 and is Vice-Chairman of the BCS Information Retrieval Specialist Group (BSC IRSG). He is the author of eight books, including "Making Search Work" (Facet Publishing 2008) and "Enterprise Search" (O'Reilly Media 2015). His primary area of research is understanding the factors that affect the way that information flows around organizations (learn more about his most recent research).

Title of Martin's class: Information foraging in knowledge organisations

Barbara H. Kwasnik, Professor Emerita, taught in the areas of knowledge organization and representation, theory of classification, and information science. Her main research interests are formal aspects of classification structure, personal information management, and the intersection of classification with everyday human endeavor. One of the most rewarding aspects of her academic career has been work with doctoral students, where she contributed the understanding of classification to the research process at all levels, from conceptualization to analysis. She retired in 2018 from the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University in Syracuse, N.Y., but believes one never retires from working with students. Her recent publication, "Changing Perspectives on Classification as a Knowledge-Representation Process" (Knowl. Org. 46 (2019) No.8) summarizes the evolution of her thinking about classification over the past forty years. To learn more about Prof. Kwasnik's research see selected works.

Title of Barbara's class: Critical description and evaluation of classification schemes

Marcia Zeng is Professor of Information Science at Kent State University (USA). Her primary research interests include knowledge organization systems, linked data, metadata, smart data and big data, semantic technologies, and digital humanities. Dr. Zeng has authored over 100 research papers and five books. She has chaired and served on committees, working groups, and executive boards including IFLA, SLA, ASIS&T, NISO, ISO, DCMI, ISKO, and W3C. She was a member of the working group that developed the international standard ISO 25964 (Thesauri and Interoperability with other vocabularies).

Koraljka Golub is Professor in Library and Information Science at Linnaeus University (LNU), Sweden. She is the head of the iInstitute, LNU's iSchool, coordinator of the Digital Humanities Master's Programme and co-leader of the Digital Humanities Initiative. Her teaching and research is mainly in the field of digital libraries and information retrieval, particularly focused on topics related to knowledge organisation such as automated subject indexing, social tagging and evaluation. Her official webpage is available at: https://lnu.se/en/staff/koraljka.golub/

Marjorie Hlava is President and Chairman of Access Innovations, Inc., an international database construction and information management services company she founded in 1978. She was educated as a botanist, trained by NASA as an information engineer, and has worked behind the scenes for most of the major information organizations. Her research interests center on speeding the human processes in knowledge management through productivity enhancements, working methodologies and software for the automation assistance of the human brain in organizing information. She has been active in pushing semantic enrichment and adaptation of artificial intelligence techniques wherever they allow consistently reproducible results. Marjorie is the creator of the patented Data Harmony software suite for the automation of indexing process that includes metadata management module to manage thesauri, taxonomies and ontologies. Marjorie authored numerous books and over 200 articles on the topic of information organization, semantic enrichment, taxonomy and thesaurus construction. A relevant publication, "The Taxobook", is a three-volume collection on information concepts, search and retrieval and the construction and implementation of taxonomies.