[Sigcr-l] Reading about how culture/language affects knowledgerepresentation

[Birger Hjørland]

On Sep 19, 2009, at 5:33 PM, Dagobert Soergel wrote:

> Could you recommend a reading about how culture/language affects  
> knowledge representation?
>
> Does anyone know of the one or two articles that introduce this  
> problem, or a bibliography?  A good treatment of cultural focus (or
> bias) in classifications, such as DDC or the Colon Classification,  
> would certainly fit in here.


I believe that the really important thing to consider is that the question is "radical": Traditional views on classifications suggest that they should be "objective", science is supposed to be "objective" and to uncover the real structure of the world. All this is questioned by some new tendencies in epistemology and the philosophy of science, including "pragmatism". 

The discourses in library and information science are generally not  well informed about this. 

One thing is, however, theory. Another thing is practice. The two largest libraries in Denmark have stopped to classify their books, but now just buy MARC-tapes with Dewey classifications. 


Very important if more people could be engaged in these problems

Kind regards

Birger