Deliberate bias in Knowledge Organization?

Deliberate bias in Knowledge Organization? Birger Hjørland 10th International ISKO Conference, Montréal Thursday, August 7, 2008 (afternoon)

Introduction Bias * is a negatively loaded word, and normally is research focused on eliminating bias. In some context this may make good sense. In many fields “that noble dream” of objectivity has been seen as an ideal and as a prerequisite for a profession (i.e. in history and in library and information science). The avoidance of bias corresponds to this dream. The discussion of bias is thus linked to the discussion of objectivity as an ideal for a discipline as well as for a profession based on a discipline.

Introduction In the field of history Peter Novick has outlined the American historical profession’s relation to objectivity: ”Part One, dealing with the years from the founding of the American historical profession in the 1880s down to the outbreak of the first world war, is concerned with the various reasons for the establishment of objectivity as the central norm of the profession. Part Two, treating the period of World War I and the interwar years, shows how a changed cultural, social, and political climate produced "historical relativism," which, though it never became the dominant view within the profession, did put believers in objectivity on the defensive. . . .

Introduction . . . The theme of Part Three, covering the years of World War II and the cold war, is the attempt of the historical profession to establish a new, somewhat chastened, objectivist synthesis, trivializing the relative critique by the partially incorporating it. Part Four treats the years since the mid-1960s, and is a story, necessarily lacking an ending, of the many factors which caused the collapse of the postwar synthesis, leading to the present period of confusion, polarization, and uncertainty, in which the idea of historical objectivity has become more problematic than ever before." (Novick, 1988, p. 16-17).

Introduction Novick’s book is important because it describes different ways in which objectivity has been conceptualized, the developments and discourses about objectivity and the broader social basis for these views and discourses. It is a very emotional topic. To be professional (rather than amateur) is – as shown by Novick - often associated with norms of methodology, objectivity and consensus.

Introduction I believe the same issue about objectivity is important also for Knowledge Organization – that we can learn much from Novick’s book and from other works about epistemology. It is not a simple question about being for or against objectivity because objectivity is a word with many meanings. Leopold Ranke is the big name in establishing History as an “objective” science. Some of his methodological ideals are fruitful, but even his history is not “objective” but history as seen and understood by Ranke.

Epistemology I do not believe that epistemology is something that can be avoided if we want to develop our field of KO, but we have a shortage of philosophical knowledge. Ontology and epistemology are nottwo different approaches to Knowledge Organization as Gnoli (2008) suggests: Whether we speak about the classifications of disciplines on the one hand or phenomenaon the other hand we are still talking about the classification of kinds of ontological phenomena.

Epistemology Epistemology is about how we organize knowledge: In order to identify phenomena in the world we have to use some kinds of methods, which are based on epistemological views. For example, in classifying animals, zoologists depend on different research methods. There are different methods and “paradigms” in biological systematics and different research methods produce different (although overlapping) classifications of animals. (Hjørland, in press: Book review of Ereshefsky). Knowledge Organization must be based on arguments, which include arguments about epistemology.

Epistemology Tennis (2008, p. 103) writes: “Hjørland offers us a number of epistemic stances for KO research; his own work moving from materialist through activity-theoretic, then into what some would call an implicit rationalist stance, and then to critical realist viewpoints (Hjørland 1992, 1997, 2002, 2004 respectively). [. . .] The variegations of interpretations of epistemology, epistemic stances, and their ilk, make the defining and using of epistemology a difficult problem for the KO researcher.” I agree in the last sentence, but I believe the first part of the quote makes things worse than they are.

Epistemology I do not believe that I have moved from one position to another such as Tennis’ quote suggests. (And I do not follow the interpretation of “an implicit rationalist stance”). I believe much of this confusion is due to lack of concrete exemplification in our discussions. Every time we use a theory or a point of view we should point out what practical difference this view makes. (If a view cannot be related to such practical differences, it is probably not important).

Epistemology Novick spoke about “the present period of confusion, polarization, and uncertainty”. We should thus not expect these problems to be easy to handle. But that does not mean we can ignore them. Progress in our field – much more that in history or other fields – may depend on a satisfactory solution – and on enough researchers in KO working from a satisfactory theoretical understanding.

Knowledge Organization (KO) The basic problem of KO may seems very simple: How do we define a given class (or a given concept) and how do we determine the relation between two classes (or concepts). This seems so simple, that it is hard even to raise the problem. We all know, for example, that Montréal is a town in Canada, and that the semantic relation between “Montréal” and “Canada” is a part-whole relation. Library and information specialists have normally not addressed the question of how such relations are established in the first hand (and the associated problems of “objectivity”).

Knowledge Organization (KO) I believe it is important that the epistemological problems of KO is always exemplified with such concrete examples (as simple as possible) and vice versa: That any decision in practice is always defended from a theoretical point of view. This is the only way theory can be tested and practice can be related to theory. In recent years, I have tried to demonstrate that normally is a kind of positivist/objectivist assumptions influencing KO but that alternatives related to pragmatism may be more fruitful.

Knowledge Organization (KO) A number of different approaches (and labels) may be considered members of the same family. Scholars in KO such as Olson, Campbell, Furner, Andersen, Feinberg, Dahlström and Kjellmanmay be seen as basically in agreement with my understanding of “pragmatism”. I feel it is important that the common principles in these views are formulated as an approach and confronted with conflicting approaches. The following slides presents the view of Mats Dahlström:

Knowledge Organization “Knowledge organization has by tradition treated its bibliographic tools as more or less value free and neutral instruments beyond the limitations of medial, historical, social, and ideological constraints, and free from the biases and tastes of any author. Several library and information science (LIS) studies have however lately performed close readings of bibliographic tools as situated texts, revealing the dependency of the tools on particular historical media settings, their socio-cultural roles and functions, or their argumentative and rhetorical dimension.” (Dahlström, 2006, p. 291; emphasis added).

Knowledge Organization “Bibliographic tools are always, it is argued, to some extent hermeneutical documents and subjective interpretations, in two senses: they carry with them a history of ideology and a hermeneutical heritage, and they also exert an interpretative influence over the objects they are designed to manage”. (Dahlström, 2006, p. 291).

Knowledge Organization “A pattern [in the literature about scholarly editions] was detected: [1] an idealistic strand treats departure and target documents (i.e. the final editions) as primarily unbiased, content delivery vehicles, whose texts and other content can be subjected to disambiguation. The idealistic strand nourishes the scientific ideals of representativity, testability and cumulativity. . . .

Knowledge Organization . . . [2] A more hermeneutically oriented strand emphasizes the interpretative element as unavoidable within all phases of editorial clustering and transposition. To that strand, the interpretative and rhetorical elements are dominant to the point where the scholarly edition is more aptly depicted as a rhetorical argument rather than as an objective report, and where the editor has the face of a biased author rather than of a mere textual porter. The very form and mediality of the edition then assumes the role of content constraining filters. . . .

Knowledge Organization . . . [3] A third option would be to view editions as content circulating ecosystems, where the division of labour between collaborating and parallel media and edition types is emphasized, and where the varying technical and material qualities of different media and edition types are appropriated to accommodate different aims, functions, symbolic values, uses and target audiences.” (Dahlström, 2006, p. 297-8, emphasis added). (This third option does not, in my opinion, make an alternative to the [2] option: In these ecosystems every actor must provide “bias” in accordance with some goals and values).

Conclusion • A positivist strand in KO (“unbiased, content delivery vehicles, whose texts and other content can be subjected to disambiguation. The idealistic strand nourishes the scientific ideals of representativity, testability and cumulativity”) is opposed to • A pragmatic strand see KO more like a rhetorical argument which must be based on explicated values and goals. Feinberg 2007a+b also points to this important conclusion, but she is not alone in this view – such as her papers seem to suggest.

Conclusion One of my 2004 examples of “deliberate bias” in KO “In the Danish Dewey System (DK5) the Virgin Islands are classified as part of “Denmark” (46.5) even though they were sold to USA in 1916! This can be seen as a “bias” but it may be a well considered bias in that the users of the system will primarily be interested these islands because of their former relations to Denmark (and books are written on the former Danish possession). “ (Hjørland, 2004, slide 12).

Conclusion In my recent paper (Hjørland, 2008) I have classified and discussed six approaches to KO: • The traditional approach to KO expressed by classification systems used in libraries and databases, including DDC, LCC and UDC (going back to about 1876). • The facet-analytical approach founded by Ranganathan about 1933 and further developed by the British Classification Research Group • The information retrieval tradition (IR) founded in the 1950s.

Conclusion • User oriented / cognitive views gaining influence from the 1970s • Bibliometric approaches following Garfield’s construction of the Science Citation Index in 1963 • The domain analytic approach (first formulated about 1994). Almost all those traditions have been dominated by “positivist” rather than “pragmatist” views. This does not make them worthless, but the pragmatic theory might be fruitful for their further development.

Conclusion I believe it is important that all researchers in KO relates to the history and “paradigms” of our field and develop arguments for their chosen position and examine problematic assumptions in other positions. I find some of the influential approaches notoriously unclear. It may not seem tempting for the individual researcher to work with such conceptual and theoretical issues, but it may be decisive for the future of our field.

Conclusion A final point is the relation between KO and subject knowledge. While I agree with Feinberg (2007b) about what I have interpreted as the pragmatic view, there may be different views in our relation to subject knowledge. My position is that Feinberg’s goal presupposes subject knowledge: That the KO-professional is able to identify and negotiate about theoretical positions in the field being organized. A field “philosophy of classification” seems to be developing mainly disconnected from our community, but connecting philosophy with sciences (e.g. chemistry and biology). We cannot afford to be disconnected from this discourse.

Thanks for your attention!

References • Feinberg, Melanie (2007a). Beyond retrieval: A proposal to expand the design space of classification. Proceedings of the North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization, vol. 1. Retrieved 2007-06-07 from: http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1892/ • Feinberg, Melanie (2007b). "Hidden bias to responsible bias: an approach to information systems based on Haraway's situated knowledges" Information Research, 12(4) paper colis07. http://informationr.net/ir/12-4/colis/colis07.html

References • Fleck, Ludwik (1979). Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (German original 1935). *Discussed active and passive elements of knowledge, which may be preferred to objective versus ”bias”. • Gnoli, Claudio (2008). Ten Long-Term Research Questions in Knowledge Organization. Knowledge Organization, 35(2/3), 137-149.

References • Hjørland, Birger (2004). Theory of knowledge organization and the feasibility of universal solutions. Eighth International ISKO Conference LondonFriday July 16th 2004, Session 9B 2.15-3.45 . Available at: http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/389/ (this presentation was not published in the Conference Proceedings) • Hjørland, Birger (2008). What is Knowledge Organization?Knowledge Organization, 35(2/3), 86-101.

References • Hjørland, Birger (2008, in press). Book review of Ereshefsky (2007): The Poverty of the Linnaean Hierarchy: A Philosophical Study of Biological Taxonomy. Knowledge Organization, (In press)

References Novick, Peter (1988). That Noble Dream: The 'Objectivity Question' and the American Historical Profession. Cambridge University Press.

References Olson, Hope A. (2002). The Power to Name: Locating the Limits of Subject Representation in Libraries. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. Tennis, Joseph T. (2008). Epistemology, Theory, and Methodology in Knowledge Organization: Toward a Classification, Metatheory, and Research Framework. Knowledge Organization, 35(2/3), 102-112.

Deliberate bias in Knowledge Organization?