Information and Knowledge Organisation in Digital Humanities Global Perspectives

Koraljka Golub and Ying-Hsang Liu

February 21, 2023

The book Information and Knowledge Organisation in Digital Humanities: Global Perspectives aims to explores the role of knowledge organisation in the digital humanities. By focusing on how information is described, represented and organised in both research and practice, this work furthers the transdisciplinary nature of digital humanities. Although knowledge organisation has in the past been viewed as one of the major disciplines within the field of Information Studies, it has found applications in numerous areas because the need to organise data, informa¬tion or knowledge is omnipresent. However, we have also witnessed that, in many domains of human endeavour, information is being organised ad hoc, often resulting in systems that underperform and even effectively prevent access to data, information and knowledge. In order to help ensure that the best solutions are found for knowledge organisation in the digital human¬ities, it is important to bring the two communities of research and prac¬tice together, to explore potential solutions and jointly address challenges. This book attempts to achieve that by providing state-of-the-art examples of interdisciplinary projects and case studies while also discussing the chal¬lenges and suggesting a future agenda. Our hope is that this volume helps set the stage for evolving knowledge organisation in DH into a truly transdisci¬plinary approach that seamlessly harnesses the synergies of its component parts.

Following the introductory chapter to the field of knowledge organisation for DH, the first part of the book, Modelling and Metadata, comprises six chapters which address the challenges of modelling cultural heritage data, related conceptual mod¬els, approaches to metadata aggregation and metadata enrichment, as well as the need to move from organising data to organising knowledge. This is also the largest part of the book, reflecting the fact that metadata is the dom¬inant area of research within the field of knowledge organisation for digital humanities research. The second part, Information Management, consists of three chapters which discuss the management of in-copyright texts and lexicographical resources as well as DH research outputs. The third part, Platforms and Techniques, contains three papers which focus on specific platforms needed to support DH research, including one on data analysis techniques and one on browsing visualisation techniques to be deployed in user interfaces to cultural heritage collections. Each chapter provides an introductory overview of the topic under discussion, exemplified by a case study, concluding with reflections and suggestions for future work.

The book is an international volume, as its 41 authors are affiliated with universities and related organisations in 16 countries on 4 continents. In addition to providing international perspectives, this wide pool of authors demonstrates the cross-sectoral nature of digital humani¬ties: as many as eight authors are affiliated with a cultural heritage institu¬tion, a heritage board and the European Commission; two authors are IT developers.

Still, as an edited volume of invited chapters, the book provides but a limited snapshot of international perspectives on a sample of topics from knowledge organisation in digital humanities. Examples of themes that could be more represented are automated methods and techniques such as entity linking in natural language processing or deep learning models for semantic representations. User perspectives in information interface design and in evaluation are also underrepresented. Finally, we would have liked to see more of humanities-driven knowledge organisation research rather than vice versa. Perspectives from Africa and South America are sadly absent.

On a final note, editing an interdisciplinary volume can be challenging as a result of different terminologies, research paradigms and writing styles; we have gained immensely from this work and learnt how to further widen our horizons inherited from our own disciplinary backgrounds. It is our wish that this book provides the same inspiration for the reader and sparks new interest in joining forces to devise and enable transdisciplinary approaches to knowledge organisation in the digital humanities.

Here are additional resources of the book:

1. Open access: Information and Knowledge Organisation in Digital Humanities: Global Perspectives
2. Book review by Roxanne Missingham published in Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association

About the Authors

Koraljka Golub is a Professor in Information Studies at Linnaeus University in Sweden. Her research focusses on knowledge organisation of digital document collections, especially on subject access.

Ying-Hsang Liu is a Researcher in Information Studies at Uppsala University in Sweden. His research lies at the intersections of knowledge organisation, interactive information retrieval and human information behaviour.