UC Berkeley

Since ancient times intellectual work has required tools for writing, documents for reading, and bibliographies for finding, not to mention more specialized techniques and technologies. Direct personal discussion is often impractical and we depend on documents instead. Document technology evolved through writing, printing, telecommunications, copying, and computing and facilitated an 'information flood' which motivated important knowledge organization initiatives, especially in the nineteenth century (library science, bibliography, documentation). Electronics and the Internet amplified these trends. As an example we consider an initiative to provide shared access to the working notes of editors preparing scholarly editions of historically important texts. For the future, we can project trends leading to ubiquitous recording, pervasive representations, simultaneous interaction regardless of geography, and powerful analysis and visualization of the records resulting from that ubiquitous recording. This evolving situation has implications for publishing, archival practice, and knowledge organization. The passing of time is of special interest in knowledge organization because knowing is cultural, living, and always changing. Technique and technology are also cultural ("material culture") but fixed and inanimate, as can be seen in the obsolescence of subject headings, which remain inscribed while culture moves on. The tension between the benefits of technology and the limitations imposed by fixity in a changing world provide a central tension in knowledge organization over time.