The Organization of Information

This latest edition of The Organization of Information is a key resource for anyone in the beginning stages of their LIS career as well as longstanding professionals and paraprofessionals seeking accurate, clear, and up-to-date guidance on information organization activities across the discipline. The book begins with a historical look at information organization methods, covering libraries, archives, museums, and online settings. It then addresses the types of retrieval tools used throughout the discipline--catalogs, finding aids, indexes, bibliographies, and search engines--before describing the functionality of systems, explaining the basic principles of system design, and defining how they affect information organization. The principles and functionality of metadata is next, with coverage of the types, functions, tools, and models (particularly FRBR, IFLA-LRM, RDF) and how encoding works for use and sharing--for example, MARC, XML schemas, and linked data approaches.

The latter portion of the resource describes specific activities related to the creation of metadata for resources. These chapters offer an overview of the major issues, challenges, and standards used in the information professions, addressing topics such as resource description (including standards found in RDA, DACS, and CCO), access points, authority control, subject analysis, controlled vocabularies--notably LCSH, MeSH, Sears, and AAT--and categorization systems such as DDC and LCC.

Daniel N. Joudrey, MLIS, PhD, is professor in the School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College, Boston, MA, where he teaches information organization, subject cataloging and classification, and descriptive cataloging.

Arlene G. Taylor, MSLS, PhD, is professor emerita, School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh. Her experience as a library school educator covered more than 30 years, and she was active in the American Library Association for more than 30 years.

Katherine M. Wisser, MA, MSLS, PhD, is associate professor at the School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College, Boston, MA, where she teaches information organization, archival access and use, metadata, indexing and thesaurus construction, and the history of libraries.