Knowledge organization: past, present and future

Knowledge organization (KO) is in vogue from times immemorial. However, as a scientific and definitive activity its origin can be traced to the recent past. The scope of KO includes information resource description, indexing and classification as performed in libraries. The goal of KO is organizing the information resources and providing easy and efficient access to them. The processes involved in these activates are called knowledge organizing processes (KOP). This paper describes the KOP as described by Birger Hjorland of Royal School of Library and Information Science. Computers are increasingly used KO activities. The approaches have changes. It is high time that we need to examine relative contributions of different approaches. This paper offers an understanding of KO based on an explicit theory of knowledge.