Knowledge Organization - Making a difference
The impact of knowledge organization on society, scholarship and progress
 
ISKO-UK BIENNIAL CONFERENCE – 13/14 July 2015, London. This will be the fourth biennial conference of the UK Chapter of ISKO (International Society for Knowledge Organization). The venue (as for our previous conferences) is University College London (UCL). Proposals should be submitted in English via <https://www.conftool.net/iskouk2015/> after 8 October and before 29 November 2014 at latest.
 
The systematic and structured organization of knowledge and information has far-reaching applications, best known in the search, browsing, navigation and exploration of collections and networks. But despite this capability, “what use is classification nowadays?” some people ask. “The era of the physical library is fading, and Google will find whatever we want.” This widely held view threatens our budgets as well as the reputation of our profession and our ability to attract thought leaders into the field. As well as forgetting the way organized collections of scientific and cultural literature have underpinned study and development throughout the last 2-3 millennia, it neglects our current and future reliance on knowledge organization (KO). For example, KO techniques are used behind the scenes in Google and other search engines, and much more explicitly in intranets, records management systems and other in-house applications where Google simply fails.
 
This conference is an opportunity for our speakers to show what impact KO has had, is having and could have on economic and social development (at macro and/or micro levels). If academic courses are to attract students, if research bids are to attract funding, if KO techniques are to be applied on the internet and in corporate environments, and if trained KO professionals are to find plenty of good jobs, the subject should be widely respected as contributing to the general good. 
 
This conference aims to explore, justify and proclaim the continuing demand for KO. It will be a showcase for R & D that offers benefits for cultural activities and economic development. Practitioners as well as theoreticians are invited to contribute, along with consultants, researchers, teachers and students. Knowledge Organization can be useful to systems designers as well as information managers, with applications in areas as diverse as web design, records management, digital asset management, network management, etc. So we hope for a wide spread of perspectives on the KO theme. See more details at http://www.iskouk.org/conf2015/. The twitter hashtag is #ISKOUK2015
 
Conference scope and topics
Any aspect, application or subdiscipline of knowledge organization is in scope, provided the submission casts light on the potential benefit - past or present - for society, scholarship and progress. R&D reports that can be applied in today’s mobile, networked environment are especially welcome. While forward-looking presentations are preferred, submissions demonstrating that KO offers no future benefit could also be within scope, and will be considered on their merits. Examples of relevant topics include:
•	The impact of historical KO developments e.g. launch of UDC, influence of Vannevar Bush, etc.
•	Prospects for future influential KO developments
•	Trends in current KO research and where they may lead
•	Costs and benefits of applying and exploiting techniques such as classification, social tagging, linked data, corporate taxonomies, metadata, etc. 
•	Case studies/outcomes of applying KO within the enterprise
•	Prospects for integrating more KO techniques into applications such as email, records management, online sales outlets, social media
•	Evaluation/appraisal of social tagging
•	Linked open data initiatives and their impact
•	Use of metadata in coordinating or simplifying workflows
•	Ontologies to improve search results across networked resources
•	Semantic modelling applications
•	KO applied to “Big Data”
•	Development and impact of vocabulary crosswalks and registries
•	Tools, techniques, training and applications for KOS alignment
•	KO for improving access to images or audio collections
 
Presentation format, submissions and acceptance criteria
The conference will include a mix of brief (20-minute) and long (40-minute) presentations, as well as a display of posters. Speakers will be asked to provide a paper as well as presenting the material in person. Together with slides and audio recordings, all the papers submitted will be published electronically on the conference website. After peer review the four best papers will be selected for publication in ISKO’s journal, Knowledge Organization. 
 (To make the submission you will be asked to set up a user account with Conftool, our service provider.) The extent to which they demonstrate the benefits and/or impact of Knowledge Organization will be the first criterion for acceptance; other important factors include originality, clarity of expression and a sound basis on theory or current practice. Please provide an abstract of 300-500 words, and indicate whether you plan a Brief or Long presentation, or a Poster. You will be informed by the first week of February 2015 whether your proposal has been accepted. Full papers should be submitted by 1 May 2015. Editorial guidelines will be available from February 2015, via the conference website. Presentation slides too should be submitted by 8 July 2015. They will be pre-loaded on the conference PC, and released on the conference website immediately after the event.
 
More background
ISKO is a not-for-profit scientific/professional association with a mission to promote the theory and practice of organizing knowledge and information. The emphasis in our UK Chapter is to build bridges between the research and practitioner communities, for example at our regular and very popular afternoon meetings. You can see past and future events at www.iskouk.org/events.htm, most with MP3 recordings. The proceedings of our previous biennial conferences are available there too, in electronic media.