Information coding classification

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The Information Coding Classification ( ICC ) is a classification system of almost all known approximately 6500 fields of knowledge . It also contains those areas of knowledge that are generally not covered in literary terms. This goes beyond the framework of the known library classification systems such as the Regensburg network classification , the Dewey Decimal Classification , the Universal Decimal Classification and the Library of Congress Classification . Therefore, it can be a universal system for classification of literature other or information used by fields of knowledge.

construction

It differs methodologically from the library classification systems mentioned above in three ways:

  1. In its main classes it is not based on disciplines , but on nine ontic stages of development, the layers of being .
  2. It divides these rough and in the other hierarchical levels also fine after nine categories , which is also a coding by decimals allows and
  3. The locations for the areas of knowledge were determined by an element position plan in such a way that the first hierarchy level is structured according to nine layers of being (object areas as subject categories) and the second hierarchy level according to nine functionally oriented form categories. The possibly 3rd and 4th of subordinate knowledge areas as well as the 5th and 6th level are arranged according to the same subject and form categories. This makes it possible to always access the same categories with the digits of the numerical coding of a certain area of ​​knowledge, which strengthens the mnemonic of the system and also takes the localization of inter- and transdisciplinarity into account.

The first two hierarchy levels can serve as "upper ontology" for ontologies and other applications.

The first three hierarchical levels of the ICC were in 2014 in knowledge organization. Development, Task, Application, Future , published in German and English. The French equivalents already exist for them.

The German section of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) is responsible for maintenance and further development . V.

Historical development

At the end of 1970 Ingetraut Dahlberg received a dissertation offer from Prof. Alwin Diemer , Düsseldorf, on the subject of "The universal classification system of knowledge: its ontological, epistemological and information-theoretical foundations". With this, Diemer had already indicated a change in the approach of such a system, namely that an ontological basis is required (i.e. one related to the diversity of being) and that it must also meet scientific-theoretical requirements. The third requirement had already been laid down in the Indian Colon classification , but required explanations and additions. In 1974, the dissertation became the book Basics of the Universal Order of Knowledge , which began with conceptual explanations and also followed up with a clarification of what “universal” can mean in connection with “knowledge”, i.e. also includes areas of knowledge such as goods, handicrafts, Statistics, patents, law, communication, people, societies, languages, places, times, etc.

While the dissertation was still in progress, work began on a new universal system with the collection of the names of areas of knowledge from all reference works that were available, funded by the German Society for Documentation (DGD, 1971-72) under the title " Classification system of the areas of knowledge ". All course directories of German universities and technical colleges were searched for such names and recorded accordingly (1975). After the definitions from special dictionaries and encyclopedic works could be determined for all terms, it was found that half of the 12,500 terms found could be explained as synonyms (DFG project "Log structure", 1976-78).

In the above 30 theses were formulated in the work, which ultimately led to the 12 principles for the new system, published much later. These concern not only its theoretical foundations, but also the framework and arrangement of the discovered amount of knowledge areas. In 1974 the version already available was used in the structure of the bibliography of classification literature in the journal "International Classification". In 1977 the system was ready to be presented at a seminar in Bangalore, India. A first publication about the ICC did not appear until 1982, however. It was reprinted in Knowledge Organization and supplemented with its three-level hierarchy, which is now out of date.

The principles of the ICC

Specifically, the 12 principles in the book are knowledge organization. Development, Task, Application, Future and the Article Information Coding Classification. History, principles, content described. Here they should only be mentioned with their topics:

  • Principle 1: Conceptual approaches. The contents of the ICC are terms that are understood as units of knowledge. How does a term come about? Where do the conceptual features / knowledge elements come from? How do conceptual relationships arise?
  • Principle 2: The four types of conceptual relationships and their applications
  • Principle 3: Decimal numbers as notation (coding) of the ICC, a universal language.
  • Principle 4: The nine layers of being of the ICC. They were bundled as follows into three each according to inanimate, animate and produced being:
    1. Shape and structure
    2. Energy and matter
    3. Cosmos and earth
    4. Biological being and life
    5. Human being and life
    6. Social being and life
    7. Material products - economy and technology
    8. Intellectual products - knowledge and information.
    9. Intellectual products - cultural and human sciences
  • Principle 5: The division of the areas of knowledge into nine categories that are based on the Aristotelian form categories. It takes place in the system through a general element position plan, i.e. a measure to assign a meaning to each subdivision position:
    1. General, theories, principles (axioms and structures)
    2. Object area: objects, types, parts, properties (object reference)
    3. Field of activity: Methods, processes, activities (activity reference)
    4. A special characteristic or characteristic of a knowledge area
    5. Personal reference or further characteristics of a knowledge area
    6. Relation to society or other characteristics of a knowledge area
    7. External influences on an area (instrumental reference)
    8. Application of the methods to another area (resource reference)
    9. Information about the area and synthesizing social tasks (reference to updates)
    This element position plan was also called a systematizer because it determines the systematics of the sub-terms. It was also - but not consistently - used to structure the overall system.
  • Principle 6: The layer model of the knowledge areas shown under principle 4 is based on the "integrative level theory", which means that each layer is integrated in the one and the following layers. Each individual area of ​​knowledge is also a prerequisite for the next.
  • Principle 7: The ability to combine knowledge areas (inter- and transdisciplinarity) has been determined by the elementary position plan.
  • Principle 8: The topmost zero layer of the overall system concerns the categories, i.e. the general structural terms, the subdivisions of which can also be used for classificatory statements (to be worked out).
  • Principle 9 and 10 concern the combinability of the ICC codes with those of space and time (to be worked out).
  • Principle 11: Mnemonics in the system through fixed codes for certain system points as well as the 3 × 3 subject and form categories.
  • Principle 12: The combination options mentioned under system points 1, 8 and 9 make the ICC a self-networking system and correspond to current scientific developments.

The ICC in matrix form

The first two stages of the ICC can be represented in the following matrix.

ICC as a matrix with the first two hierarchy levels

The first hierarchy level consisting of the nine subject categories can be found in the first column under codes 1 to 9.

In the second hierarchy level, the individual subject categories are subdivided according to the nine functionally applied form categories, which can be found in the first line under codes 01 to 09 (a few exceptions are described under principle 7).

Research work with the ICC

Studies on automatic classification with the ICC

In the course of multiple efforts to classify web documents, as also sought by Jens Hartmann, University of Karlsruhe, Walter Koch, University of Graz, applied the. In autumn 2010 at his institute “Angewandte Informationstechnik Forschungsgesellschaft mbh” (AIT) Have ICC examined for automatic classification of metadata from around 350,000 documents. The work was made possible by the provision of data that had been generated as part of the EU-funded project EuropeanaLocal. For the investigation, the ICC was available in a three-level hierarchy with around 5,000 terms. The result, presented in a report by the clerk Christian Mak, with its “classification level” of around 50%, was interpreted by Koch as a good result, considering that it was the shortened form of the ICC. For a better result it would have taken 1-2 years. Another result of this work was a register of all terms with their codes (sources).

Data linking with the ICC

Inspired by the work of an Italian research group in Trento on the subject of "Revising the Word Domains Hierarchy: semantics, coverage and balancing" using the codes of the Dewey Decimal Classification, Ernesto William DeLuca et al. shown in a study that the ICC codes can lead to much simpler results for such cases and this is described in two articles: Including Knowledge Domains from the ICC into the Multilingual Lexical Linked Data Cloud (LLD) and "The Multilingual Lexical Linked Data Cloud: A possible access optimization? ”, Whereby the LLD is used by a meta-model that contains all resources with the possibility of retrieving and navigating the data from different aspects. Thus the existing work over many thousands of knowledge areas (in the ICC) is combined with the Multilingual Lexical Linked Data Cloud based on the RDF / OWL representation of EuroWordNet and similar integrated lexical resources (MultiWordNet, MEMODATA and the Hamburg Metaphor DB).

Semantic Web structuring with the ICC

In October 2013, the computer scientist Hermann Bense recognized the possibilities of structuring the Semantic Web with the codes of the ICC. He developed two approaches for the graphic representation of the knowledge areas with their subdivision options. The introduction of the 3rd level is currently in progress.

Some uses of the ICC

  1. Possibility to roughly structure documents, especially bibliographies and reference works.
  2. Structure of person directories according to knowledge areas such as B. Who's Who in Who's Who in Classification and Indexing
  3. Support in the creation of statistics according to knowledge areas, e.g. B. also university statistics, statistics of academies, institutes, professors and teaching staff, etc.
  4. In the publishing industry, all possible publications could be provided with the numbers of the relevant areas of knowledge in advance and thus serve as an initial aid to order.
  5. As a standard classification, the ICC could be used in many ways, especially in the field of industry, knowledge management and knowledge engineering .
  6. With their definitions, a lexicon of all areas of knowledge can be brought out. This could also serve as a template for corresponding lexicons in other languages.
  7. The ICC could also serve as a template for comparing scientific activities in a European or global context.
  8. The ICC would be a suitable tool for a "switching system" between the existing universal classifications in the information sciences.
  9. The ICC would also be a possible "suspension system" for various special classification systems, e.g. B. for special terminological concept systems
  10. With its first three structural levels and corresponding explanations, the ICC could also be used in higher school lessons to give the young people an overview of the areas of knowledge in their context.
  11. Similar to the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) for medicine, a “Unified System of Knowledge Fields” could be kept available in many languages ​​and thus enable a global understanding of the representation of areas of knowledge.
  12. The alphabetical register of approx. 5000 terms occurring in the ICC in the first three hierarchical levels could be used for many checks, including e.g. B. for comparison with the registers for the German UDC and DDC, in order to gain an overview for all three systems.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Ingetraut Dahlberg : knowledge organization. Development, task, application, future . In: German section of the International Society for Knowledge Organization e. V. [ISKO] (Ed.): Textbooks for Knowledge Organization . Vol. 3. Ergon Verlag, Würzburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-95650-065-7 , pp. 82-100 .
  2. ↑ a b Ingetraut Dahlberg: Basics of a universal order of knowledge. Problems and possibilities of a universal classification system of knowledge. Still available in the second-hand bookshop otherwise as print on demand from deGruyter. Ed .: German Society for Documentation e. V. Verlag Documentation, Pullach near Munich 1974, ISBN 978-3-11-141267-2 .
  3. ↑ Ingetraut Dahlberg: Ontical Structures and Universal Classification . Ed .: Sarada Ranganathan Endowment for Library Science (=  Sarada Ranganathan Endowment for Library Science series ). Bangalore 1978, LCCN  79-903750 .
  4. ^ Ingetraut Dahlberg: ICC - Information Coding Classification. Principles, structure and application possibilities . In: International Classification . tape 2 , 1982, p. 98-103 .
  5. ↑ Ingetraut Dahlberg (Ed.): International Classification and Indexing Bibliography (ICIB 1): Classification systems and thesauri 1950-1982 . INDEKS Verlag, 1982, ISSN  0943-7444 .
  6. ^ Ingetraut Dahlberg: Information Coding Classification. History, principles, content . In: Marlies Ockenfeld (Hrsg.): Information, Wissenschaft & Praxis . 61, issue 8. De Gruyter, 2010, ISSN  1619-4292 , p. 449-454 .
  7. ↑ An example of its application is the structure of the classification literature .
  8. ↑ A simplified overview with a corresponding introduction can be found in Ingetraut Dahlberg : Knowledge Organization. Development, task, application, future . In: German section of the International Society for Knowledge Organization e. V. [ISKO] (Ed.): Textbooks for Knowledge Organization . Vol. 3. Ergon Verlag, Würzburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-95650-065-7 , pp. 71 .
  9. ↑ Examples are given in Ingetraut Dahlberg: Knowledge Organization. Development, task, application, future . In: German section of the International Society for Knowledge Organization e. V. [ISKO] (Ed.): Textbooks for Knowledge Organization . Vol. 3. Ergon Verlag, Würzburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-95650-065-7 , pp. 103-104 .
  10. ↑ EuropeanaLocal
  11. ↑ Christian Mak: Categorization of the database of EuropeanaLocal Austria based on the ICC . In: Report of the institute "Applied Information Technology Research Society mbh" (AIT) . Graz 2011.
  12. ↑ Luisa Bentivogli, Pamela Forner, Bernardo Magnini, Emanuele Pianta: Revising WordNet Domains Hierarchy: Semantics, Coverage, and Balancing . In: Proceedings of COLING 2004 Workshop on “Multilingual Linguistic Resources” . Geneva, Switzerland 2004, p. 101-108 ( fbk.eu [PDF]).
  13. ^ Ernesto William DeLuca et al .: Including Knowledge Domains from the ICC into the Multilingual Lexical Linked Data Cloud . In: Knowledge Organization in the 21st Century. Between Historical Patterns and Future Prospects. Proc.13th Int. ISKO Conf. Krakow, Poland 2014, p. 258-365 .
  14. ↑ Ernesto William DeLuca et al .: The Multilingual Lexical Linked Data Cloud: A Possible Access Optimization? In: Information, Science & Practice . 65, issue 4-5. De Gruyter, 2014, ISSN  1619-4292 , p. 279-287 .
  15. ↑ A graphic representation of the knowledge areas belonging to the first two hierarchical levels can be found under Ontology4
  16. ↑ Ingetraut Dahlberg (ed.): Who's Who in Classification and Indexing (=  FID-Publ. 620 ). INDEKS Verlag, Frankfurt 1983.
  17. ^ Ingetraut Dahlberg: A systematic new lexicon of all knowledge fields based on the Information Coding Classification. In: Knowledge Organization 39, No. 2 . 2012, p. 142-150 .
  18. ↑ Ingetraut Dahlberg: Library catalogs and the Internet. Switching for future subject access. In: Green, R. (Ed.): Knowledge organization & change. Proc.4th Int.ISKO Conf., Washington, DC INDEKS Verlag, Frankfurt 1996, p. 155-165 .