Epistemological roots of documentary classification

Abstract

Building an explicative and pragmatic theory of the Knowledge Organization requires the elaboration of a precise conceptualization of its basic elements from an interdisciplinary perspective. Therefore, the analysis of three cognitive human resources to build concepts and to understand the world (the capacity of order, classify and organize), serves to explain the most characteristic qualities of the documentary processes of ordering, classifying and organizing. Classifying by means of the selective and relational criteria is considered positive for the information retrieval. The descriptive and reductionist conceptions of the documental classification are discussed. Alternatively, a concept based on the observation of the analytical and synthetical intellectual process of the indexing and classifying is propossed. So, a unique definition is essayed for all kind of information centres and documentary languages. (Author)