On the 13 th conference of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) 2014 in Krakow a panel was held on 'The Future of Knowledge Organization and ISKO'.Here a synopsis with additional information and more dense presentation is given by a panelist. The main items were: What is knowledge organization (KO)? What will be the most challenging for ISKO and KO in the future? What is your ideal picture of ISKO and KO of the future? The results were inter alia that KO is a general discipline and applicable in many areas, though it is mostly perceived as part of information and library science. To ameliorate its standing not only the fundamentals have to be worked out but also its diverse application fields and openness to new objects and methods. To integrate cultural and semantic diversity is seen as its power and importance.
Social science data are mainly understood as rectangular case-by-variable data sets that will be analyzed statistically on the basis of an individual epistemology. On the other hand, interpretation methods focus on single cases that are treated as typical examples. Knowledge-based systems are suited for processing expert strategies together with real-world facts. Thus we find suggestions for expert systems not only for social decision support and methodological advice but also for integration of theoretical research results, explanation of nonmeasured causal factors, and selection and interpretation of individual or composite cases. An example of the latter is Akcess, a system that analyzes bibliographic data on the social science community by means of network knowledge.Quantitative Data Analysis Data analysis is based on the assumption that theoretical conclusions (descriptive or causal) must be derived from empirical experience. In the social sciences this means that we have to extract knowledge about social phenomena (often on an aggregate level, e.g., groups, societies) by gathering data on many individuals that we sum up to a mean type, differentiated only by some strata.Attributes of aggregate social phenomena are then mostly composites of individual attributes, such as national income, unemployment rate, and national identity. It should not be forgotten that data collection in sociology is mostly based on interviews that reflect only the expressed belief of the individuals on a more or less ambiguous question in a historical situation. The process of choosing the hypotheses and items of interest, developing the research design, and operationalizing the stimulus situation depends heavily on the researcher and his background; and the statistical findings are, in principle, without any importance if they cannot be inter-
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