Ontology Building as Practical Work: Lessons from CSCW
Dave Randall, Wes Sharrock, Ye Lin, Rob Procter, John Rooksby · 2007
Ontology building can be thought of sociologically: the work undertaken and the problems and difficulties entailed can be understood in terms of the practices of knowledge workers and the practical nature of ‘sorting things out’. It appears that many problems in the work of ontology building resemble problems in software engineering, particularly engineering cooperative systems. We discuss research in the field of Computer Supported Cooperative Work that focuses on classification and which throws light on ontology building. We then introduce some data from our own early ethnographic studies of ontology building.