Holley, R. P.; McGarry, D.; Duncan, D.; Svenonius, E. (Ed’s.): Subject Indexing: Principles and Practices in the 90’s. Proceedings of the IFLA Satellite Meeting held in Lissabon, Portugal, 17–18 August 1993. (Mira Micacic, Mima Willer)
KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION · 1996
viewed as a " copy" or " image" ( "Abbild") of the world; instead it is seen as a representative organ, whose function is to manifest the imperfection of natural language and to provide a formel for ordering things.Tn the last chapter, the authoress turns her attention to an objection which might be made to her study, that namely with her concentration on theory in the context of library science nothing is gained for the day-to-day problems of libnuy practice.She replies, that when one views the system of the sciences as a variable historical construction, Leibniz's own efforts to bring together his practical work as a librarian and his theoretical and philosophical work in ordering lmowl edge turns out to be quite interesting.In conclusion, then, the authoress calls attention to the new situation for communicat ing knowledge created by the new possibilities of electronic storage of information.In doing so, she also calls attention to the danger inherent therein, namely that thinking would appear to depend less and less on the context.As a conse quence, questions pertaining to the ordering of Imowlec1ge come less and less to the fo re; in libraries, classifieatOlY subject-cataloging is abandoned in favor of verbal indexing.Quite correctly, the autoress replies that today as in the past, new knowledge comes to expression " between the texts".Furthermore, as she points out, the definition of knowledge must not be reduced to merely collecting and recalling fa cts.When the librmy as institution should, in the future as in the past, continue to fu lfill its fllnctionofordering the knowledge of its time, then -so the authoress concludes -it is necessaty " to refiectupon the spatial aspect of knowledge as this is being transformed by the media.Tn the spatial organi zation of knowledge, new structures emerge within and between previously existing structures".Thus to fu lfill this task, mllch can be learned from the way organizing structures of the past have approached the problem.Thus fo r the solution of contemporalY problems in organiz ing and ordering knowledge, recourse to the proposals devel oped by Leibniz in the context ofllis theories can well prove fruitful.The authoress's combination of methods belonging (0 (he theOlY of knowledge with those belonging (0 (he history ofknowlcdge is well suited to call attention to specific aspects of Leibniz's contribution to the organization of knowledge and of science.Not only librarians but also Leibniz-specialists should pay close altention to this study, which, by the way remarked, has dealt thoroughly with all the literature relevant to its themes.