On March 20th, the 18th International Conference on Knowledge Organization was held in Wuhan, co-hosted by the School of Information Management and the Information Resources Research Center of Wuhan University. The conference, themed "Resilient Knowledge Organization in Times of Crisis: Challenges and Opportunities," aimed to explore how systematic and flexible knowledge organization can contribute to building resilient information systems.
The scene at the 18th International Knowledge Organization Conference. Photo by Zhang Jinguang.
Knowledge organization, as explained, stands at the core of information resource management studies. Particularly in the era of artificial intelligence, generative AI, by integrating knowledge from multiple domains, has significantly enhanced the efficiency of knowledge organization. However, challenges such as the interpretability, accuracy, and implicit biases of generative AI also pose challenges to the knowledge organization community. Global researchers need to collectively gather diverse insights and wisdom to build a more advanced research community in knowledge organization, thus collectively benefiting the accumulation and utilization of human knowledge.
During the conference, experts and scholars like Birger Hjerland elaborated on the differences and integration between knowledge organization and knowledge management, along with the challenges and opportunities they face. Scholars delved into discussions, elucidating the utility of knowledge organization from various perspectives such as combating global pandemics and showcasing cultural heritage, analyzing the current status, ideas, and practices of knowledge organization and utilization in the era of artificial intelligence.
It is noted that the International Knowledge Organization Conference is the most influential academic event in the global knowledge organization field. The conference brought together hundreds of participants from disciplines such as information resource management, data science, and artificial intelligence. Over the three-day conference, there were 18 English sub-forums covering topics such as concepts and knowledge representation, ontology, knowledge graphs, knowledge organization systems, knowledge organization applications, knowledge organization of academic literature, domain knowledge organization, and digital humanities knowledge organization. Additionally, there were 9 Chinese sub-forums covering topics like concepts and knowledge representation, knowledge graph construction, and knowledge organization and discovery, aiming to share how knowledge organization integrates and disseminates information from various fields, thus promoting the creation and use of knowledge.
