Modulation and Specialization in North American Knowledge Organization: Visualizing Pioneers

Abstract

Pioneers are those who, in some way, lead their peers to new destinations. In the evolution of a domain, the pioneers might very well be those who have followed a theoretical principle in some particularly ardent manner, thus leading the rest of the domain toward an evolving research front. The present paper is an attempt to use the tools of domain analysis to diachronically analyze the domain of knowledge organization as it is evolving in North America. That is we use bibliometric tools to identify the axes that define North American knowledge organization and its scientists, who are its pioneers. The evolution of a North American chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) marks a growth in coherence of a long active research area. An interesting research question is: what are the characteristics of North American scholarship in knowledge organization? Author co-citation analysis of North American authors whose work appeared in the journal Knowledge Organization is contrasted with author co-citation analysis of authors from outside North America. North American leaders are clearly identified, and some themes—such as knowledge organization online—that are emergent topics in North America are identified.