Classifying the Humanities

Abstract

His research is focused on facilitating interdisciplinary research and teaching; knowledge organization has become the dominant element in that research agenda. He authored two books and several articles that develop classifications of things (phenomena), theories and methods applied, types of data, ethical perspectives, research practices, and relationships. He contributed to the Integrative Levels Classification and is developing the Basic Concepts Classification, and is collaborating on a book about interdisciplinary knowledge organization. He is exploring how these classificatory principles can be applied to galleries, museums, archives, and the Semantic Web, as well as to libraries.Rick Szostak. Classifying the Humanities. Knowledge Organization. 41(4), 263-275. 34 references.

Knowledge Organisation Across Aural and Visual Domains: Connecting the Facets of Music and Art

“…Additionally, we need to return to medium, and consider its connections to form. For example, Szostak (2014) mixes the terminology between types/genres and medium. Furthermore, form is the primary facet in DDC art, whereas medium is the primary facet for music (according to both DDC (see above) and other classifications of music (Lee and Robinson 2018)), possibly symptomatic of a crossover.…”

“…This music/art connection grows if utilizing Panofsky's three levels of iconography, in particular the division between art being "of" versus art being "about" (Szostak 2014, analyzing Shatford Layne), and then viewing this through a music classification lens. The idea of art sometimes depicting what something is "of" (Szostak 2014) could be equated to the function and occasion sides of music's function/character facet, whereas iconography's idea of "about" (Szostak 2014) could have parallels to the character aspect of function/character or be considered an additional, "shadowy facet". While seldom explicitly part of music's classification structure in the way that iconography is situated within art, subject is an implicit presence which is often coupled in some way to function/character in music, and could be thought of as another "shadowy facet".…”

“…There is a discussion of arts classification more generally in interdisciplinary KO research, especially work by Szostak about the Basic Concepts Classification (Szostak 2021). Szostak (2014) analyses the classification of the humanities, including some discussion about shared types of information between music, art and other arts. However, our paper takes a different approach: we start, instead, with music and art classification as they are realised in knowledge organization systems (KOSs) and systems of facets, and discuss the commonalities, dissimilarities, and connections between them.…”