Knowledge Organization is an inter-disciplinary field of practice that pervades the information society. By developing and applying conceptual tools such as semantic analysis or classification systems, it aims to add intelligence and value to the representation, processing, storage and transfer of information, thus:

• At the personal level, we test our KO skills as we try to keep abreast of our emails, or search among last year’s files on our desktop computers, or follow the mesh of links across the World Wide Web.
• At the corporate level, organizations must keep track of what they have done in the past, as well as their commitments to partners and customers; crucially they need immediate access to their intellectual resources, whether recorded in their works or resident in the memories of employees.
• At the level of society, political development, the administration of justice and the delivery of services such as education, health and social care require records to be kept accurately and easily but securely accessible.
• For society to advance, science currently generates terabytes of data, quantitative and qualitative, in all the media known to technology, useful only when it is within reach of diverse researchers.
• Most cultural activities, too, increasingly organize and draw upon a heritage of precious resources, physical and intellectual.