International Society for Knowledge Organization. Forty years of cooperation

Abstract

The experience of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO), its tasks, current status, and main activities are discussed. The initiative of establishing ISKO belongs to Ingetraut Dahlberg, its first president. The part Russia takes in ISKO and that of the Russian ISKO section are discussed.The author analyzes the ISKO portal structure, the content of its main divisions illuminating the mission, elected bodies, its history, national sections, events in reversed chronology, and publications. The international Encyclopedia is one of the dynamic ISKO projects and a nonexhaustive digital resource; the entry on the Russia’s national classification system, namely BBK (Library Bibliographic Classification) was added to the Encyclopedia in 2017. The history of the project and the difficulties of editing text for foreign users are discussed. The information and scientific importance of publishing the BBK entry in ISKO Encyclopedia is stressed.The author concludes that, to cooperate efficiently with foreign colleagues, ISKO has to publish books, textbooks, monographs both in the Russian and English languages and to participate in IFLA activities.