Logic and the Organization of Information

Abstract

This reviews the main themes of the book. Symbolization and logic can be invaluable allies in the organization of information. Symbolic logic can be a notation for concepts, and, in turn, concepts can be used for assigned indexing. Representation in logic reveals many of the relations between concepts. In turn, this facilitates the construction of graphs of topics which show the relations between the indexing keys. It also assists with the construction of more general graphs of bibliographical relationships. Many of the indexing concepts will be compounds and thus will be searchable or accessible via their components. Additionally the constituent concepts in the indexing concepts will themselves often have types or kinds. These types or kinds amount to facets or faces. Thus, indexing or classification, can often be faceted. And faceted classification enables faceted search and retrieval. Search for suitably tagged Information Objects can be faceted. Using concepts for indexing provides an approach for addressing the information retrieval concerns of synonymy and homography. One important area of information retrieval that symbolic logic does not assist with is that of citation analysis or link analysis (where the citations or links are made by humans).