Richard P. Smiraglia
Chapter 6
Epistemology of Domain Analysis
1.0 Introduction
Domain analysis is at the heart of knowledge organization, for without it we would
have no ontological matter to constitute our knowledge organization systems (KOS).
Essentially an empirical tactic, involving the analysis of a specific environment to ascertain its language, culture, and activities, domain analysis thus makes use of all epistemic
stances in its interpretation and analysis of domain-specific ontologies. In this chapter I
begin with a definition of domain analysis, which also will allow me to assert a definition of “domain.” I then review the most common approaches to domain analysis found
in the recent literature of knowledge organization in order to explicate their epistemic
stances, which emerge from their methodologies. In this manner the present chapter begins with the point of view put forward by Hjørland (1997, 106) who suggested
knowledge organization should reside in a domain analytic paradigm:
A theoretical approach to information science [such that] the best way to understand information … is
to study the knowledge domains as discourse communities, which are parts of the society’s division of
labor. Knowledge organization and structure, cooperation patterns, language and communication
forms, information systems, and relevance criteria are reflections of the objects of the work of these
communities and of their role in society.
1.1 About domains
Certainly the ontological imperative for the analysis of specific domains is a reality
in today’s knowledge organization. Where once philosophers sought to spin universal
schemes, today researchers dig into the knowledge bases of individual groups of workers, scholars, scientists, professionals—any definable group—to ascertain the specific
ontological content with which they function. In knowledge organization the activity
called domain analysis is the act of defining the conceptual knowledge base of a community. Tools for domain analysis are plentiful and fruitful. Increasingly, studies are being used to compare domains as well as to track their evolution. But an essential question remains: what is a d omain? There is no agreed-upon answer. Analysis using
WordNetTM reveals several interesting epistemological parameters for domains. Excluding mathematical functions, these are:
Sphere, area, orbit, field, arena (a particular environment or walk of life)—all of which suggest space
and expansive coverage;
Demesne, land (territory over which rule or control is exercised);
World (people in general, especially a distinctive group of people with some shared interest)—
suggesting action in community; and,
Knowledge base (content of a particular field of knowledge)—suggesting collaborative conceptual
content.
Some suggest that domains constitute discourse communities, others say they are parallel to disciplines, others that they simply identify work ecologies. All are true, of course.
Perhaps there is no need for the definition of a d omain other than to say it must be a
group with a coherent ontology, which implies also a shared epistemology. There is
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much discussion but little agreement in knowledge organization about the distinctions
among and definitions of domains, discourse communities, and invisible colleges. All
three constitute groups of scholars working on research problems that are in some way
perceived to be similar. All suggest some sort of social networking among participant
scholars. Yet the functional parameters of the three are divergent. The concept of “domain” suggests intellectual boundaries, and the concept of “discourse community” suggests an active exchange of information; the term “invisible college” has been used to
suggest both intellectual commonality and active discourse taking place in a socially‐structured unit.
1.1.1 The usefulness of domains
In 1995 Hjørland and Albrechtsen described a domain‐analytic paradigm within information science. In fact, using the metaphor “old wine in new bottles” they brought
together components of information science that had already been in use, but not in
concert, to demonstrate the power of the ability to explicitly identify domains. The focus became the description of knowledge−domains, communities in which individuals
are seen as participating members—the implication being one of explicit complicity in
the fixing of the domain’s boundaries. One means of such participation might be as part
of a discourse community (409). The purpose of Hjørland and Albrechtsen’s paper was
not to define these terms; rather their intent was to demonstrate the usefulness of domain‐analysis for the study of hypotheses in information science. Thus we are left to infer a hierarchical relationship between a domain and a discourse community. The insight brought forward is the application of activity theory to the comprehension of
domains, which shifted the epistemological bases of information science from simple
cognition to a realistic teleological ontology.
The same year (1995) Beghtol used the analysis of fiction studies to demonstrate the
power of domain analysis. She began by recounting the normative intuitive (and therefore not systematic or quantitative) tools of domain analysis that usually were employed
to define the parameters of a classification or other KOS. These were (1995, 30): “(1)
determining a number of fundamental categories in the field; and (2) analyzing in some
detail the kinds of topics, issues and questions that authors in the area believe merit an
investigation.” Using the concept of literary warrant as a point of departure, Beghtol developed a systematic quantitative technique for the identification of concept categories,
such that those that appear statistically‐significantly most often thus constituted the extension of the domain. She demonstrated the technique by using the Modern Languages
Association Bibliography Online to establish categories. Not only did Beghtol clearly
demonstrate the utility of systematic quantitative analysis, she also demonstrated the
utility of defining a domain for construction of a KOS.
Hjørland (2001, 777) described what he meant by “domain” within the context of a
discussion of aboutness. As before, this was not a direct, intentional definition of the
term “domain.” Rather it was a provisional definition of “domain” within another context. What constitutes a domain, this point of view, is empirical but likely reflects a social construction. In other words (and we can derive this from the discussion of
aboutness in the same paper, 776), the definition of any specific domain is dependent on
the pragmatic considerations of its members. Discourses, theoretical assumptions, and
intersubjective agreement are “higher,” or we might say have a closer correlation, when
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they occur within a domain. Thus Hjørland seemed to proffer a definition of domain by
pragmatic accordance of its members. To the extent that they agree on critical components, one can say that they constitute a domain. The closer the agreement the higher the
degree of “domain” accordance; the more dispersed is their theoretical base, the less
likely it is that we are looking at a true “domain.”
Hjørland (2003) brought together several seemingly disparate components of information retrieval research to demonstrate how they form the fundamental axes of
knowledge organization. Of primary importance here are his concepts of social semiotics and paradigms. In the first instance, he explains the importance of shared activity as
the center of ontological development for a community. He sees all of the products of
scholarship as teleological, and therefore all are shaped by their teleological imperatives. This means that the social activity of a community of scholars is both
goal‐directed and boundary‐driven—in order to produce knowledge the community
must erect an intellectual fortress that protects its members from external influence.
Paradigms then arise to defend these fortress‐like borders, and do so by continually testing and retesting a set of common hypotheses. This is how true theory develops. But it
also is a glimpse for the post‐modernist of the importance of the domain. The intellectual boundaries of the domain shape the inherence and reception of its products. And that,
in turn, shapes the ability (or capability) of its intellectual products to influence scholarship in broader interdisciplinary or related disciplinary domains.
Zuccala (2006, 155) brought forward a synthesis of what it means to be an invisible
college. She suggests that:
An invisible college is a set of interacting scholars or scientists who share similar research interests
concerning a subject specialty, who often produce publications relevant to this subject and who communicate both formally and informally with one another to work towards important goals in the subject, even though they may belong to geographically distant research affiliates.
Like a domain, an invisible college has as its focus the social interaction of a group of
scholars who share similar research interests within a subject specialty. Like a discourse
community, an invisible college is a g roup of what Zuccala calls “social actors” engaged in discourse both formal and informal. Important distinctions are Zuccala’s suggestions that an invisible college is relatively young—that is, its activity is mostly quite
recent—and that it becomes visible through a dedicated Website where members might
share current research information (157).
Albrechtsen and Pejtersen (2003) demonstrated the new qualitative methodology of
Cognitive Work Analysis for capturing evolving semantic structures in a work domain.
They clearly demonstrated the teleological imperative of a work‐centered domain
through the use of means‐ends analysis. Specifically, analysis of decision‐making in the
domain demonstrates collaborative information generation, as well as the power of the
work environment to enforce the domain’s intension. Using studies of three national
film archives, semantic multiplicity is demonstrated, bounded by dialogue and negation.
In this case, the environment in which the work takes place plays a significant role in
the definition of the domain.
1.2 What identifies a domain?
The most complete description of domain analysis comes from Hjørland (2002) who
elaborates on the methodology of a domain‐analytic approach to information science by
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enumerating eleven steps that can provide information about a domain. These steps are
(450‐451):
• Literature guides—idiographic descriptions of information resources in a domain;
• Special classifications and thesauri—demonstrate logical conceptual structures and semantic relations;
• Indexing—reveals the epistemological potentials of individual documents;
• Empirical user studies—reveal mental models of domain actors;
• Bibliometric studies—demonstrate sociological patterns of explicit recognition among documents;
• Historical studies—to reveal traditions;
• Document and genre studies;
• Epistemological and critical studies;
• Terminological studies;
• Studies of structures and institutions in scientific communication; and,
• Domain analysis in professional cognition and artificial intelligence—to elicit mental models.
This panoply of methodologies is accompanied by references to existing studies to reinforce the appropriateness of domain analysis as a b ackdrop for all of information science. In the eleven approaches we see clearly the role of activity and actors, of teleological imperatives, and of the social semantics of group intellectual, collaborative activity.
Introducing some methodological clarity, Tennis (2003) described the muddy boundaries of the definition of “domain,” and provided two axes for the operationalization of
a domain. These axes are 1) areas of modulation—definitions used by members of the
domain, which modulate the domain by stating its extension; and, 2) degrees of specialization, including “focus” and “intersection”—which offer ways to qualify a domain by
increasing its intension.
1.3 Therefore, a domain is ...
A domain is best understood as a unit of analysis for the construction of a KOS. That
is, a domain is a group with an ontological base that reveals an underlying teleology, a
set of common hypotheses, epistemological consensus on methodological approaches,
and social semantics. If, after the conduct of systematic analysis, no consensus on these
points emerges, then neither intension nor extension can be defined, and the group thus
does not constitute a domain. Hjørland and Hartel (2003) said that domains are constituted of ontological dimensions, and epistemological and sociological concepts. “Domains are dynamic” (p. 44) as they play a symbiotic role in the evolution of both
knowledge‐spaces and the real world. It is the interactions of the ontological, epistemological, and sociological that define a domain and reveal its critical role in the evolution
of knowledge.
2.0 Domain analysis
Hjørland and Albrechtsen (1995, 400) began their challenge to redirect the information science community toward domain analysis with these words: “the best way to
understand information in [information science] is to study the knowledge-domains as
thought or discourse communities, which are parts of society’s division of labor.” Their
assertion was that everything else that accords with information science—knowledge,
knowledge organization, information behavior, information need, and even relevance
criteria—are aspects of social behavior that arise from within a domain. In the preceding
paragraph I asserted a definition of domain that relies on a common or social embrace
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by a group of an underlying teleology, common hypotheses, epistemological consensus,
and social semantics. Thus we can see that domain analysis involves the search for these
elements within the context of given domains. This is a post-modern (cf. Mai 1999) or
late-modern (Mai 2011) view of knowledge organization, in which we encourage the
analysis of given actors within stated or visible social boundaries, such that their teleology, epistemology and semantics are revealed. Mai (2011, 711) embraces a shift from
“classification-as-ontology, in which everything is defined as it is, to a more contemporary notion of classification-as-epistemology, in which everything is interpreted as it
could be.” This shift requires the KO community to embrace domain analysis.
Hjørland (2002) suggests a variety of approaches by which the research community
(he is speaking directly to the information science community, rather than to the KO
domain per se) can move toward domain-analytic methodologies. Beginning with a discussion about the bibliographic responsibilities of traditional special librarianship, he illustrates how the eleven approaches outlined above in section 1.2 can provide domainanalytical results that reveal, in a scientific way, the teleology, epistemology, and social
semantics of individually-bounded communities of scholarship. He describes the slightly narrower usage of domain-analytical methods that arose in the systems analysis
community, where the knowledge-base of the intended users of a system is captured so
it might be reflected in eventual system design. He alludes to the rise of ontologies in
computer science, which we now see more abundantly in areas such as knowledge management and in those aspects of many disciplines, from biology to cultural heritage, that
embrace the notion of knowledge-sharing for a semantic Web (see for example Deshpande and Kumbhar 2011; Doerr 2003; Lin, Hong and Doerr 2008; Edgington et al.
2004). Ultimately Hjørland (2002) presents no single definition or methodology for
domain-analysis; rather he presents what he calls the domain-analytic paradigm as a
way of thinking about approaching research in information science. In any event, it is
clear that the rigorous application of any techniques to reveal the underlying teleology,
epistemology, or social semantics of a b ounded community falls into the realm of the
domain-analytic paradigm.
3.0 Domain analysis in KO
Hjørland and Albrechtsen (1995) presented a call to action in an attempt to provide a
catalyst to the information science research community. Whereas their approach to domain-specificity has been largely embraced in the knowledge organization community,
their call for domain-analytic research has been less apparently successful. Limited empirical research of a domain-analytic nature has emerged in KO as a domain, although
bibliometric and informetric analyses continue to play a prominent role in information
science at large (see for example, Klavans and Boyack 2011, who demonstrate the division of information science as a domain into clusters around informetrics and information retrieval). Both Hjørland and Albrechtsen (1995) and Hjørland (2002) present
extensive literature reviews of research in information science that demonstrates techniques that could be described as domain-analytical. For the purpose of this chapter, I
have chosen instead to look briefly at three categories of research, all of which are situated in the KO community. These include domain analytic papers from ISKO proceedings or the journal Knowledge Organization from 2002 t o the present, Ph.D. dissertations that are deliberately domain-analytical and centered in KO, and a small group of
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published journal articles from the IS domain that are described by their authors as domain-analytical with reference to either or both Hjørland papers. Hjørland (1998) introduced epistemology to the information science arena through metatheoretical review, by
suggesting that epistemic stances are shadows underlying consciousness of authors, and
that these are best revealed through methodological points of view. Therefore, I will analyze the selected literature by looking in each case at the methodology employed for
analysis of each given domain.
3.1 Domain-analytical literature from the KO domain
3.1.1 ISKO proceedings
The 9th International ISKO conference was held in Vienna, Austria, July 4-7, 2006.
Four studies from the proceedings could be considered to represent research from the
domain analytical paradigm. López-Huertas (2006) studied Spanish-language gender
studies in Uruguayan publications selecting terms from titles, abstracts and main headings in monographs, articles, and reports, and section or column headings in specialized
periodicals. Pajarillo (2006) used qualitative techniques with home health-care nurses to
analyze the domain of medical necessity nursing interventions. Miller, Fox, Lee and Olson (2006) used meta-analytical techniques paired with term-extraction from listserv archives to analyze the domain of LIS organization of information education. Lin, Aluker,
Zhu and Zhang (2006) used an application called visual-concept-explorer to analyze the
domain of influenza virus A-avian; terms were extracted from PubMed.
The 10th International ISKO conference was held in Montréal, Canada, August 5-8,
2008, and again four papers were domain analytical. De Oliveira Lima, Palmirani and
Vitali (2008) used the FRBRoo conceptual ontology to model the domain of legal resources. Their analysis is essentially epistemological narrative analysis. Loehrlein
(2008) analyzed the records management domain by looking for Wittgensteinian formof-life contexts in a corpus of texts. Participants ranked interpretations of the texts based
on complexity judgments. Mustafa El Hadi (2008) used discourse community analysis
for the paradoxical comparison of sense and non-sense (terms that lose their special
meaning through over use). She analyzed a corpus of texts related to the Darfur political
and humanitarian crisis with the specific context of conflict-early-warning. C hen,
Ibekwe-SanJuan, Pinho and Zhang (2008) used bibliographic records from the Web of
Science (WoS) to look for culture and geographic identity in the domain of astronomy
surrounding the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Three text-mining systems were used for the
analysis, utilizing author-keywords and noun phrases extracted from titles and abstracts.
Comparisons were made across geopolitical boundaries.
The 11th International ISKO conference was held in Rome in February of 2010. Several approaches to domain analysis appear in these proceedings, as well as a paper from
Roberto Poli (2010) proposing a “domain theory.” Bragato Barros and de Moraes
(2010) used discourse analysis applied to key manuals of archival science to extract key
concepts of description and classification. Zherebchevsky (2010) used terminological
analysis to examine the presence of formalism in the discourse of the 10th International
ISKO conference held in Montréal in 2008. Ibekwe-SanJuan and SanJuan (2010) applied an automatic topic mapping system to WoS records of KO publications 19982008—predominantly journal articles and conference papers; they used term extraction
to create topic visualization. Working with traditional terms from Medical Subject
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Headings (MeSH) and mapping terms extracted from WebMD, Kwaśnik and Flaherty
(2010) analyzed autism as a domain. Beginning with the premise that social interactions
within domains affect the discourse within the domain and that each domain’s social interactions are unique, López-Huertas and López-Perez (2010) used literature review to
generate epistemological analyses of KO and psychiatry. Tanaka (2010) used citation,
author-cocitation and co-word analyses to delineate the domain of computational science; she worked with records from the Brookhaven National Labs to identify a set of
core authors in this multidisciplinary domain, then used traditional WoS sources.
3.1.2 The journal Knowledge Organization
A much smaller cluster of articles employing domain analytic methods has appeared
in the KO domain’s official journal Knowledge Organization. By far, the majority of
these papers appeared in a special theme issue in 2003 edited by Birger Hjørland on
domain analysis. Abrahamsen (2003) conducted what Hjørland called epistemological
analysis of musical genres to consider how music might be approached as a domain.
Narrative analysis of genre terms from within popularly-named segments of musical life
(he referred to “classical music” and “popular music,” both of which are misnomers
used in colloquial speech), combined with consideration of actors, institutions and processes, and narrative analysis of terms from library classifications constitute the elements of analysis. Albrechtsen and Pejtersen (2003, already cited above) introduced
Cognitive Work Analysis as a qualitative empirical approach to revealing the collaborative semantic structures that evolve dynamically in work environments. They gave as an
example data gathered from analysis of three Danish film archives. Hartel (2003) reported an epistemological analysis of hobbies as a domain, and then described briefly a
qualitative study of leisure hobbies as a domain in which she “toured” with gourmet
cooks. The details of this study were reported later and are mentioned in section 3.1.3
below (Hartel 2010). Sundin (2003) attempted to analyze nursing knowledge as a d omain, using literature review from the domain. Gazan (2003) considered metadata developed for environmental information systems; using primarily qualitative techniques
he evoked work-based parameters from within the system development domain. Zins
and Guttman (2003) analyzed the domain of social work empirically, using what they
called an integrated-method; they reported a four-phase qualitative study that began
with rationalist mapping of the domain based on phenomenological analysis of the domain. Grounded theory was used to elaborate the model using 13 c lassification
schemes. Then empirical data were generated by selecting terms from the Dictionary of
Social Work; these terms were tested against the qualitatively-generated knowledge
map. In the final phase, all papers from two leading journals were classified. And Ørom
(2003) analyzed the domain of visual art with an emphasis on painting and a focus on
art studies. His method was narrative epistemological analysis involving narrative of
function within the domain and generating summaries based on standard classifications
and thesauri in art.
Only four other domain analytic papers have appeared in KO. Chaudhry and Ling
(2005) described a case study of building prototype taxonomy for a business consulting
company. Chiu (2005) used qualitative techniques to understand the evolving factors affecting organization of knowledge resources within the library and information service
industry in Taiwan. Deokattey, Neelameghan, and Kumar (2010) developed a prototype
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domain ontology for the multidisciplinary domain accelerator-driven systems using both
qualitative and quantitative term extraction methods, merging and mapping new terms
onto an existing ontolgy. Kaipainen and Hautamäki (2011) attempted to generate ontologies for multi-perspective domains, using as example economic stimulation policies
using terms extracted from published literatures.
3.1.3 Domain-analytical papers from the information science literature
By far, traditional bibliographic methods are employed, sometimes in novel ways, in
most domain-analytical research reported in information science journals. MoyaAnegón, Vargas-Quesada and Chinchilla-Rodriguez (2005) used JCR categories as
units of co-citation and measurement for the construction of heliocentric maps. These
maps not only provide visualization, but also permit navigation among the nodes and
even viewing of constituent articles. Arencibia-Jorge, Vega-Almeida and Martí-Lahera
(2007) used citation-analysis, ACA and semantic analysis as text-mining techniques to
study benign prostatic hyperplasia. Articles from main-stream journals were chosen using WoS. The authors commended their methodology, which they termed (26) “a hybrid
of terminological extraction” to “fuse linguistic and non-linguistic methods” for
“strengthening qualitative dimension” in domain analysis. Miguel, Moya-Anegón and
Herrero-Solana (2008) studied research productivity from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Museum of the National University of La Plata, Argentina, using cocitation
analysis of subject categories, journals and authors of their scientific publications collected from WoS. They called their approach “institutional domain analysis.” Zhao and
Strotman (2008) used what they called enriched author cocitation analysis to describe
the domain of information science during the first decade of the Web. They concluded
that their (15): “novel visualization technique … can provide more intuitive insight into
the intellectual structure of a field.”
In addition to traditional bibliometric techniques, co-word or term analysis can provide triangulating evidence about the emergence of trends in scholarly domains. Lee,
Kim and Kim (2010) analyzed library research trends in digital libraries using text mining methods by generating descriptors from journal articles. Clustering mechanisms
were used to create a visualization of the clustered journals. Chronological and subject
cluster maps also were generated. A general conclusion was that (161) “clusters generally develop along a backbone, and that in terms of topology location, Backbone was a
more significant placement than Centre.” Jeong and Kim (2010) used co-word analytical techniques on calls-for-papers and conference programs to gather abstracts of 12,536
papers in biomedical informatics; terms extracted were compared with MeSH descriptors to visualize major and emerging topics of research. Ménard, Mas and Alberts
(2010) used domain analytical techniques to extract terms from the Artefacts Canada
database, resulting in a taxonomy of virtual museum objects. Dutta, Majmumder and
Sen (2011) used keywords collected from 3,330 journal articles on Brane Theory and
4,456 journal articles on Fermi Liquid published during 1989 to 2003 to suggest some
parameters of a subject-domain such as cluster-rank and cluster-potential.
I also will cite my own domain-analytic work in this section, because most of it has
been reported either at conferences of the Canadian Association for Information Science
(CAIS), at successive North American Symposia on Knowledge Organization
(NASKO) or as editorials in Knowledge Organization. Inspired by White’s 2003 paper
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about “authors as citers” I attempted to demonstrate the influence of Patrick Wilson’s
seminal Two Kinds of Power, a book that had influenced my own research immensely.
The result was Smiraglia (2007) in which I used WoS to gather all authors who had ever
cited Two Kinds of Power, resulting in 77 seminal papers. Co-word analysis applied to
the titles of the papers was used to visualize thematic streams, and author co-citation
analysis was used to visualize perceived similarity among the authors. The two methods
work well together to provide methodological triangulation, by confirming and enriching the thematic results that emerge from the visualization. Using the same techniques
applied to conference proceedings over a decade I tracked the evolution of the music information retrieval (MIR) movement, from its inception as the International Symposium
on MIR in 2000 to its coming of age as the International Society for MIR in 2009. These domain analytical visualizations are presented in Smiraglia 2006 and 2009a. In order
to track the evolution of KO as a domain I frequently use the same domain analytic
techniques (co-word analysis and author co-citation analysis) to generate quick visualizations of themes and co-citation among authors at regional or international KO conferences. Formal results have been reported in Smiraglia 2009b and 2011.
Epistemological analysis is one of the categories of domain-analytic activity encouraged by Hjørland but rarely seen in the literature. Nageswara Rao and Talwar (2008)
used literature review to discuss means of classifying recommender systems as a domain. Nascimento and Marteleto (2008) used narrative analysis and discourse analysis
of Bourdieu and Hjørland, together with empirical analysis of a journal Revista Pampulha, together with thematic content analysis of the journal and of interviews with
three members of the editorial board to generate a visualization of Brazilian architecture. They used as a focus what they called an “extracted determined historical moment”
(13) to gain comprehension of the social actors in the domain. Robinson (2009) used a
six-component information chain viewed through the Hjørland’s 11 lenses of domain
analysis to present a conceptual model of information science; the methodology here
was essentially narrative analysis. Lam (2011) used narrative analysis to generate a conceptual model of music as a d omain for the user or consumer of music, especially for
the consumer of music videos.
Uniquely, both methodologically and because the focus was not a scholarly domain,
Hartel (2010) used ethnographic techniques to follow gourmet cooking hobbyists, as a
means of discovering documentary and digital resources, which she termed personal
culinary libraries. Case studies involved interviews and guided tours with gourmet
cooks.
3.2 Summary
What we see is that there is a steady if not exactly abundant stream of domain analytical work in KO, and that the pace is quickening as a community of domain-analytical
and discourse-analytical researchers build up a body of work. Some of the work reported here emerged from doctoral dissertations; unfortunately several other domain analytical dissertations are not reported here because their results have never been disseminated. The majority of the methods reported here are empirical, and most of those are
bibliometric. A few notable epistemological analyses are reported as well as one notably
ethnographic research stream.
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4.0 Concluding thoughts on the epistemology of domain analysis in KO
In the opening section of this chapter we appealed to WordNet™ to unravel the epistemology of a domain. Now we return to that source to see what linguistic usage can tell
us about domain analysis. Here are some parameters for the term “analysis” (this time
minus mathematical and psychological connotations):
• an investigation of the component parts of a whole and their relations in making up the whole;
• the abstract separation of a whole into its constituent parts in order to study the parts and their relations;
• a form of literary criticism in which the structure of a piece of writing is analyzed;
• the use of closed-class words instead of inflections: e.g., ‘the father of the bride’ instead of ‘the
bride’s father’;
We see here a b readth of methodological implications ranging from part-whole relations, through deconstruction to term extraction. These are demonstrably the tools used
in the domain analytical paradigm, such as it is represented in the KO literature reviewed here. As we have seen, these analyses take place in many diverse, if mostly empirical, methodological environments, from author co-citation analysis of many discourse communities to ethnographic tours with gourmet cooks. There is in this body of
research a similar embrace of diverse notions of what it is to be a domain, ranging (as
we saw in the opening of this chapter) from spatial implications, through regions of
dominance or control, to knowledge bases. Domain analysis is an empirical region, because it must be, even when rational, pragmatic or historicist points of view are engaged.
Hjørland and Hartel (2003a) introduced their special issue of Knowledge Organization on domain analysis by siting Hjørland and Albrechtsen (2005) historically as a response to a century of information science. They also set domain analysis over against
the more traditional methodological paradigms in information science associated with
cognitivism and information systems (125). In their afterword (2003b) they noted that
domains are dynamic and therefore constantly evolving, which points dramatically to
the importance of embracing domain analysis as a central epistemic stance in KO. That
is, if KO is to succeed as the domain in which the natural and useful blend of ontological realities results in ordered knowledge, then the community must in this late-modern
environment embrace many, and multi- and intra- and cross-domain analytical techniques. That most of the domain analytical research reviewed in this chapter (which
could be perceived as the aftermath of the 2005 call or the embrace of a d omainanalytical paradigm) is empirical aligns with the classical philosophical embrace of
epistemology as in accordance with truth. That most of the empirical research is bibliometric accords with the late modern understanding that more than one truth might coexist, that therefore more than one methodological approach is necessary to seek truth, and
that the best approach to the search for truth might be the proper focus of science, which
Hjørland and Hartel call the search for better theories (240). Poli (2010) laid out the
manners in which different domains embrace their core entities, pointing out that there
are at least four different classes of domains, which he termed (150): “domain (in the
proper sense) …; sub-domain or facet frameworks … ; cross-domain …; [and] microdomain ….” He said that the distinction between domains in the proper sense and all of
the other classes means it is imperative for KO to “find a criterion with which to distinguish proper domains from the other domain types.” The epistemological imperative
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for KO is the embrace of the domain-analytical paradigm.
5.0 References
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