People and organizations

DIS staff

Vanda Broughton

Vanda Broughton is a prominent member of the UK knowledge organization community. She is the holder of several offices including:

• Joint editor of the Bliss Bibliographic Classification 2nd edition
• Associate Editor of the Universal Decimal Classification
• Chair of the UK Chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization.

In 2004 she chaired the 8th International Conference of the International Society for Knowledge Organization.
She was Chair of the recent first conference of ISKO UK 'Content architecture: managing and exploiting diverse resources'

Vanda has been a member of the UK Classification Research Group since 1972, and has also served on the Committee of the Classification and Indexing Section of IFLA.
Her research interests are centred on faceted classification and its application, particularly in digital environments, and she is a well-known speaker at both national and international events.
Her publications include two well received standard texts as well as research papers and articles.

Anne Welsh

teaches cataloguing at DIS, and has a wealth of experience in this field. She has worked with rare books, legal resources, and most recently at the former National Library for Health (now NHS Evidence). She is an active member of ISKO UK, the Cataloguing and Indexing Group, and is a former editor of Catalogue and Index. She sits on the Management Committee of the UK electronic Information Group (UKeIG) as Web Liaison.

Anne is co-authoring Practical cataloguing: AACR, RDA and MARC21, which is due out from Facet later in 2009.

Taxonomies Anne has developed are still used by former employers in the commercial sector. In 2005-7, she was the taxonomy consultant for an EU-funded portal to drugs information in fifteen European languages. She is particularly interested in controlled vocabularies and the impact of standardization on research into counter-culture and non-Establishment points of view.

John Bowman Honorary Senior Research Fellow

John Bowman is a well-known figure in the cataloguing world, and the author of best-selling monographs on the subject. Until recently he taught cataloguing in the Department. He has been a member of a number of official bodies responsible for the on-going development of cataloguing standards:

• Library Association (later CILIP) Dewey Decimal Classification Committee since 1985
• CILIP/British Library Committee on AACR2 since 2003
• RDA Examples Group of the Joint Steering Committee for the Revision of AACR2 from 2005

He is also a member of the Editorial Board of Cataloging & Classification Quarterly. In addition to his work in the field of cataloguing, John's research interests and publications also include Greek typography, and the twentieth century history of knowledge organization.

He was instrumental in re-establishing the series 'British librarianship and information work', a key publication recording and analysing academic and professional activity in the UK, and has edited the two recently published volumes covering 1990-2005. John is also the holder of awards for his historical publications, and for the quality of his indexes. He is the current holder of the Cataloguing and Indexing Group's Jefferys Award for his contribution to cataloguing.

DIS organizational research activities

International Society for Knowledge Organization - UK Chapter

ISKO UK was formed at a meeting at University College London in March 2007. DIS has acted as home institution to the new association, and has hosted a series of events designed to promote awareness of knowledge organization.

ISKO UK is a not-for-profit scientific/professional association with the objective of promoting research and communication in the domain of knowledge organization, within the broad field of information science and related disciplines, through the following means:

• development of liaisons between communities of researchers and practitioners in the domains, sectors and scientific disciplines of the field of knowledge organization
• organization of study days, seminars, workshops and, in particular, the organization of a biennial conference of ISKO UK in the years alternative to the International Conferences of ISKO
• all other activities that conform to the objective of the association.

A core element of ISKO UK's activities is the 'Konnecting Kommunities' programme, designed to facilitate the exchange of research and good practice across different KO sectors, and to provide a forum for meetings and discussion. A particular feature of the UK Chapter is the breadth of its membership, with substantial representation of KO specialists from the commercial sector, including consultants and software developers, alongside academics and researchers.

More ...

Classification Research Group
DIS has provided a home for the CRG since the 1980s, and hence facilitated much ground-breaking work from this historically signifcant group. Of recent years most of the CRG's efforts have been focused on the revision of the Bliss Bibliographic Classification 2nd edition.