Call for papers
Les cahiers du numérique
Knowledge Organization and Web. 2.0: from a 
centralized and hierarchical organization to a 
social and distributed organisation
Presentation
Man has always tried to organize his 
environment, an essential condition for his 
understanding of the world and perhaps even for 
his own survival. This organizing process, using 
categories and classification limited at the 
beginning to organizing objects and natural 
phenomena, quickly became essential also for 
organizing ideas and knowledge. Philosophical 
systems of knowledge organization have in turn 
inspired bibliographical classificatory 
structures for organizing documents and 
information created by reflective thought and research.
In information science more generally, and in 
archive, library science and museology more 
specifically, the importance of organizing 
processes is never questioned in spite of the 
fact that the information and documentation 
environment, within which this organization is 
carried out, is changing very rapidly. The 
evolution of users' information needs, 
expectations and behaviour, the powerful 
technology which has allowed for the building of 
high-performance search engines, the design of 
interactive, dynamic and user-friendly 
organizing tools all call for the re-examination 
and adjustment of goals, procedures and tools. 
More recently, technological progress resulting 
from Web. 2.0. has contributed to the 
enhancement of sociotechnical and cultural usages.
This thematic issue of Les Cahiers du Numérique 
will deal with knowledge organization endeavours 
to account for traditional and modern 
organization models. It will also study the 
relevance of frequently used binary terms 
describing antagonistic knowledge organization 
models: free/controlled, 
hierarchical/distributed, passive/active, 
vertical/horizontal, professional/social. It 
will finally try to answer three fundamental questions:
1 Where do we come from? We cannot answer this 
question without first reviewing knowledge 
organization tradition, history, basic objectives and theoretical bases.
2 Where are we currently? To answer this topical 
question, we have to look at accounts of 
experiments going back to the beginning of the 
21st century, to learn about more conceptual and 
technological contemporary applications, and to 
study proposals of modifications to traditional theories.
3 Where are we going? The third question will 
lead to examining the immediate future and to 
test a number of so-far unverified hypotheses. 
Under the impact of participatory and social 
networks, are we witnessing the falling by the 
wayside of processes of systematic knowledge and 
information organization that have been used for 
a very long time? Or are we, on the opposite, 
about to take advantage of tradition and 
systematization for building and designing 
methods and tools capable of adjusting 
themselves to the evolution of an ever more 
forbidding technological environment?
Chapters on the following themes are welcomed:
-Epistemological and historical foundations
-Categorization theory
-Classification theory
-Document classification and its use in the internet environment
-Automatic classification and categorization
-Faceted structures for knowledge organization
-Structures and relations in knowledge organization
-Language and culture and their impact on knowledge organization
- Knowledge organization paradigms (cognitive, semiotic, linguistic and
   computational)
-Social and collaborative classifications
-Knowledge organizing systems and tools and their interoperability
Review Committee
Clément Arsenault, EBSI, Université de Montréal (Canada)
D. Grant Campbell, University of Western Ontario (Canada)
Stéphane Chaudiron, GERIICO, Université de Lille 3 (France)
Viviane Couzinet, LRASS, Université de Toulouse (France)
Claudio Gnoli, Université de Rome (Italy)
Michel Gorin, Haute École de Gestion de Genève (Switzerland)
Rebecca Green, OLCL, Library of Congress (USA)
Marc Guichard, INIST-CNRS, Nancy (France)
Michèle Hudon, EBSI, Université de Montréal (Canada)
Fidélia Ibekwe SanJuan, ELICO, Université Lyon 3 (France)
Omar Larouk, ENSSIB (France)
Ia Mclwaine, University College London (UK)
Elaine Ménard, SIS, McGill University (Canada)
Widad Mustafa El Hadi, GERIICO, Université Lille 3 (France)
Ismaïl Timimi, GERIICO, Université de Lille 3 (France)
Khaldoun Zreik, PARAGRAPHE, Université de Paris 8 (France)
The timelines are as follows:
Call for articles: October 2009 Deadline for 
submission of papers: December 15 2009 Comments 
and decision of review committee: January 30th 
2010 Deadline for final version: March 15 2010 
Publication: End of May - Beginning of June 2010
For more information on the journal itself: http://lcn.revuesonline.com/
 Guidelines for authors:
-Proposal are to be sent to both Widad Mustafa 
El Hadi and Michèle Hudon (see contacts below) 
-Contribution should conform to the guidelines 
available on the journal's website:
   http://lcn.revuesonline.com/ (or by request 
from (lcn /at/ lavoisier.fr)) -Chapters should not 
exceed 30 pages including references. 
-Proposals are to be sent in Word or RTF format 
(cf. guidelines attached) -Final versions are 
to be submitted in Word format.  -PDF format 
will be accepted but orthographic corrections will then have to be
   undertaken by the authors and not by Lavoisier.
For information and submission, contact Widad 
Mustafa El Hadi ((widad.mustafa /at/ univ-lille3.fr)) 
and Michèle Hudon ((michele.hudon /at/ umontreal.ca))