I S K O

International Society for Knowledge Organization

ISKO's mission

Founded in 1989, ISKO is the leading international society for organization of knowledge. ISKO has a broad and interdisciplinary scope. ISKO's mission is to advance conceptual work in knowledge organization in all kinds of forms, and for all kinds of purposes, such as databases, libraries, dictionaries and the Internet.

As an interdisciplinary society, ISKO brings together professionals from many different fields. ISKO counts more than 400 members all over the world, from fields such as information science, philosophy, linguistics, computer science, as well as special domains such as medical informatics.

In order to achieve its mission and goals, ISKO works to

• promote research, development and applications of knowledge organization systems that advance the philosophical, psychological and semantic approaches for ordering knowledge
• provide the means of communication and networking on knowledge organization for its members
• function as a connecting link between all institutions and national societies, working with problems related to the conceptual organization and processing of knowledge

Among ISKO's most important activities are

• international conferences every two years
• national and regional conferences on special topics
• publication of the leading scientific journal in the field: Knowledge Organization (KO), formerly International Classification, founded in 1974
• ISKO News, published in Knowledge Organization
• the series Advances in Knowledge Organization (AKO)

ISKO's organization

ISKO is organized in an Executive Board with 7 members, and a Scientific Advisory Council currently with 22 members. Membership meetings are arranged every two years. ISKO has a number of national or regional chapters.

The ISKO Charter and Preamble (1989) is available (PDF).

ISKO cooperates with international and national organizations such as UNESCO, the European Commission, and ISO (the International Organization for Standardization). In addition, links are established to

• IFLA (the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions), in particular the Section on Classification and Indexing,
• ASIS&T SIG/CR (the Special Interest Group on Classification Research of the American Society for Information Science and Technology),
• NKOS (Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services), and
• Infoterm (the International Information Centre for Terminology).

ISKO offers both individual and institutional memberships; please see the Join ISKO page for information on how to join.

© ISKO 2004-2008 : last updated 2010.04.01