14th International Conference

“Knowledge Organization and the Challenges of Diversity”

Organized jointly by the French Chapter of ISKO and the Centre for Research on Mediation (Crem)

Conference venue: University of Lorraine, Metz, France

Dates: October 13–14, 2025

Every act of classification reflects a worldview and is embedded within a specific social and political context. Far from being a merely technical exercise, knowledge organization involves ethical, political, and social issues, requiring in-depth reflection on the models, tools, and systems that shape the way knowledge is produced, classified, shared, and used within heterogeneous environments.

The 14th International ISKO-France Conference will examine knowledge organization through the lens of “diversity” and “inclusion.” Diversity refers to all individuals who make up a society and who differ from one another through, among other characteristics, factors related to age, physical appearance, cultural or geographical background, gender, or sexual orientation. Inclusion—which has been at the heart of many public policies for the past decade—aims to implement cross-cutting actions that encompass all forms of diversity by moving beyond their simple juxtaposition, within a broader effort to combat discrimination (Durand & Lecombe, 2023).

Knowledge organization and classification systems are expected to evolve under the influence of these policies, but also through processes of knowledge production based on lay, experiential, or activist knowledge developed by social groups (sometimes marginalized or stigmatized) or by citizens seeking to move beyond cultural industries and scientific institutions in the dissemination of knowledge and information.

This questioning of expert authority follows in the footsteps of movements challenging authority that emerged in the 1960s and continued during the 1980s through patient communities (e.g., people living with HIV/AIDS), who became experts in their own conditions, able to engage in dialogue with physicians and assert their role in public debates (Bonneuil & Joly, 2013).

Furthermore, the democratization of internet access and the emergence of social media in the early 2000s paved the way for amateur contributions (Flichy, 2010) and for the rise of citizen science, whose origins can be traced back to the work of Alan Irwin (1995). Citizen science is defined as the desire to make research more democratic and interdisciplinary by enabling members of the “general public” to collaborate on scientific projects, while developing tools to improve access to academic discourse and knowledge at all levels of society (open science).

The proposed papers may address one or more of the themes identified below, or present an original perspective related to the conference topic.

Theme 1. Social Epistemology in Knowledge Organization

Following the 13th ISKO-France Conference, the first theme will examine the contribution of social epistemology to knowledge organization.

Social epistemology is defined as “an analysis of the social dimension of knowledge” (Conein, 2007). In the 1950s, Margaret Egan and Jesse Shera (1952) introduced this epistemological perspective into information science and library science in order to demonstrate that knowledge organization should not be reduced to the mere use of tools and techniques, but should instead be considered as a theoretical and methodological field allowing researchers to study the ways in which a society develops a relationship of understanding with its environment.

This epistemological perspective can be found in various fields of the humanities and social sciences, such as ethnosciences, which examine popular knowledge and classification systems (Bromberger, 1986), or contemporary analyses of the relationship between lay knowledge and scientific knowledge (Barthélémy, 2005).

For Egan and Shera, social epistemology must be grounded in interdisciplinarity. This perspective has opened the way to new approaches in knowledge organization, including:

  • domain analysis (Hjørland & Albrechtsen, 1995);
  • paradigm theory (Kuhn, 1962);
  • feminist epistemologies (Haraway, 1988);
  • postcolonial epistemologies (Spivak, 1994).

All these approaches reject the idea of knowledge as being “neutral” and “universal” and demonstrate that knowledge is a socially and historically situated production.

Like knowledge production itself, knowledge organization is influenced by social and epistemological structures that need to be brought to light (Hjørland, 2002), as demonstrated by Hope Olson (2002) in her critical analysis of bibliographic classification systems.

This theme will address:

  • the contribution of interdisciplinary and critical approaches, such as feminist and postcolonial epistemologies;
  • theoretical and methodological frameworks for analyzing the integration of multiple forms of knowledge into knowledge organization;
  • the tension between the precision of documentary languages designed to facilitate information retrieval and the inclusiveness they must strive for in order to represent the diversity of human experiences and knowledge.

Theme 2. Inclusive Libraries

Libraries (public, academic, and school libraries) play an essential role in promoting inclusion and diversity by providing collections capable of meeting the information needs of all their users (children, adolescents, adults), socially isolated individuals, people with disabilities, and minority or stigmatized populations.

For example, from an inclusion perspective, the Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam hosts a collection dedicated to homosexuality and sexual diversity that is primarily managed by the IHLIA LGBT Heritage association (Hubert, 2021).

Since 1997, the latter has also developed the “Homosaurus,” an international thesaurus designed to complement other controlled vocabularies, such as the Library of Congress Subject Headings.

According to Cait McKinney (2020), such initiatives are part of information activism, which reshapes existing classification standards in order to prevent cataloging and indexing errors that may lead to the invisibility of documents and resources.

Implementing an inclusive approach certainly involves developing specialized collections, but it also requires the evolution of classification systems and documentary languages, as well as a rethinking of access to documentation through catalogs, indexing practices, and shelving systems in order to better account for cultural, sexual, and gender diversity and minorities (Beyron-Whittaker, 2018).

The selection of criteria for distinction, the creation of categories, and the order in which they are presented inevitably favor a particular perspective, while rendering other equally legitimate approaches or interpretations invisible. This can lead to misinterpretations and result in discrimination linked to assigning an entity or an individual to a specific category (Bowker & Star, 1999; Mustafa El Hadi & Timimi, 2021).

Considering these elements, this second theme will explore the following questions:

  • What developments have documentary languages undergone in recent years in order to better account for diversity, cultural, sexual, and gender minorities, as well as users with disabilities (visually impaired individuals, deaf and hard-of-hearing people) or multilingual audiences?
  • How can the hybridization between situated or activist knowledge produced by people directly affected by a cause or discrimination, and the information-documentation knowledge of librarians or archivists, contribute to improving classification systems and knowledge organization?
  • What participatory actions can be implemented as part of a policy aimed at welcoming all audiences in libraries, and how can such approaches encourage the emergence of inclusive professional practices?
  • What forms of appropriation and what technical solutions can support the inclusion of “restricted-access” audiences affected by sensitive political contexts?

Theme 3. Folksonomies: From Social Indexing to Social Movements

The term folksonomy is formed from the combination of the terms taxonomy (classification rules) and folk (people), in order to describe the activity of indexing and classifying content freely carried out by users of digital platforms.

This practice, which emerged in the 2000s, is based on the creation of keywords such as tags and hashtags, enabling produsers (Bruns, 2008) to organize and retrieve their content more easily, while also allowing them to quickly highlight topics for their audiences, for example through tag clouds displayed on their website homepages.

User-generated indexing of content produces metadata and contributes to a process of “redocumentarization” of the web (Pédauque, 2006).

It can be compared to the indexing practices carried out by documentation professionals and librarians, as both facilitate the circulation of and access to content and documents.

However, folksonomies differ in that they rely on natural language and do not use standardized documentary languages such as thesauri or ontologies.

Users therefore freely choose their keywords and express their own subjectivity, which does not always allow efficient circulation of content and may generate ambiguities (Le Deuff, 2012; Stassin, 2022).

Despite these limitations, folksonomies represent, for social science research, a means of accessing individuals’ representations, complementing traditional qualitative observations and interviews.

Rooted in everyday life and lived experiences, they provide insight into what individuals consider meaningful (Charvolin & La Branche, 2024).

Finally, while hashtags are used to improve content indexing and discoverability, they are also used to express opinions or advocate for causes. They become tools for public expression, enabling solidarity, testimony, and the sharing of experiences of violence or discrimination (e.g., #MeToo or #BlackLivesMatter).

This third theme therefore aims to highlight the evolution of folksonomies over the past two decades and to examine the transformations they have introduced into knowledge organization practices and information circulation:

  • How do folksonomies contribute to the evolution of classification practices in libraries and other cultural institutions, and what role do they play in the development of new documentary languages?
  • Can folksonomy practices linked to lived experiences (activism, illness, etc.) contribute to better recognition of lay knowledge in the creation and organization of new knowledge?
  • What potential do tags and hashtags offer in the construction, capitalization, and circulation of knowledge, and how can they support the development of citizen-based action research projects?
  • How can the study of folksonomies serve as a method for investigating and observing social movements and protest practices?

Theme 4. Mode 2 and Diversity of Knowledge: Open Science, SAPS, and Interdisciplinarity

The development of open science (OS) is redefining practices of knowledge production, sharing, and dissemination by moving away from traditional models based on restricted access and limited distribution.

This approach promotes transparency and the reuse of scientific resources, following a logic of creating knowledge commons based on collective governance and operating outside purely market-driven approaches (Fabre, 2017; Le Crosnier, 2011).

Within this framework, knowledge organization, which is essential for structuring and making open resources intelligible, is part of a dynamic supported by learning organization models (Senge, 1990).

In the context of open science, these models encourage a rethinking of interactions between stakeholders and information systems in order to create an environment conducive to knowledge acquisition and dissemination.

At the same time, participatory approaches based on the principles of science with and for society (SAPS) enrich these processes by incorporating knowledge derived from individual and collective experiences into research practices, thereby contributing to a reconsideration of knowledge management and sharing methods.

The issue of open science is part of a broader transformation in knowledge production, often described as the transition from Mode 1 to Mode 2.

The Mode 2 knowledge production model, conceptualized by Michael Gibbons and colleagues (Gibbons et al., 1994), refers to a form of knowledge production characterized by its context of application, interdisciplinarity, and collective production.

Unlike Mode 1, which focuses on disciplinary research conducted primarily within academic institutions, Mode 2 promotes an open and interactive dynamic in which knowledge is co-produced by various stakeholders: researchers, practitioners, companies, and public or private institutions.

Through its grounding in practical contexts and its transdisciplinary nature, Mode 2 profoundly challenges knowledge organization dynamics by questioning traditional classification structures historically based on compartmentalized disciplinary approaches (Laursen & O’Rourke, 2019).

Within this framework, knowledge organization must not only integrate mechanisms that encourage the intersection of different perspectives, but also ensure greater accessibility and transparency for all participants involved in the co-construction process.

All these elements raise new questions regarding knowledge organization, which will be central to this theme:

  • Which standards, documentary languages, or methodological frameworks make it possible to structure knowledge within an open science framework?
  • How can feedback and experiential learning be integrated in order to improve and enrich knowledge organization systems while ensuring compliance with sensitive data protection requirements and scientific rigor?
  • What roles do socio-technical systems based on emerging technologies (AI, blockchain, etc.) play, and what are their impacts on the structuring, sharing, and reliability of open knowledge?
  • How can knowledge organization be structured to foster interdisciplinary collaboration in research projects related to Mode 2?
  • What lessons can be drawn from the evolution of practices 30 years after the publication of Gibbons and colleagues’ landmark work?

Invited Speakers

Olivier Le Deuff
MICA, University Bordeaux Montaigne, France

José Augusto Guimarães
São Paulo State University, Brazil

Submission Guidelines

Proposals must be submitted in the form of an abstract of 1,500 words, specifying the author’s name, email address, and the theme in which the paper is intended to be included.

Abstracts should be sent to the following address:

colloque2025@isko-france.asso.fr

Important Dates

  • Call for papers launched: February 4, 2025
  • Submission deadline for proposals: April 15, 2025
  • Notification of acceptance: May 15, 2025
  • Deadline for submission of final proposals (full text): July 15, 2025
  • Registration period: June 15–September 25, 2025
  • Conference dates: October 13–14, 2025

Organizing Committee

  • El Mawas Nour (Crem, University of Lorraine)
  • Knauf Audrey (Crem, University of Lorraine)
  • Monnier Angeliki (Crem, University of Lorraine)
  • Roux Ugo (Crem, University of Lorraine)
  • Stassin Bérengère (Crem, University of Lorraine)

Scientific Committee

  • Bolfarini Tognoli Natalia (Federal Fluminense University, Brazil)
  • Broudoux Evelyne (CNAM Paris, France)
  • Casenave Joana (University of Lille, France)
  • Chaudiron Stéphane (University of Lille, France)
  • Chevry Pébayle Emmanuelle (University of Strasbourg, France)
  • Couzinet Viviane (University of Toulouse, France)
  • Djambian Caroline (University of Grenoble Alpes, France)
  • El Hachani Mabrouka (University of Lyon 3, France)
  • El Mawas Nour (University of Lorraine, France)
  • Favier Laurence (University of Lille, France)
  • Goria Stéphane (University of Lorraine, France)
  • Hjørland Birger (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
  • Ihadjadene Madjid (University of Paris 8, France)
  • Kane Aminata (Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar, Senegal)
  • Knauf Audrey (University of Lorraine, France)
  • Larouk Omar (Enssib, France)
  • Liquete Vincent (University of Bordeaux Montaigne, France)
  • Martínez-Ávila Daniel (University of León, Spain)
  • Moulaison Heather (University of Missouri, iSchool, USA)
  • Mustafa El Hadi Widad (University of Lille, France)
  • Oliveira Milani Suellen (Federal Fluminense University, Brazil)
  • Roszkowski Marcin (University of Warsaw, Poland)
  • Roux Ugo (University of Lorraine, France)
  • Sidir Mohamed (University of Picardie Jules-Verne, France)
  • Simon Emmanuelle (University of Lorraine, France)
  • Sosińska-Kalata Barbara (University of Warsaw, Poland)
  • Stassin Bérengère (University of Lorraine, France)
  • Timimi Ismaïl (University of Lille, France)
  • Wiorogórska Zuza (University of Warsaw, Poland)

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