Introduction

Hi,

I've noted that, in spite of the size of this list, introductions seem to be
expected (or at least they are called for periodically), so here we go. :)

I'm Adam, and I'm a lecturer in Information Systems at the University of South
Australia. Until recently (aka yesterday) we were part of a Business faculty,
but as of today we are part of the IT faculty. Prior to becoming an academic I
spent close to 10 years as a web developer/programmer. I teach programming and
database design subjects. Research-wise, my original background is in
philosophy, but now my research tends to be in either methodologies for
developing systems or foundational/philosophical issues in information systems.

My interest in faceted classification is extremely recent. I'm currently
working on the traditional 10-year staff doctorate. I'm looking at the
understanding of "knowledge" in both information systems and knowledge
management. Rather than make the standard move of offering yet another
definition, I decided to start by building a topography and taxonomy of
definitons of knowledge used in the field. There are a lot of them. Initially I
had intended to propose, at most, up to two or three definitions as core,
"useful" definitions. Since then I have come to realize that this was a mistake
- that instead it would be better to acknowledge that there are (and should be)
a multitude of definitions which can be applied to produce very different
systems. This then leads to the question of how do you choose a valid and
useful definiton for a given application. So I focused more on the taxonomy. To
do so I started looking for methodologies, but mistakenly focused mostly on
systems theory, as that was part of where I come from, and it didn't work. But
recently I stumbled across faceted classification as a result of a chance
comment in a conversation, and I had one of those really cool eureka moments.
I'm not yet convinced that my application is suitable for faceted
classification, (or vice-versa), but it is well worth spending time studying,
even if only for other directions for research that it may reveal.

So there you have it. :)  

Adam.



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