my earliest recollection of the chemistry laboratory at high school was the mysterious chart that hung high on the wall behind the teacher. Every one of its squares was filled with a two-letter abbreviation, such as Na or Cl. It was, of course, the Periodic Classification of the elements. In due course, I was introduced to the hidden wonders of the classification, with every element and its properties bearing a predictable relationship to others. Eventually I learned about the atomic structure of the elements, and just why each element had its unique position in the table. It was the beauty and symmetry of the Periodic Classification that eventually led me to major in chemistry, all the while learning about other classification systems. One of them was the Library of Congress classification in the library at the University of Southampton, and here I began to realize that a book might not fit neatly into a particular section of the classification, which had problems understanding the differences between physical chemistry and chemical physics. Of course, the problems of classification do not just affect chemists, but physicists, biologists, botanists, zoologists...the list is endless. I seem to have spent the rest of my life trying to classify things. Probably the ultimate challenge is to work with patent classifications, where in theory you are trying to classify inventions that are novel, and therefore should always falloutside a classification based on past inventions. However, with intranets I am finding that a substantial part of my work involves classification. You can't go to an intranet conference nowadays without every speaker referring to the importance of taxonomies, thesauri, and classification. The better the classification, the better the intranet. It is as simple as that. CONTENT ARCHITECTURE Let me start at the home page.
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