The Discipline of Organizing: Professional Edition, 4th Edition

Chapter 9. The Forms of Resource Descriptions

Ryan Shaw

Murray Maloney

9.1. Introduction

Throughout this book, we have emphasized the importance of separately considering fundamental organizing principles, application-specific concepts, and details of implementation. The three-tier architecture we introduced in §1.6 is one way to conceptualize this separation. In §6.7, we contrasted the implementation-focused perspective for analyzing relationships with other perspectives that focus on the meaning and abstract structure of relationships. In this chapter, we present this contrast between conceptualization and implementation in terms of separating the content and form of resource descriptions.

In the previous chapters, we have considered principles and concepts of organizing in many different contexts, ranging from personal organizing systems to cultural and institutional ones. We have noted that some organizing systems have limited scope and expected lifetime, such as a task-oriented personal organizing system like a shopping list. Other organizing systems support broad uses that rely on standard categories developed through rigorous processes, like a product catalog.

By this point you should have a good sense of the various conceptual issues you need to consider when deciding how to describe a resource in order to meet the goals of your organizing system. Considering those issues will give you some sense of what the content of your descriptions should be. In order to focus on the conceptual ...