Knowledge Organization Tools Based on 'Human Needs' for Digital and Internet Environments

Abstract

Due to the influence of changing socio-political and economic situations, there is a marked change in the information needs of people in the 21st century. In today’s context people want to have value added and customized information that would help in problem solving and creative thinking. On the other hand there is rapid growth in scientific knowledge in the past few decades, and Internet and the world wide web are emerging as major repositories of knowledge and information. Traditional subject-based knowledge organization tools are unable to cope up with the information demands of the knowledge society thus influencing information professionals all over the world to design and develop effective and efficient knowledge organization tools to meet the information requirements of the 21st century. Since knowledge and information are intricately linked with the human mind any attempt to design knowledge organization and information retrieval tools must have an insight on certain fundamental aspects like the reason for human beings seek knowledge, cognitive functions and capabilities of human mind, influence of societal and technological aspects on knowledge growth etc. This paper briefly discusses each of these fundamental aspects and suggests an alternative knowledge organization and information retrieval tool based on basic and advanced 'human needs'.