Integrative Levels Classification

"The Integrative Levels Classification (ILC) is a knowledge organization system featuring experimental innovations. Although drawing from the heritage of bibliographic classifications, it is different from most of them in allowing to represent any combination of concepts without the ties of traditional disciplines. Phenomena of the world are listed in the ILC schedule according to the natural sequence of integrative levels; each concept can then be freely combined with others by meaningful relationships (facets). This makes ILC suitable to order and connect knowledge in a variety of media, including directories, websites, encyclopedias, audio-visual archives, printed collections, museum specimens, etc. The expressivity of its notation makes it especially fit to be integrated in computer-based automation to produce clever search and dynamic displays of knowledge items. ILC is being developed progressively since 2004. A first stable edition (ILC 1) is available for those interested in testing or using it. This includes 7052 classes (concepts) covering the whole spectrum of knowledge broadly, plus deeper specificity in certain domains (e.g. cetaceans, countries, ...) that have already been worked out in detail. The combination mechanisms allow to use the existing classes to generate meanings that approximate well enough the contents of most general collections. A special feature (deictics) is also available to define extensions fitting your local needs in ways compatible with the general system. The ILC research project takes its theoretical and technical foundations from the work developed in the 1960s by the Classification Research Group (CRG) in London, particularly in the persons of Douglas J. Foskett and Derek Austin, under a NATO grant. At the time this did not produce a finished system for contingent reasons, but it did leave us with a precious heritage of advanced techniques (freely faceted classification) that are now being implemented in ILC. The system is currently developed and managed by an international team led by Claudio Gnoli and including researchers, librarians, computer scientists, and philosophers."