SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System) is a recommendation from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for representing controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, thesauri, classifications, and similar systems for organizing and indexing information as linked data elements in the Semantic Web, using the Resource Description Framework (RDF). The SKOS data model is centered on “concepts”, which can have preferred and alternate labels in any language as well as other metadata, and which are identified by addresses on the World Wide Web (URIs). (...) Concepts are grouped into hierarchies through “broader” and “narrower” relations, with “top concepts” at the broadest conceptual level. Concepts are also organized into “concept schemes”, also identified by URIs. Other relations, mappings, and groupings are also supported. This article discusses the history of the development of SKOS and provides notes on adoption, uses, and limitations. (shrink)

This article examines genre as knowledge organization. Genres are fluid and historically changing categories, and there are different views about the scope and membership of specific genres. The literature generally agrees that genre is a matter of discrimination and taxonomy, and that it is concerned with organising things into recognisable classes, existing as part of the relationship between texts and readers. Genre can be thought of as a sorting mechanism, and genres are not only a matter of codes (...) and conventions but also call into play systems of use and social institutions. This article explores the history of genre analysis across a broad range of disciplines, including literary studies, rhetorical and social action studies, and English for academic and professional purposes. It considers genre theory as a framework for librarianship and knowledge organization and explores the use of genre within librarianship and knowledge organization. Finally, the article discusses the Library of Congress Genre/forms Terms for Library and Archival Materials which, itself an evolving and changing standard, offers a step towards standardisation regarding genre terms and the scope of genre categories. (shrink)

Nearly fifty years after the incorporation of the International Society for Knowledge Organization and the introduction of its formal scientific journal Knowledge Organization, a comprehensive encyclopedia of the domain appeared. The practice of domain analysis for knowledge organization, twenty years after its introduction as a core methodology, has created the largest corpus of theoretical knowledge in the domain analysis of knowledge organization itself. A substantial body of research data, therefore, is available (...) in the corpus of articles and conference papers reporting on the epistemological and ontological pillars of the science of knowledge organization. This paper is a report on the evolution of a formal taxonomy of knowledge organization, which is a product of an exhaustive meta-analysis of the KO domain. Our team compiled the corpus of twenty-nine formal published analyses together with key formative historical documents. We then analyzed the corpus thematically, bibliographically, and using co-word analysis to extract key concepts and the underlying faceted conceptual infrastructure. The taxonomy itself is faceted and is linked where possible to published definitions in the KO literature and as well as to the online ISKO Encyclopedia of Knowledge Organization. A dynamic project, the taxonomy will be maintained as linked open data and will grow as emergent research contributes new concepts or generates new facets. (shrink)

The Sixteenth International Conference on Knowledge Organization was to have been held in Aalborg, Denmark in July 2020. Cancelled due to COVID-19, the proceedings were published online on 4 December 2020 containing 48 full papers, 17 short papers and 14 posters. Informetric analysis of the proceedings reveals the shifting intension and extension of the knowledge organization domain. International participation was extensive as usual. There is a much larger share of empirical and applied technical research, and therefore (...) much less historical or analytical work than before. The shape of the research front continues to revolve around concept theory and domain analysis, but cultural and ethical issues are more prevalent than before, having attained nearly core status. There is new emphasis on concepts around interdisciplinarity and phenomenon-based knowledge organization systems, and facet analytical theory has been extended into new approaches in the linked data environment. There are more journal articles than before. No monographs are highly cited but interdisciplinarity, Wittgenstein, domain analysis and music classification are prominent alongside archival science and ontology construction on the bookshelf for this conference. Among conferences ISKO and its chapters predominate. The discourse represented by the works on ISKO 16’s bookshelf seems to be rooted in classical concept theory. There is some concretization of discourse concerning interoperability and the continued distancing from ideas of single or “universal” knowledge organization systems. There is a recurrence of concepts of warrant buttressing the extension of research into issues of culture and identity. (shrink)

This contribution presents the principal features of ontologies, drawing special attention to the comparison between ontologies and the different kinds of know­ledge organization systems (KOS). The focus is on the semantic richness exhibited by ontologies, which allows the creation of a great number of relationships between terms. That establishes ontologies as the most evolved type of KOS. The concepts of “conceptualization” and “formalization” and the key components of ontologies are described and discussed, along with upper and domain ontologies and (...) special typologies, such as bibliographical ontologies and biomedical ontologies. The use of ontologies in the digital libraries environment, where they have replaced thesauri for query expansion in searching, and the role they are playing in the Semantic Web, especially for semantic interoperability, are sketched. (shrink)

In his Categories, Aristotle details the kinds of being that exist, along with what can be understood and predicated of existing things. Most notably within this work, Aristotle advances a set of ten, top-level categories that can be used to classify all kinds of being. Even today, the influence of the Categories is felt in many domains, particularly in knowledge organization (KO). Here, Aristotle’s Categories bear deep, long-standing connections with works examining categorization, subject analysis, and theory of classification. (...) Though its relation to ontology might seem obvious, connections to KO perspectives on knowledge organization systems (KOSs) and ontological modeling are curiously lacking. The aim of this work is to offer a re-examination of the Categories as a KOS, particularly through the lens of the KO field’s understandings of ontology. Utilizing Zeng’s classification of KOSs as a theoretical framework, this study draws parallels between the first two sections of the Categories and the defining features of ontologies and offers an initial ontological model of this work. The results of this re-examination stand to offer a new view of a fundamental work in the KO canon, draw further connections between past and present perspectives in KO, and further contribute to the theoretical grounding of contemporary KOS research and practice. (shrink)

This research explores temporal concept drift and temporal alignment in knowledge organization systems. A comparative analysis is pursued using the 1910 Library of Congress Subject Headings, 2020 FAST Topical, and automatic indexing. The use case involves a sample of 90 nineteenth-century Encyclopedia Britannica entries. The entries were indexed using two approaches: 1) full-text indexing; 2) Named Entity Recognition was performed upon the entries with Stanza, Stanford’s NLP toolkit, and entities were automatically indexed with the Helping Interdisciplinary Vocabulary application, (...) using both 1910 LCSH and FAST Topical. The analysis focused on three goals: 1) identifying results that were exclusive to the 1910 LCSH output; 2) identifying terms in the exclusive set that have been deprecated from the contemporary LCSH, demonstrating temporal concept drift; and 3) exploring the historical significance of these deprecated terms. Results confirm that historical vocabularies can be used to generate anachronistic subject headings representing conceptual drift across time in KOS and historical resources. A methodological contribution is made demonstrating how to study changes in KOS over time and improve the contextualization historical humanities resources. (shrink)

The study’s objective is to analyze the structure of knowledge organization studies conducted worldwide. This applied research has been conducted with a scientometrics approach using the co-word analysis. The research records consisted of all articles published in the journals of Knowledge Organization and Cataloging & Classification Quarterly and keywords related to the field of knowledge organization indexed in Web of Science from 1900 to 2019, in which 17,950 records were analyzed entirely with plain text (...) format. The total number of keywords was 25,480, which was reduced to 12,478 keywords after modifications and removal of duplicates. Then, 115 keywords with a frequency of at least 18 were included in the final analysis, and finally, the co-word network was drawn. BibExcel, UCINET, VOSviewer, and SPSS software were used to draw matrices, analyze co-word networks, and draw dendrograms. Furthermore, strategic diagrams were drawn using Excel software. The keywords “information retrieval,” “classification,” and “ontology” are among the most frequently used keywords in knowledge organization articles. Findings revealed that “Ontology*Semantic Web”, “Digital Library*Information Retrieval” and “Indexing*Information Retrieval” are highly frequent co-word pairs, respectively. The results of hierarchical clustering indicated that the global research on knowledge organization consists of eight main thematic clusters; the largest is specified for the topic of “classification, indexing, and information retrieval.” The smallest clusters deal with the topics of “data processing” and “theoretical concepts of information and knowledge organization” respectively. Cluster 1 (cataloging standards and knowledge organization) has the highest density, while Cluster 5 (classification, indexing, and information retrieval) has the highest centrality. According to the findings of this research, the keyword “information retrieval” has played a significant role in knowledge organization studies, both as a keyword and co-word pair. In the co-word section, there is a type of related or general topic relationship between co-word pairs. Results indicated that information retrieval is one of the main topics in knowledge organization, while the theoretical concepts of knowledge organization have been neglected. In general, the co-word structure of knowledge organization research indicates the multiplicity of global concepts and topics studied in this field globally. (shrink)

Some of the fundamental activities of the software development process are related to the discipline of Requirements Engineering. Their objectives are to discover, analyze, document, and verify the system’s requirements. The requirements are the conditions or capabilities that software needs to have or fulfill to meet its users’ needs, and problems in its identification can mean the failure of a software project. This study is part of the research that is being developed to propose a model based on Know­ledge (...) class='Hi'>Organization Systems to be used in the Requirements engineering process. This article aims to present the results of an analysis on a set of Know­ledge Organization Systems to identify whether they are likely to be applied in the Requirements engineering process and identify at which stage of this process each one of them can be implemented. The Know­ledge Organization Systems analyzed were the authority files, gazetteers, glossaries, subject headings, classification systems, thesauri, semantic networks, and ontologies. Based on the results obtained, it was possible to conclude that the Know­ledge Organization Systems analyzed can be used in the Requirements engineering process and, consequently, contribute to increasing the software requirements’ quality. (shrink)

This article presents a set of principles for knowledge modeling in knowledge organization systems in specific domains. It discusses the representational problem, comparing the abstraction mechanisms present in the theories related to representation in concept systems, taken from foundational authors of information science, computer science, and terminology approaches. Parallel to this context, several representational possibilities arise to assist the modeler in the activity of elaborating models of representation. It describes the application of theoretical and methodological principles when (...) organizing, representing, and managing navigation on learning paths in the corporate education field. As a concept proof, it exposes a conceptual model of learning paths and discusses a literature review on this subject to verify to what extent these principles are being applied. It concludes that we can consider the principles discussed in this study as relevant, since they expand the modelers’ freedom, not making him hostage to a specific model. (shrink)

The ethics of describing and indexing works which have an element of deception is an important topic within the arena of knowledge organization (KO). However, what happens if the unreal element is for artistic purposes and is part of the experience of the document? The focus of this article is on the KO of art documentation. It considers art documents where unreality and mistruth are part of a document’s creative and artistic purpose. Three examples of exhibition documentation for (...) contemporary art are explored. These illuminate the KO implications of unreal elements in artworks, exhibitions and documents, and the interplay between them. Three models are then presented relating to the KO of unreality. Model one shows how the wishes of the creator are a significant part of ethical KO for art and the ethical KO decisions which result from the performative and experiential aspects of art documentation. Model two illustrates how the placement of the unreality in relation to metadata creation can have a critical impact on ethical decisions in KO. Model three posits unreal-ness as a novel type of information about metadata creation, introducing categories such as motive for the deception. It shows how this original way of contemplating applied ethics in KO is vital for all ethically challenging works. Ultimately, considering the KO ethics of art documentation extends our thinking about how to deal with deception and unreality and adds an important aesthetic-ethical dimension to the corpus of work on KO ethics. (shrink)

Scientometrics has found many applications in describing, explaining and predicting the scientific status of researchers, educational and research groups, universities, organizations and countries in various national and international arenas. By studying the scientific products of different countries, their status in the production of science can be evaluated. Present study was conducted using a scientometrics approach and using co-word analysis and social network analysis (SNA) to investigate relationships in the field of know­ledge organization. In this regard, research indexed in web (...) of science on the topic of “know­ledge organization” has been analyzed using software including VOSviewer, Gephi, Publish or Perish. The findings of the study show that the most frequently used topics and words are know­ledge organization and classification. Also, the most valuable subject areas were identified based on the maps drawn using the closeness and centrality of indexes, taxonomy, ontology and know­ledge organization systems. Co-authorship analysis revealed that the co-authorship network is discrete and has low-density, with a total of 12,491 citations in all articles. Also, the most prolific author is Hjorland, followed by Smiraglia and Dahlberg. using the co-word map of know­ledge organization, policymakers can plan appropriately through the know­ledge of the research and thematic status of know­ledge organization. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to delineate the process of evolution of know­ledge organization systems (KOSs) through identification of principles of unity such as internal and external unity in organizing the structure of KOSs to achieve content storage and retrieval purposes and to explain a novel method used in ranking of KOSs by proposing the principle of rank unity. Different types of KOSs which are addressed in this article include dictionaries, Roget’s thesaurus, thesauri, micro, macro, and meta-thesaurus, ontologies, (...) and lower, middle, and upper-level ontologies. This article relied on dialectic models to clarify the ideas in Kant’s know­ledge theory. This is done by identifying logical relationships between categories (i.e., Thesis, antithesis, and synthesis) in the creation of data, information, and know­ledge in the human mind. The Analysis has adapted a historical methodology, more specifically a documentary method, as its reasoning process to propose a conceptual model for ranking KOSs. The study endeavors to explain the main elements of data, information, and know­ledge along with engineering mechanisms such as data, information, and know­ledge engineering in developing the structure of KOSs and also aims to clarify their influence on content storage and retrieval performance. KOSs have followed related principles of order to achieve an internal order, which could be examined by analyzing the principle of internal unity in know­ledge organizations. The principle of external unity leads us to the necessity of compatibility and interoperability between different types of KOSs to achieve semantic harmonization in increasing the performance of content storage and retrieval. Upon introduction of the principle of rank unity, a ranking method of KOSs utilizing cognition states as criteria could be considered to determine the position of each know­ledge organization with respect to others. The related criteria of the principle of rank unity- cognition states- are derived from Immanuel Kant’s epistemology. The research results showed that KOSs, while having defined positions in cognition states, specific principles of order, related operational mechanisms, and related principles of unity in achieving their specific purposes, have benefited from the developmental experiences of previous KOSs, and further, their developmental processes owe to the experiences and methods of their previous generations. (shrink)

Domain analysis is useful for examination of individual spheres of intellectual activity, both academic and otherwise, and has been used in the knowledge organization (KO) literature to explore specific communities and uses, including web pornography (Beaudoin and Ménard 2015), virtual online worlds (Sköld, Olle 2015), gourmet cooking (Hartel 2010), healthy eating (McTavish 2015), art studies (Ørom 2003), the Knowledge Organization journal (Guimarães et al. 2013), and domain analysis itself (Smiraglia 2015). The results of domain analyses are (...) useful for the development of controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, ontologies, metadata schemas, and other systems for the documentation, description, and discovery of resources, as well as for knowledge discovery in general (Smiraglia 2015; Hjørland 2017). This research describes a methodology for the elucidation of knowledge organization systems (KOS) currently in use on image websites that document graffiti, graffiti art, and street art around the world. (shrink)

This case study aims to preserve and disseminate cultural heritage information about the North American community folk dance tradition of contra dance through development of a thesaurus of choreographic terms and a domain ontology. A survey of dance resources was conducted, reviewing historic and modern examples of contra dance choreography notation and instructions, records of dance events, and recordings of dance performances. Domain and content analysis were performed on the resources to collect and organize concepts and themes regarding choreographic components (...) and their relationships, the structure and function of cultural works, their creative expressions, and the evidence of those expressions in documents and recordings. Vocabulary used in the description of contra dance choreography was identified, classified, and notated to build a thesaurus, which was used as the basis of a domain ontology. Ontology building methodology and existing conceptual models for cultural heritage domains guided the ontology development and revision phases. The study also seeks to safeguard an intangible cultural heritage by applying knowledge organization and semantic approaches to folk dance in order to model such challenges as multiple, simultaneous modes of communication and forms of representation, modular conceptual components, descriptive sequences, differing levels of structured information, and complex cultural networks found at various levels of domain discourse. (shrink)

This research presents a computer model called EUREKA that begins with novice‐like strategies and knowledge organizations for solving physics word problems and acquires features of knowledge organizations and basic approaches that characterize experts in this domain. EUREKA learns a highly interrelated network of problem‐type schemas with associated solution methodologies. Initially, superficial features of the problem statement form the basis for both the problem‐type schemas and the discriminating features that organize them in the P‐MOP (Problem Memory Organization Packet) (...) network. As EUREKA solves more problems, the content of the schemas and the discriminating features change to reflect more fundamental physics principles. This changing network allows EUREKA to shift from a novicelike means‐ends strategy to a more expertlike “knowledge development” strategy in which the presence of abstract concepts are triggered by problem features. In this model, the strategy shift emerges as a natural consequence of the evolving expertlike organization of problem‐type schemos. EUREKA captures many of the descriptive models of novice expert differences, and also suggests a number of empirically testable assumptions regarding problem‐solving strategies and the representation of problem‐solving knowledge. (shrink)

Since the spectrum of possibilities in linguistic theory construction is much broader and more variegated than students of linguistics have perhaps been led to believe, the Current Issues in Linguistic Theory series has been established in order to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of linguistic opinions of scholars who do not necessarily accept the prevailing mode of thought in linguistic science. CILT is a theory-oriented series which welcomes contributions from scholars who have significant proposals to make towards (...) the advancement of our understanding of language, its structure, functioning, and development. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory is especially designed, by offering an alternative outlet for meaningful contributions to the current linguistic debate, to furnish the community of linguists the diversity of opinion which a healthy discipline must have. (shrink)

Donald Campbell has long advocated a naturalist epistemology based on a general selection theory, with the scope of knowledge restricted to vicarious adaptive processes. But being a vicariant is problematic because it involves an unexplained epistemic relation. We argue that this relation is to be explicated organizationally in terms of the regulation of behavior and internal state by the vicariant, but that Campbell's selectionist approach can give no satisfactory account of it because it is opaque to organization. We (...) show how organizational constraints and capacities are crucial to understanding both evolution and cognition and conclude with a proposal for an enriched, generalized model of evolutionary epistemology that places high-order regulatory organization at the center. (shrink)

This paper identifies an overlooked but widespread philosophical view in the animal rights movement, Animal Rights Vanguardism. This is the view that (1) the arc of history, by way of ever-increasing moral awareness, bends towards animal liberation,(2) animal rights activists are aware of the moral truth when it comes to human-animal relations thanks to a moral-epistemic privilege, and (3) the primary moral imperative for animal rights activists is to increase the moral awareness of the masses. The paper then makes four (...) points about Animal Rights Vanguardism: First, it can be found across a wide range of animal rights literature. Second, it is the target of many familiar objections against vegans and animal rights activists. Third, it presents an obstacle to the success of the animal rights movement. Fourth, consciously rejecting it leads to a more compelling philosophy of animal rights activism, termed Critical Animal Rights Collectivism, which is based on the principles that social change is contingent, that everyone has broadly equal access to moral truth, and that activists should focus on collective organization more than on individual persuasion. (shrink)

The advent of the knowledge economy changes the ways in which firms organize their activities and how they strategize in the market place. This non-technical volume lays the foundations for an analysis of these phenomena. In particular, it shows how 'knowledge-based approaches' in management studies may be complemented by key ideas from the economics of organization. The discussion is both theoretical and empirical.

With the rise of the knowledge economy, the knowledge content of goods and services is going up just as their material content is declining. Economic value is increasingly seen to reside in intangible assets, rather than material. This book explores the framework of 'I-Space' - a theoretical approach to the production and distribution of knowledge.

The ArgumentSociologists of Third World science, who share the dominant assumption in the philosophy of science that the “culture” of specific substantive fields of scientific inquiry is invariant across the globe, have, after a period of blind optimism devoted to building a critical mass of scientists in the developing countries, relapsed into a bleaker mood and see the Third World as a peripheral region lacking in “creativity” in its research programs.Challenging the doctrine of the universality of scientific practice by means (...) of an in situ study of an Indian physics laboratory, an attempt is made to bring to light a particular community's shared ideals of knowledge which animate the everyday practice of its field of study and fashion its choice of problems, style of professional communication, attitudes toward experiment, etc. These local ingredients should not be understood as deficiencies with respect to some arbitrary norm but as what differentiates research practices in different parts of the world. (shrink)

With the rise of the knowledge economy, the knowledge content of goods and services is going up just as their material content is declining. Economic value is increasingly seen to reside in the former - that is, in intangible assets - rather than in the latter. Yet we keep wanting to turn knowledge back into something tangible, something with definite boundaries which can be measured, manipulated, appropriated, and traded. In short, we want to reify knowledge. Scholars (...) have been debating the nature of knowledge since the time of Plato. Many new insights have been gained from these debates, but little theoretical consensus has been achieved. Through six thematically linked chapters, the book articulates the theoretical approach to the production and distribution of knowledge that underpins Max Boisot's conceptual framework, the Information Space or I-Space. In this way the book looks to provide theoretical and practical underpinnings to Boisot's book Knowledge Assets.Following an introductory chapter, how knowledge relates to data and information is first examined in chapter 1, and how different economic actors - entrepreneurs, managers, etc - use knowledge as a basis for action is explored in chapter 2. Chapter 3 looks at how the heterogeneity of economic actors arises naturally from their respective data processing strategies in spite of any similarities in the data that they might share. Chapter 4 argues, contra much transaction-based economics, that an organizational order must have preceded a market order, something that should be reflected in any knowledge-based theory of the firm. Chapter 5 discusses the cultural and institutional significance of different kinds of knowledge flows. Finally, chapter 6 presents an agent-based simulation model, SimISpace, that illustrates how the I-Space might be applied to concrete problems such those of intellectual property rights. A concluding chapter proposes a research agenda based on the theorizing developed in the book.The approach the book sets out is used by a whole range of organizations to issues of knowledge management, policy, economics, and organizational and cultural change. (shrink)

In the employment relationship, organizational factors are the main factors that affect employee behavior. Especially for knowledge-based workers, it is even more crucial for organizations to give enough attention to their individual needs. Based on Existence, Relatedness, and Growth theory, this study constructs a moderated mediating model to explore how the impact of the employee–organization relationship on work engagement and work well-being of knowledge-based employees. In this study, existence–relatedness–growth need satisfaction is used as a mediator and the (...) perceived symbiotic relationship is used as a moderator. Data collected from 791 knowledge-based employees in higher education institutions from more than 20 provinces and cities in China are used to test the model. The results show that EOR has significant positive effects on WE and WWB. Need satisfaction for relatedness partially mediates the effects of EOR on WE and WWB. Need satisfaction for growth mediates the effect of EOR on WE while the mediating role of need satisfaction for growth between EOR and WWB is unsupported. The mediating role of need satisfaction for the existence of EOR on both WE and WWB is unsupported. The perceived symbiotic relationship moderates the relationship between EOR and WE and WWB. The findings are of theoretical significance in expanding the research field of EOR and providing a basis for organizations to implement EOR strategies. (shrink)

In this article, we discuss how we used institutional ethnography (Institutional ethnography as practice, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD and 2006) to map out powerful ruling relations that organize nurses’ wound care work. In recent years, the growing number of people living with wounds that heal slowly or not at all has presented substantial challenges for those managing the demands on Canada's publicly insured health‐care system. In efforts to address this burden, Canadian health‐care administrators and policy‐makers rely on scientific evidence (...) about how wounds heal and what treatments are most effective. Advanced wound care exemplifies the growing authorization of particular forms of evidence that change the ways in which nurses come to know about and conduct their work. The focus of this paper's nursing inquiry is a critique of registered nurses’ wound work as it arises within the established uptake of scientific evidence. (shrink)

Knowledge hiding is known to have negative consequences on organizational performance. The existing literature mainly focuses on the identification of antecedents and consequences of knowledge hiding. The studies pertaining to the top management role in creating a culture that stops concealing knowledge within an organization are limited. To fill that gap, the paper empirically address the knowledge sharing culture and to explore the management support to avoid knowledge hiding culture in an organization. This (...) study based on an empirical study carried out in a United Kingdom-based laboratory within a high-tech global corporation, in which the atmosphere appeared conducive to knowledge sharing, and knowledge transfer appeared voluntary and spontaneous. The paper seeks to address why members of the case organization is reluctant about knowledge hiding among themselves. The study reveals that the management role is important in creating a culture that help discourage employees to withhold knowledge. The paper identifies the actions that top management takes to stop concealing knowledge within an organization. This study has provided several contributions. The findings of the study may be useful to managers and practitioners. For managers, this paper presents some important organizational factors that can be nurtured to avoid a knowledge-hiding culture in the organization. They can also take the management actions of the case organization as lessons to create a culture that encourage their employees to avoid knowledge hiding behavior. (shrink)

The study aimed to identify the knowledge management processes and their role in achieving competitive advantage at Al-Quds Open University. The study was based on the descriptive analytical method, and the study population consists of academic and administrative staff in each of the branches of Al-Quds Open University in (Tulkarm, Nablus and Jenin). The researchers selected a sample of the study population by the intentional non-probability method, the size of (70) employees. A questionnaire was prepared and supervised by a (...) number of specialists in order to obtain the results of the study. The study concluded that there is a positive direct relationship, that is, the higher the degree of application of knowledge management processes, the greater the degree of competitive advantage. Knowledge Technology came first with a score of 80.02% on all items. Competitive advantage came second with 81.74%. In the third place came "knowledge generation" where the total score on all paragraphs in this area (78.24%). In the fourth place, "knowledge transfer" (77.21%). "Developing and storing knowledge" came in fifth place (77.13%). "Acquisition of knowledge" came in sixth place (76.45%). Knowledge Organization ranked seventh (74.26%). The study recommended that the university should enable the employees to benefit from the experiences and expertise available to help generate knowledge. The University encourages the creation of knowledge through the system of incentives and open the way for creators to apply their creations and spread and invest in excellence and creativity. The university should design work performance levels based on the integration of knowledge and organize it according to policies that support freedom of research. The need for Palestinian universities to adopt a knowledge management approach. The need to adopt a system of incentives that rewards cognitive efforts, and give workers enough freedom to enable them to apply their knowledge. (shrink)

For music students, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a great impact, forcing them to adapt to certain coronavirus regulations laid down by the state. In this study, the experiences of music students in three consecutive semesters under different coronavirus-related conditions are investigated. At the end of three semesters, the lockdown semester [SS 2020: April – July], a partially opened semester [WS 2020/21: October – February] and a mostly opened semester, a total of 152 music students at the University of Music (...) Freiburg were asked to fill in an online survey. A mixed-methods approach was used, with results showing that the qualitative statements of the students support the quantitative data. The results of the cross-sectional study demonstrate that self-regulated learning improved during the lockdown semester, through new time management and focused practice with regular breaks. During the partially opened semester, the use of blended learning formats led to organizational problems, such as travel time and change of locations. Furthermore, music students were challenged by the social distancing, which improved during the partially opened, and mostly opened semester. New technologies regarding digital communication formats were emerged, which have evolved over the course of the three semesters. Concerning the overall experience, students stated that the partially-opened semester was most challenging, since distances and change of locations had to be combined with quickly changing public COVID-19-regulations. These findings during different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic provide constructive starting points for future teaching. (shrink)