interest of interdisciplinarity will thus, by better capturing the unique
contribution of a work, be useful for specialized disciplinary scholars as
well. Other elements of uniqueness will be captured by classifying works in
terms also of theories, methods and perhaps authorial perspectives applied;
these various elements were stressed in the León Manifesto of 2007 [11]
One further advantage of the synthetic approach is that it reduces/eliminates
the temptation to abuse hierarchy. Recycling is treated as a subclass of
garbage because there is no other obvious place to put it [12]. But recycling
is something we do to garbage, not a kind of garbage. A synthetic approach
allows recycling to be treated as a relationship. While the human user may
(or may not) be unfazed by a classification treating recycling as a subclass
of garbage, a computer attempting to navigate a classification will certainly
be challenged.We can aspire to a classification in which subclasses are
strictly logical, and different types of subclass (“type of,” “part of”) are
strictly delineated.With respect to relationships, a combinatory approach
may prove superior to hierarchy: thousands of verb-like relationship terms
can be generated by combining some 100 basic verb terms (which can
themselves be grouped into a handful of logical classes) with each other or
with phenomena or properties [13]