The Importance of ISKO Conferences: An Editor's Note.

This article establishes the importance of International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) conferences. The articles Trends in Knowledge Organization Research by I. C. McIlwaine, and Fundamentals of Knowledge Organization by Birger Hjørland are testimony to the importance of conference in the field of knowledge organization. The original versions were presented at the conference of the Spanish chapter of ISKO held in Salamanca, Spain in May 2003. These articles are comprehensive analyses of where and what is the field of knowledge organization. of course, much of what appears in ISKO conference proceedings merit wider consideration. McIlwaine's bibliography particularly bears this out. Further, the conferences themselves are the stuff of which scholarly cloth is woven. The papers, discussions, and casual encounters are full of brilliant thread, woven into the tapestry that is knowledge organization. ISKO is the primary international venue for this field. It holds an international conference every two years. The next conference, the 8th International ISKO Conference, will be held in London, England on July 13-16, 2004, with the theme: Knowledge Organization and the Global Information Society.