History of science: the problem of cataloging, knowledge indexing and information retrieval in the digital space

Text-based and multimedia documents in and for history of science are displayed in libraries and ought to be organized to make knowledge and information on history of science accessible. The traditional approach to the organization of and access to knowledge and information was expressed by classification schemes primarily influenced by philosophical traditions, and then mostly based on the literary warrant principle. Within this context, the scholarly and scientific literature was seen as representing facts about knowledge and structures of knowledge. Cataloging and classification were essential to provide users access to information. Cataloging elements consist of bibliographic description, subject analysis and classification. Currently, within the digital environment, not only text-based documents, but documents of all sorts must be included, classified and organized in order to be browsed. In this paper I call the attention to some of the improvements and challenges that currently affect the relationship between catalogs, knowledge organization, classification and information retrieval. As an example I mention the catalog-interface that is being developed for the digital library of CESIMA-Brazil.