Phylomemetic Cataloguing: An Optimistic Proposal for a Radical Bibliographic Catalogue

According to philosopher and cognitive scientist Dan Dennett, “there is no such thing as philosophy-free science, only science that did not interrogate its philosophical assumptions” (Ouellette, 2024). Like any other field, Library and Information Science (LIS) has its own philosophical assumptions, which exert a shaping influence on Knowledge Organization and library cataloguing. Contemporary cataloguing developed out of a concern for guiding reliable practice. This pragmatic orientation has led contemporary cataloguing to adopt an essentialist philosophical foundation, which can be detected in standards like The Library Reference Model (LRM). The ‘Work’ is the core entity of LRM and represents an independent genesis of intellectual or creative effort that is uniquely identifiable and stands apart from all other texts. Having been codified, cataloguing practice now stands downstream of this essentialist conception of the ‘Work.’ A field’s philosophical foundations, or ontology, defines the entities, attributes, and relationships that are of concern. Contemporary cataloguing is primarily concerned with elements like books, subject headings, and author, with essentialist ‘Works’ as the core entity of concern. Phylomemetic Cataloguing Ontology is a non-essentialist conceptualization of texts. The development of the ontology of Biology from the essentialist paradigm of Linnaeus to the modern Phylogenetic Synthesis serves as an analogy for this change, and the Conceptual Engineering philosophical method provides the tools to enact it. In Phylomemetic Cataloguing texts are understood as being analogous to biological species, being composed of discrete components, textual memes, and sitting in a network of relationships with other texts, textual clades. An ontology is then joined to a set of guiding principles, such as the primacy of shelf order, to create a cataloguing theory. Phylomemetic Cataloguing Theory challenges the traditional principles of cataloguing, such as shelf order, and replaces them with new guidelines, most notably the principle of consilience. Theory in turn is joined to a set of goals, such as the LRM User Tasks, to establish a cataloguing paradigm. Phylomemetic Cataloguing Paradigm introduces novel User Tasks in the form of Ethical Use, Visualization, Participation, and Infrastructure. Finally, Phylomemetic Cataloguing Practice is illustrated in the form of a small functional prototype Phylomemetic Cataloguing Environment.