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The purpose of this editorial is to introduce the selected Proceedings of the 1st National Conference of ISKO UK, the UK Chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization. It aims to provide some background for the group, and place it within the context of the recent history of information organization and retrieval in subject domains.

The paper introduces a selection of papers delivered at the 1st National Conference of the UK Chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization.

The field of knowledge organization is lively and progressive, and researchers and practitioners in many sectors are actively engaged with it, despite its apparent decline in LIS education. New communities of interest may use different terms to describe this work, but there is much common ground, and a growing convergence of ideas and methods.

The value of existing theory is now more widely recognised, and the importance of structured knowledge organization systems and vocabularies in retrieval is generally acknowledged. It is to be hoped that these important areas of information practice and research will soon be restored to their former place in professional education.

The second edition of the Bibliographic Classification of H. E. Bliss (BC2), being prepared under the editorship of Jack Mills, Vanda Broughton and others, is a rich source of structure and terminology for thesauri covering different subject fields. The new edition employs facet analysis and is thesaurus‐compatible. A number of facet‐based thesauri have drawn upon Bliss for terms and relationships. In two of these thesauri the Bliss Classification was the source of both systematic and alphabetical displays. The DHSS‐DATA thesaurus, published by the United Kingdom Department of Health and Social Security, provides controlled terms and Bliss class numbers for indexing and searching the DHSS‐DATA database. The ECOT thesaurus (Educational courses and occupations thesaurus) prepared for the Department of Education and Science, uses the software designed for the British Standards Institution ROOT thesaurus to generate an alphabetical display from the systematic display derived from the Bliss schedules. Problems, benefits, and future prospects of Bliss‐based thesaurus construction are discussed.

This paper aims to provide an overview of principles and procedures involved in creating a faceted classification scheme for use in resource discovery in an online environment.

Facet analysis provides an established rigorous methodology for the conceptual organization of a subject field, and the structuring of an associated classification or controlled vocabulary. This paper explains how that methodology was applied to the humanities in the FATKS project, where the objective was to explore the potential of facet analytical theory for creating a controlled vocabulary for the humanities, and to establish the requirements of a faceted classification appropriate to an online environment. A detailed faceted vocabulary was developed for two areas of the humanities within a broader facet framework for the whole of knowledge. Research issues included how to create a data model which made the faceted structure explicit and machine‐readable and provided for its further development and use.

In order to support easy facet combination in indexing, and facet searching and browsing on the interface, faceted classification requires a formalized data structure and an appropriate tool for its management. The conceptual framework of a faceted system proper can be applied satisfactorily to humanities, and fully integrated within a vocabulary management system.

The procedures described in this paper are concerned only with the structuring of the classification, and do not extend to indexing, retrieval and application issues.

Many stakeholders in the domain of resource discovery consider developing their own classification system and supporting tools. The methods described in this paper may clarify the process of building a faceted classification and may provide some useful ideas with respect to the vocabulary maintenance tool.

As far as the authors are aware there is no comparable research in this area.