Indigenous Knowledge Organization is the subject of a special edition of Cataloging & Classification Quarterly Journal, July-September 2015, co-edited by Cheryl Metoyer, associate professor emerita of the iSchool. The edition includes articles authored by Metoyer, iSchool Ph.D. candidate Sandra Littletree, Marisa Duarte, Ph.D. ’13 and Miranda Belarde-Lewis, Ph.D. ’13. 

In the introduction, Metoyer and co-editor Ann M. Doyle, write that the articles share “the inherent beauty in how and why Indigenous people express and fulfill their desire to learn, preserve, organize, and share knowledge. This knowledge is embedded in stories that find expression and location in libraries, archives, and museums.”

Metoyer and Littletree contributed “Knowledge Organization from an Indigenous Perspective: The Mashantucket Pequot Thesaurus of American Indian Terminology Project,” which examines the conceptual foundations, theoretical framework, and application of the Thesaurus to a museum setting.

“Imagining: Creating Spaces for Indigenous Ontologies, written by Duarte and Belarde-Lewis, explores how imagining provides a way for knowledge organization practitioners and theorists to incorporate Indigenous community-based approaches to the development of alternative information structures.

The special issue was envisioned by Sandra K. Roe, Editor-in-Chief of Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, who extended the invitation at the 2nd Milwaukee Conference on the Ethics of Information Organization. The iSchool has designated Native North American Indigenous Knowledge as a strategic area of visibility in the iSchool 2018 strategic plan.