Patrick Lamb is a good friend and a consistent provider of excellent links and comments both on this own blog, and on various listservs. He is also someone you can have an argument with without personality clashes creeping into the learning process.

One area on which we have traditionally clashed is the usefulness of taxonomies. I have been known to suggest that in many an IT implementation the static nature of taxonomy based classifications is closer to taxidermy than it is to knowledge management. From a complexity perspective I have been more interested in coalescence than in categorisation and in emergent meaning than in formal abstractions. However I have a lot of respect for Patrick so when he sent me his new book I settled down on a plane and read it from cover to cover. I then re-read it a week later which is a rare complement and I have no hesitation in recommending the book. I quote from the introduction:

Taxonomies are at the same time deceptively simple and fiendishly complicated. They are simple because they are absolutely basic to human consciousness, so everyone manipulates and creates them with great ease........ (They) are complicated becuase we use them for the most part unreflectingly .... often in competing and inconsistent ways.

One of the things that Patrick does well is to place taxonomy within the wider context of library sciences, and does so in an eminently readable way. Chapter two in particular moves us beyond the tree structures which are all to common. There is a wonderful table (2.2) called the Practical Implications of Taxonomy Forms. This covers everything from a simple list to the complications of facets. He then uses the Cynefin framework as an organising strucuture for different forms. He handles issues of culture in a sensitive way, along with issues of boundaries which are rarely handled.

As a writer Patrick has that rare ability to combine deep academic insight with practical language. His book provides practical advise, but also intellectual stimulation; expect some more blogs on this subject over the next month as a result. Patrick's book has joined a small select set that sit on the top of my bureau desk and the book already has many underscorings and green ink comments in the margins (well we all have rituals)

Having said all of that you should be aware that Patrick has his odd quirks and is subject to the odd paranoia. An innocent aside in one of my recent posts suggested that we needed more un-conferencing and as an aside I suggested that some supported such approaches because they had failed to make it on the conventional conference circuit. Patrick picked up on this and ignored the more positive statements. I know Patrick too well to suggest that this emphasis represents some form of Freudian slip ....