The Discipline of Organizing

“The Discipline of Organizing” is a transdisciplinary textbook that explores how resources—whether physical, digital, or conceptual—are systematically organized to support meaningful interactions. It introduces the concept of an “organizing system” as an intentionally arranged collection of resources and the interactions they enable. The exploration of organizing systems demonstrates the shared principles and design challenges faced by libraries, information systems, digital platforms, and human organizations. Drawing from fields such as library and information science, computer science, business, cognitive science, and design, the book provides a framework grounded in design thinking and architectural abstraction for analyzing and designing how things are organized. Framing the description and analysis of organizing systems is a set of eight design dimensions, which guide how organizing systems can be compared, evaluated, and created. The core of the book describes the principal organizing activities and how they are applied in different organizing systems: resource identification and naming, resource description, linking and referencing, categorization, and classification. This book is organized into three sections: foundations, resource organization, and interactions & interoperability. As a foundation, the first four chapters establish the fundamental concepts of organizing systems. The chapters on resource organization activities focus on the activities required to organize resources effectively. The final chapters address how organizing systems facilitate interactions and interoperability.