信息组织(organization of information)一词的意义，便是组织任何信息记录(recorded information)或信息对象(information objects)，为其创建替代性的纪录，如文本或符号，以帮助用户能够查找、检索、辨识、取得数据。泰勒(Taylor,1999)认为「信息组织」是指人类所有信息纪录的组织。各种的信息纪录有的是属于文本，也有的并非文本，例如各种的书籍、影像数据、声音数据、图像数据或是各样的网络资源及不同的信息对象。好的信息组织能够提供用户及时、精确并且具相关性的书目信息。而处里信息组织的机构除了图书馆之外，还包括博物馆、美术馆、文件馆及互联网社区等等。

The term knowledge organization (KO) (or "organization of knowledge", "organization of information" or "information organization") designates a field of study related to Library and Information Science (LIS). In this meaning, KO is about activities such as document description, indexing and classification performed in libraries, databases, archives etc. These activities are done by librarians, archivists, subject specialists as well as by computer algorithms. KO as a field of study is concerned with the nature and quality of such knowledge organizing processes (KOP) (such as taxonomy and ontology) as well as the knowledge organizing systems (KOS) used to organize documents, document representations and concepts.