Our Board of Trustees has hosed me up. Again! This time by finally doing the right thing.

Pauline Atherton Cochrane has finally been given permission to teach the Seminar in Classification Systems for this Fall. I believe the teaching by emeriti faculty may itself have been solved by the Board; well after they created the problem in the first place.

Let me make it very explicit that I have no gripe with my department/school. GSLIS (particularly AD Linda Smith) has been very diligent in trying to work this out for all concerned. So kudos to them and especially Dean Smith!

We just found out a few days ago that this course will, in fact, be offered. My problem is that the time conflicts with Allen Renear’s Information Modeling course. I’m excited about all 3 classes I’m currently enrolled in for Fall, but give me a break here. Either of the other two could easily slip for Classification Systems, but Info Modeling isn’t so simple.

Course Descriptions from the full catalog:

590CS Seminar in Classification Systems for the Organization of Knowledge

Efficient and effective libraries and information services need structures for the organization of collections of knowledge and information items. Classification schemes, thesauri, and indexing systems attempt to provide such structures. The similarities and differences of various schemes, and their strengths and weaknesses for physical arrangement, knowledge organization, and computer-based information systems will be the prime foci of this seminar. Traditional and innovative schemes and systems will be examined and compared using normative principles, cognitive approaches to categorization, and disciplinary approaches as evaluative criteria.

Pauline’s personal description:

This time we will tackle the role of classification systems in libraries, on websites, in databases, etc. The final direction of the course itself will be set after discussion during the first class sessions. Possibilities include: looking toward the past or the present or the future — toward being classificationists or classifiers, toward taxonomists or knowledge managers. At the heart of this work is something like a thesaurus turned ninety degress to the right, or so.

590IM Information Modeling

An introduction to the principles of information modeling commonly used to support digital library applications such as collections management and electronic publishing. The course takes a logic-based approach to analyzing and comparing different modeling methods. Specific modeling practices covered include relational database design, entity relationship modeling (ER/EER), document grammars (XML), and semantic web languages (RDF/S and OWL).

I know that description of 590IM scares the bejeesus out of some of my fellow students and current librarians, but c’mon folks … there is no FRBR without a little ERM going on. Then again, the description of 590CS scares some people silly, too.

Well, in my case, they both are critical to my plans, goals, desires, even my dreams. Even my advisor believes so. She tried to she what she could, but it’s now on me to decide. Allen’s out of the country, though. I’d really like to talk to him about this.

Allen does teach 590IM every Fall. That’s a plus. 590CS is one of the courses that Pauline wants to hand off to Kathryn pretty soon, as she only wants to teach for a couple more years at best. Can’t say I blame her for that! As long as it was offered again by Pauline and/or Kathryn, that’d be good too.

I know some might say, “Damn, Mark. What are you crying about? Take Classification Systems now and Info Modeling next year.” Yes, that is the easy answer; no doubt about that.

But. I have to do a major capstone project for my CAS degree. Even if I am going to take 2 years to do this, that means I need to get a good grasp on what I might want to do. And I happen to think that putting off one of the 2 most critical courses to the penultimate semester is a seriously bad idea.

I know that a week ago there was little hope of even getting Classification Systems. So I am happy and grateful. I truly am.  I am also so mad at the Board of Trustees that I could spit!

Bah! I didn’t need this kind of pressure on top of moving, still worrying about what I’ll be doing to make up the work hours I dropped, how I’ll nake up the pay considering I’m moving to an apartment that’ll cost me $120 more a month, and whatever else I have stressing me that I am now too stressed to remember.