Recently read:
I read this primarily for my classification seminar, but also for some insights into interdisciplinary classification issues, hopefully.
This SIG/CR Workshop was held at the 65th ASIST Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, PA on 17 November, 2002.
The aim of the workshop was to identify and articulate research questions and research agendas that could form the core of classification research in the next decade. Instead of presenting and discussing current work, the idea was to step back and take a more reflective view of the state of classification research. The underlying assumption was that this is an exciting time for classification research, but that the classification research community needs to revisit the current state of knowledge in order to identify potential productive directions for future research and future collaborations with other areas of scholarship. In short, we need to ask ourselves: where are we now and what needs to be done? (Preface, iii)
Pauline Atherton Cochrane gave the opening address, while Marcia Bates was pressed into service to give practically “on-the-fly” concluding remarks. Three panels took place with discussion after each one. The list of contents:
Opening address:
- Pauline Atherton Cochrane, “Promising Past and Future Research Agendas on Classification.”
Panel one:
- Kathryn La Barre, “Look back to look forward: The Classification Research Study Group and SIG/CR.”
- D. Grant Campbell, “Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces in Bibliographic Classification Research.”
- Joseph T. Tennis, “Three Spheres of Classification Research: Emergence, Encyclopedism, and Ecology.”
- Jonathan Furner: “Report on the First Panel of Presentations and Associated Discussion.”
Panel two:
- Paul Solomon: “Bringing People, Technology, and Systems Together Through Classification Research: Designing for Change, Learning, and Maintenance.”
- Jonathan Furner, “Bibliographic Relationships, Citation Relationships, Relevance Relationships, and Bibliographic Classification: An Integrative View.”
- James D. Anderson, “Effective Display of Browsable Classification on the WWW and other Hypertext Media.”
- Edie Rasmussen, “Report on the Second Panel of Presentations and Associated Discussion.”
Panel three:
- Linda Hill, et. al., “Integration of Knowledge Organization Systems into Digital Library Architectures.”
- Wendi Pohs, et. al., “Creating and Maintaining Machine-Generated Taxonomies in Human Organizations: Contributions from Research and Practice.”
- Michael L. McGlashen and Anne Rogers, ” Classification in the Physical Sciences.”
- Paul Solomon, “Grounding Classification Research in Real World Problems: Report on the Third Panel of Presentations and Associated Discsussion.”
Conclusion:
- Marcia Bates. “Concluding Remarks.”
In her opening remarks, Pauline:
Called for a new research agenda, recommending a focus on (1) “the relationship between “general” encyclopedic classification schemes and “specialized” schemes,” and (2) “the exploration and implementation of compatibility among classification systems and thesauri, including standardized vocabularies” (2).
Looked to the Elsinore conference in 1964 for inspiration on what SIG-CR could/should be.
- “SIG-CR needs to become an exciting group again,…” (4).
- Develop a reading list and defintions (4).
- Move out of the Sunday conference mode and address a wider audience (4-5).
- Address a much wider, external audience (5).
- Sponsor and encourage joint research and exchange ideas (5).
Kathryn‘s paper is a look at the Classificatory Research Study Group (CRSG), which was the North American counterpart of the Classification Research Group in Britain and Ranganathan’s Library Research Circle.
She repeats the call for
[a] defintions project, the creation of a glossary, and the compilation of an online bibliography with links to current work in the field…. Additionally, tutorials and membership lists which include areas of specialization are vital and necessary components for our web presence. It is not necessary to create a loan collection, but we should seriously consider a digitization project to preserve and disseminate central publications that are out of print in order to enhance access to foundational work (9).
…. The research conducted by the current members of SIG/CR is no less central today than the work of the members of the CRSG. The time has come to look forward and forge ahead to seek the next generation of answers to persistent challenges by ensuring that we provide an enticing, dynamic and discursive proving ground as well as the premier venue for openly and critically discussing new ideas and theories even as we continue to provide necessary context for old ideas masquerading as new (9).
Amen to that ma’am! And yes, although I have referred to both of these wonderful educators (and humans) by their first names—I do and have had classes with both of them, and one is my advisor after all—I generally address them as “Ma’am.”
Unfortunately, these calls for action have not been heeded.
Campbell addresses the centripetal forces defining the field, and the centrifugal forces disseminating the field. He specifically shows that the field needs to investigate and assert its role in the areas of:
- Information architecture
- Object-oriented computer programming
- Relational database design
- Markup languages
- Hypertext and linking technologies
- Metadata and the Semantic Web
Tennis sees the metaphors and “spheres of emergence, encyclopedism, and ecology as themes for collaboration among classification researchers” (27).
Many useful and enlightening comments from the discussion session were reported by Furner.
I found several things of interest in Solomon‘s paper (including useful references), which explores the themes of change, learning and maintenance “after reflecting on the need for grounding knowledge organization and classification research in an understanding of people’s information intensive tasks, problems, and situations” (35).
- “a variety of value-added processes, including analytical, judgmental, and decision support, that go beyond retrieval of relevant items…” (35).
- “people’s interactions with the conceptual structures of thesauri and their descriptors may result in their learning something about the terminology in a field that leads to new insights or ideas with regard to their task or problem” (37).
- “Using registries of metadata schemes, ontologies, taxonomies, etc. that may not be completely up-to-date as “a vehicle for helping people move from an older term or conceptualization to those currently in the system (or the reverse)” (37).
The 1st point is most interesting as a “marketing” tool and, although I generally am not fan of “marketing,” this is a vital action in today’s environment of administrators and others calling for the wholesale dismembering of classificatory structures in a quest for “efficiency,” fiscal or otherwise. The 2nd and 3rd are more interesting and directly applicable to my goal of investigating how classificatory structures can be employed to better assist interdisciplinary researchers.
Furner looks at “bibliographic relationships,” argues for a wider view of BRs, and proposes a further research agenda. There is quite a bit to think about in this short article. I am unsure how much I accept some of it, but that may only reflect my experience of “seeking information” and a lack of imagination on my part. I need to give this one much more thought.
Having read several versions, including much longer ones, of Anderson‘s idea in this paper means there wasn’t as much for me to get out of it. I have also tried to implement Anderson’s ideas on faceting LCSH twice now (on a small-scale). I did it for “technology” in thesaurus construction this summmer, and just recently for “philosophy of science,” or more accurately, “Science–Philosophy,” in my classification seminar.
While his method has much to recommend it, it is difficult to apply, at least for one new to it. With some concepts, it may be quite simple, but with something like “Science–Philosophy” it becomes very unwieldy quickly. There is much that can and needs to be done in this regard with online displays, though.
He does suggest a research proposal to see whether users prefer hierarchical or faceted displays. Is hierarchical “closer to the way humans naturally organize information—not by facets but in clusters of relationships that cut across facets” (57)?
This sort of research is fundamental to moving forward with faceted classification effectively. My initial impression is that the choice between the two forms is a continuum or, actually, many continua along multiple axes. Some will be individual, some cultural, some contextual, and so on. It will differ based on the task at hand, the amount of knowledge one has of the subject already, what one has used in the past (ingrained preference), how good the implementation of a particular scheme is, ….
Rasmussen succinctly summarized the three papers in this panel and reported on several interesting conversations on/about/around them.
Hill, et. al. discuss integrating a variety of knowledge organization systems in digital libraries and the research and development issues that arise for doing so.
Pohs, et. al. discuss a hybrid theory and practice method of developing taxonomies in organizations.
McGlashen and Rogers short paper discusses classification in the physical sciences, through the lens of merging the knowledge structures of Dow Chemical and Union Carbide due to a merger. Some of the problems/differences with documents in the physical sciences include nomenclature, long documents with multiple sections, and intended audience.
They address the advantage of using classificaton methods that can reference and associate external information. They also call for a TREC-like repository of physical sicence documents for “adequately model[ing] the content and format complexity of typical science and technology environments” (77).
Solomon handled the summary and discussion for this panel.
Marcia Bates gave the concluding remarks. She also called for a “repositioning” of SIG/CR via a website, active evalution of various classificatory software, document repository, glossary, links to vocabularies and thesauri, etc.
On Furner’s paper and indexing:
It’s as if for documents we have these multiple layers that are simultaneously present, though we often look at them one at a time. So thinking of a document as a node embedded in a matrix of relationships represents another powerful way of thinking about indexing (85).
On the context of indexing vs. searching:
The phenomenological state, the actual experience of the person using the information system, however, is quite different. They don’t know what they are looking for, or they know only vaguely. They don’t have your indexing vocabulary in mind, they have never thought about indexing a document before. So, there’s a context around the very act of indexing, which is different from the context around the act of searching for information, and I would argue that we need to always keep that in mind” (86).
On system design:
I think one of the things we need to think about, and this fits with what Jim Anderson was saying as well, is the way that the indexing system is embedded within the information system – how it meshes with the data structure, the search engine, the user search capabilities, and the interface design. The design of the vocabulary has to work effectively with the design of the system (86).
All in all, this was a valuable read. I will have to see how far I get with Vol. 3, 4 and 12 of this title, which are lying on my floor. Of course, there are even more at the library….
