[Written for LIS590RO Representing and Organizing Information Resources Spring 2006. Some formatting is altered in this manifestation.]
Bean, Carol A. and Rebecca Green, eds. (2001). Relationships in the Organization of Knowledge. Information Science and Knowledge Management, Vol. 2. Dordrecht : Kluwer Academic Press.
Abstract
This edited monograph is comprised of a collection of papers on the theory and practice of relationships in the organization of recorded knowledge, with a particular focus on thesauri. It is divided into two fairly coherent parts; the first on the theoretical background and the second on currently implemented systems, i.e., bibliographic classification systems and thesauri.
Analysis/critique
This wonderful book is the first of two volumes whose genesis was the participation of the editors in an ACM/SIGIR workshop, “Beyond Word Relations” in 1997. This volume “examines the role of relationships in knowledge organization theory and practice, with emphasis given to thesaural relationships and integration across systems, languages, cultures, and disciplines” (Green, Bean & Myaeng, 2002). It particularly focuses on relationships in the organization of recorded knowledge and is divided into two parts: (1) Theoretical background and (2) Systems.
The first part is the coherently strongest. Green provides an excellent overview chapter, which by itself ought to be required reading in most any course dealing with the organization and representation of recorded knowledge, particularly at the lower levels of an LIS education. Tillett distills an immense knowledge of bibliographic relationships into a short article. Dextre Clarke discusses thesaural relationships, while Milstead writes about standards for thesauri, and Hudon explicates issues and solutions in multilingual thesauri. Bodenreider and Bean’s chapter on vocabulary integration within a subject domain (medicine) may focus on the UMLS, but it is still at a fairly theoretical level and has much wider applicability. Beghtol discusses cultural warrant in bibliographic classifications, and Bean and Green close the first part with a theoretical discussion of relevance relationships.
The second part, which discusses relationships within working systems, is interesting and useful in its own right. The individual articles serve a purpose in describing the roles, strengths and limitations of various relationships within each individual system, while together they provide a good overview of the state of relationships in the major bibliographic systems currently in use. LCSH is covered by El-Hoshy, AAT by Molholt, and MeSH by Nelson, et. al. Neelameghan introduces the thirty lateral relationships (non-hierarchical associative) in the OM Information Service, which “is a multicultural, multilingual information service in the spiritual and religious domains” and “intended to be used globally by peoples of different cultures and faith” (186, 185). Satija describes relationships in the Colon Classification, and Mitchell ends the second part on the Dewey Decimal Classification system.
Overall tone is somewhat variable seeing it is a collection of pieces by vastly different authors, but not enough variation to be distracting. It is also clear that there was a fairly tight editing process as many chapters cite some of the others. The two-part organization works well. It is, of course, not entirely possible to separate theory from practice in a discipline such as library and information science but the two halves work well individually and also together. Thus, the structure of the book works well with the content contained within it.
There is a large amount of that one can learn from this book, and far too many interesting theories or features of operational systems to single any out. Perhaps one way, for me anyway, to single out the more interesting—by one measure—pieces is by how many citations they lead me to chase. On that measure, the introductory chapter by Green and Beghtol’s chapter were the most productive.
I have had little cause to use the index but it appears to be more than adequate. Looking at any of the relationships types, whether the standard triad of hierarchical relationships, or another type shows good coverage broken down by context, to include each type within a specific classification system or thesaurus. Although, I notice that neither paradigmatic or syntagmatic relationships are indexed. While neither figures prominently throughout the text they are explicit concepts that I feel should be indexed. Thus, I will say that it contains a good index, but not an excellent one.
One caveat with this book is which imprint one has. The first copy I had in my possession came via interlibrary loan and was printed to a high quality on quality paper stock. When the copy that I purchased arrived it was different in significant ways. The cover is vastly different in design and even lacks Rebecca Green’s name. The paper is of a lesser quality, and the printing is variable, primarily in size. It is definitely of lesser overall quality.
All in all, this is an excellent book. While, in its entirety, it may not serve well as a text for a specific class, almost every article contained in it would serve a well-defined purpose in a specific context in courses or sections of courses on cataloging, indexing, knowledge organization and representation, ontologies, and even introductory courses.
I feel very comfortable stating that this volume serves as the singularly best introduction to relationships in the service of the organization of recorded knowledge. All of the articles provide a good or better introduction to their specific topics and the bibliographies taken as a whole provide an incredibly broad and deep resource into the literature of relationships in these contexts.
Highly recommended.
Biographical information on the Editors
Dr. Carol A Bean: It is quite difficult to find much information on Dr. Bean, especially current information. All that I have been able to glean comes from the title pages of the two volumes in this series (Bean & Green, 2001; Green, Bean & Myaeng, 2002) and from the authors’ information on a 2004 JASIST article.
Dr. Bean was at the School of Information Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN in 2001, the Extramural Programs, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD in 2002, and the Division of Biomedical Technology and Research Resources, National Center for Research Resources, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD in 2004.
Dr. Rebecca Green: Recently joined OCLC as the assistant editor, Dewey Decimal Classification, based out of the Dewey Editorial Office at the Library of Congress. Prior to this she was an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland College of Information Studies.
She holds a Ph.D., Computer science (University of Maryland), a Ph.D., Library & Information Studies (University of Maryland), an M.A., Linguistics (University of California), an M.L.S., Library & Information Studies (University of Maryland), and a B.A., Music (Harvard University).
Her research interests include: Information storage and retrieval, classification theory, database design, cognitive linguistics, computational linguistics, interlingual knowledge representation, paraphrase relationships, semantics of relationships, and subject representation.
She had edited and contributed to two texts on semantic relationships:
Bean, Carol A. and Rebecca Green, eds. (2001). Relationships in the Organization of Knowledge. Information Science and Knowledge Management, Vol. 2. Dordrecht : Kluwer Academic Press.
Green, Rebecca, Carol A Bean, and Sung Hyon Myaeng, eds. (2002). The Semantics of Relationships: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Information Science and Knowledge Management, Vol. 3. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Sources
Green, Rebecca, Carol A Bean, and Sung Hyon Myaeng, eds. The Semantics of Relationships: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Information Science and Knowledge Management, Vol. 3. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002.
Joan. “New Face at Dewey Manor.” 025.431: The Dewey blog 27 January 2007. http://ddc.typepad.com/025431/2007/01/new_face_at_dew.html Accessed 17 March 2007.
University of Maryland, College of Information Studies. Faculty & Staff page. http://www.clis.umd.edu/faculty/green/ Accessed 17 March 2007. No longer available.
University of Maryland. News Desk. UM Experts: Engineering and Technology: Computer Science and Engineering. http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/experts/experts.cfm?type=cat&category_id=40&expert_id_all=104162420 Accessed 17 March 2007.