Monthly Archives: May 2007

LC Working Group – Structures and Standards, part 2 – David Bade

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Update 16 May: Welcome American Libraries Direct readers. David Bade has made clear that I misunderstood his words and I fully agree that this is the case. I ask that you please do not propagate my misunderstanding as his intended meaning. Read his comments here and see further comments in AUTOCAT over the last few days. And by the way, there are 8 parts to this series on the Working Group meeting: A teaser, 6 numbered parts, and a 2nd stab at the Bade paper/presentation. I want to make it very clear that I greatly appreciate and agree 99% with what David Bade said/wrote for his presentation! My comments here are minor quibbles.

David Bade, Monographic Cataloger, University of Chicago, Regenstein Library

“Structures, standards, and the people who make them meaningful” – paper

[Initial commentary by Kathryn La Barre. I had read a previous draft on the way up, and copies were handed out at the meeting so I mostly read along, but will interject some commentary.]

He started out by stating that his commentary was made in the “spirit of unrestrained criticism.” I missed recording the reference [Mark].

<comment> – brief summary – I hope he puts this online</comment>

Library work is communication based, the use in the discussions so far is couched in an inappropriate, misleading transportation metaphor, and bibliographic control is instead based on a process of communication. The principle of co-operation and an understanding of common principles should inform communicative activity. The dichotomy of consumer, manager as the chief users of bibliographic control structures should be widened to include the creators of this data. The addition of the creator into this equation underlines the necessity of human evaluation and correction. We must determine the purpose of any created metadata and be certain that if we decide to reuse this metadata for another application — that it is not contrary to the new application.

These are answers to some of his questions:

  1. The best way to handle this imperative is that the level of metadata creation should be that of the most demanding users.
  2. The importance of trust and common social practices and standards must be balanced with the existence of error. In cases of error, management must pay attention to errors in order to improve systems.
  3. Currently in bibliographic control the pressures of production mean that errors in bibliographic records are rampant and are allowed to remain. Errors in metadata supplied from other sources, particularly that which is automatically generated must be carefully evaluated by humans and not blindly drawn into the bibliographic universe. It is the obligation of library managers to provide appropriate levels of metadata generation for their own users.
  4. One direction to take might be co-opting users to generate this information with appropriate refereeing. There is worry about the long tail – for if there is no metadata or inadequate metadata, there will be no use of the material.
  5. Automatically generated metadata is not higher quality metadata. Good metadata, especially high levels of subject analysis is not without cost. Today there is much copy cataloging, many shared bibliographic databases, and there are fewer catalogers. The kinds of formats, and the complexity of tasks has increased. Many errors are due to unfamiliarity with these formats, tasks and many catalogers lack knowledge sufficient to provide access to materials from a given subject.

[Me, from here on out.] While there may possibly be a kind of “romantic truth” to Diane Hillmann’s depiction of David Bade in her reporting of the day, I can sympathize and empathize a lot with his position. In fact, I’d love to sit with the guy for a few hours over a couple pints of Guinness and pick his brain. He seems a most interesting person, and if he’s “from a different planet” then it is one I want to be on.

I think he has many valuable points and perhaps he misjudged his task as Diane Hillmann suggests in the comments on her first post, but that seems to imply that that was his only opportunity to provide input to the Working Group. They have a copy of his paper and I would hope they would read it, repeatedly if need be, as I hope they will read and consider all written input.

As for her comment [same comment] about the issue of his paper [nor any of the other presentations] being available, yes, that is a problem! But it is a larger problem than David’s. He can release his paper, but are all of the presentations, from all meetings, collected in one central location? I am glad to see that Diane Hillmann has archived hers, but the Library of Congress should be doing this for all of them in a centralized manner!

At this point I will add some comments on David’s paper. Please do not misconstrue these thoughts. I have no doubt that if he and I were able to sit down over a few pints we would agree that we are both saying the same thing. I also humbly offer this critique as the things I am about to complain about are the same issues I struggle with the most—voice, nuance, and “selling” your message to your audience. These comments are offered as a request for some of that nuance and not as a deconstruction of his points.

At one point (at least) he states that “The most demanding uses of the most demanding users should determine the kind of structures and standards required” (5). During questions the moderator asked how he would balance this with the fact that these users are generally in the smallest minority. His answer that the Provost at UC has publicly stated that the researchers are the ones the library is to support is of little comfort to the vast majority of libraries—even academic libraries—around the country and the world.

I fully agree that our structures must be capable of providing for this use, and that our standards must be capable of supporting it, also. He did rephrase it a little during the questioning, as he did again later in the day, that it must be for the “most demanding level to support users of your mission.” OK; perfectly true. But perhaps that kind of nuance in the paper would be useful.

I will cite something from the paper that he wanted to be the prime take-away. It comes via Hélène Denis:

[It is] cooperation between professionals that defines the technologies and their reliability; these being not any preexisting reality but a provisional achievement [citation not specified].

One of his rules for practice states:

Quality assessment requires an assessment of the individual records and all machine-generated information must be evaluated by a human being capable of evaluating the results and correcting them if necessary (6, emphasis mine).

The philosopher in me wants to first ask what David means by “machine-generated information” so that I know we are discussing the same thing, but it’ll have to stand for now. As much as I agree with him, this can only be a desiderata. It is simply not achievable. What we all should be discussing is where the line is for this kind of quality assessment. Where for each kind of resource, each kind of machine-generated data, each project, etc. There is and can not be one answer to these questions. Does this put metadata resource sharing on a shaky ground? Yes; as do many other things. But this is the real world.

He also states that “Trusting external sources of metadata assumes that the ends for which those sources create information are compatible with the particular institution’s intended uses of that metadata” (7). Fully agreed. Tis a dangerous thing to just accept random metadata. We are only in the very beginning stages of this form of metadata sharing [yes, I am well aware of MARC, Z39-50, etc. but this is far more diverse, amongst other things]. I don’t have an answer, and this is a problem; but it is not a show-stopper.

On to my biggest issue with his paper. This paragraph was not in the draft I had but found its way in before the meeting [only a snippet of the paragraph]:

In our libraries today there is almost always a split between those actively involved in a particular field (e.g. bibliographers) and those creating the metadata. For the most part—music, map and law often being the exceptions—catalogers are hired to catalog whatever comes in the library and no subject knowledge or activity in any field of endeavor is required, expected, or encouraged. Catalogers are hired to be metadata specialists without knowing anything in particular about anything at all. Therefore, when they catalog any particular item they have no stake in the result, no users in mind, no knowledge of how or why anyone might be looking for that item (10-11).

I’d love to give David Bade a hug at this point; after I punch him in his highly offensive typing fingers! I mean “WTF, David?”

I feel your pain; I really do. If the world was structured as in the “old days” and libraries required, or even hired, subject specialist bibliographers you can bet I’d be off getting myself even more education to do that which I love. But that world—in the rare cases in which it ever existed—simply does not exist.

So I understand the spirit of your concern here; I truly do and in fact agree with the spirit of it. But I found those comments extremely offensive and I have no doubt that many other hard-working, committed catalogers/metadata specialists will, too.

I grapple daily with my concerns as to my ability to do the best that is required of me in my job, be it serials cataloging, wrangling with and structuring a highly specialized subject thesaurus, and soon to be a monographic copy cataloger. I often feel completely unprepared to do what must be done. These and many other concerns about my abilities, capabilities, and level of preparedness weigh heavily on me daily. But I am trying to learn to do my best, and my institution has much work that needs to be done. There is little choice, all around.

This is the real reason that I’d love to have a couple drinks with David and, no, I really wouldn’t punch him. But these comments are offensive to me and many others. In my case, I am fast approaching 80 hours of graduate LIS credit with most of it focused on the organization, description and representation of knowledge/information resources, not even counting any other degrees, education, or life experience.

When I think about some of the “kids” who sit with me as fellow graduate assistant catalogers I have no doubt that they, too, are fully committed to doing the best job they can. One needs only hear some of the conversations we have amongst ourselves as to how to catalog a specific item. We share knowledge, resources and language abilities, and we know exactly where to find someone close by who is far more experienced than us.

To say that we “know nothing in particular about anything at all,” that we “have no stake in the result, no users in mind,” or “no knowledge of how or why anyone might be looking for that item” is beyond elitist and derogatory.

Nonetheless, I understand his point (in spirit) and there is much value in it. But this is another trade-off of the world in which we find ourselves. This is another of those areas where we need more discussion of where and when the line gets drawn for who is qualified to describe what.

I, too, hope this paper becomes publicly available. I would even love for it to be “cleaned up” a bit and officially published. There is much of value in David Bade’s paper, but the world is not as black and white as the paper currently makes it sound. Perhaps a few pints and some friendly dialogue would help him realize that.

Again, my commentary is given in the spirit of another who sins in much the same way. I hope he takes it that way.

Next up, “clearly from another planet” [her own words] is Diane Hillmann.

But that can wait until tomorrow. This is taking hours! Don’t worry; I’ll do it all and even gladly. I feel a duty to do so for those unable to attend. But it’s still quite a bit of work and my semester just ended. Aren’t I supposed to get a weekend off? <sigh>

Also, most of the rest will have far less of my own commentary; I promise. But if you look around this blog and see what I do with the things I read perhaps you’ll understand why this paper got the treatment it did.

LC Working Group – Structures and Standards, part 1 – Welcome

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Note: Some commentary will be provided (by me) via notes from another attendee, Kathryn La Barre. I will do my best to give proper attribution when necessary, but if she is really just corroborating something I remember easily enough then probably not. I will give attribution to all folks as best I can from between Kathryn’s and my notes but I know I often did not catch who was asking a question. If someone notices any improper attributions please feel free to ask me to fix it. I will also attempt to [bracket] off any editorial comments, or make them explicit in other ways.

Not sure how many posts this will take—I have 13 pages of single-spaced typed notes from Kathryn and 21 pages of hand-written notes (mostly slide “reproductions”) in my notebook—but, I begin….

Structures and Standards for Bibliographic Control

The 2nd meeting of the Library of Congress’ Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control was held Wednesday, May 9 2007, at ALA Headquarters in Chicago. The topic was Structures and Standards for Bibliographic Control.

The meeting opened with Keith Michael Fiels, Executive Director of ALA, welcoming us all. Both this meeting and the previous were videotaped for possible cybercast at the Library of Congress. No indication was made if they might be made publicly available.

[It also seems to be the case that the papers and public testimony from the 1st meeting, nor this one, are not publicly available. This would be an immense public service, and while perhaps not required by law it should be the case. As much information as possible from this process should be publicly available. One use of this material would be to guide those not able to attend as they submit written testimony to the Working Group.]

Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress, provided another welcome and an overview of the public meeting process. The working group first met last November and had expected to meet a few times and issue a report. They quickly realized they needed input from outside the group and added 3 meetings around the country. The 1st was in Mountain View, CA (at Google) in March (Users and Uses of Bibliographic Data [brief summary]), the 2nd May 9th at ALA in Chicago (Structures and Standards for Bibliographic Data), and the 3rd will be July 9th in the DC area (Economics and Organization of Bibliographic Data).

The Library of Congress is working on their own strategic plan for the future. There are 38 groups, one of which is looking at bibliographic control. A report (treatise) from another group on the history of bibliographic control going back to 2000 BC will be released to the public. [When?]

José-Marie Griffiths, Dean of the UNC School of Information and Library Science, and Chair of this working group gave us a 3rd welcome and reminded us that the working group is at the “information gathering” stage, with a report due to Deanna Marcum in November.

She commented that this process is part of a larger question for those of us in the academic community (LIS education), i.e. what do we need to do to ensure graduates are equipped for the workforce? Traditional indexing and cataloging courses are declining in number. What are the implications for education? [from Kathryn's notes]

She then read through the working group’s charge:

  • Present findings on how bibliographic control and other descriptive practices can effectively support management of and access to library materials in the evolving information and technology environment
  • Recommend ways in which the library community can collectively move toward achieving this vision
  • Advise the Library of Congress on its role and priorities [source]

She commented on the 2 user groups that were identified during the March meeting—consumers and managers—but noted that it is really a spectrum of users. Editorial aside: If so, then say so explicitly! That user “dichotomy” bothered me from the moment I saw it. What am I as a serials cataloger? Surely I am a consumer while I try to determine if a record exists, proper form of entries, etc. While at the same time, I am “managing” some information (functionally), although I do not think of myself as a manager by any stretch. This point was made by others during the day.

She then introduced the Working Group members who were present. [I find it rather telling that there is a small picture on the main Working Group page of the members [all of them?], but no easily available listing. Doing a web search turns up this page, but my point is that we should not have to search. That list should be prominently available from the main Working Group page. I am frequently sadly reminded that information/knowledge organizers are as bad at that as Signal Corps folks in the Army are at communicating. We can get the tech right, but not necessarily the communicative act.]

Brian Schottlaender, Working Group member and today’s moderator. Introduced the issues with the pull quote from Joe Janes’ column in the April 2007 American Libraries entitled “W(h)ither Print?”

If you’re being honest with yourself, you know something nontrivial is afoot.

Submitting written testimony

Several people reminded us throughout the day that the Working Group is taking written testimony. Marcum, perhaps, suggested that they would do so through at least the 3rd meeting on July 9th. The website states July 15th.

I highly encourage anyone and everyone to do so! All written testimony must be sent to Dr. José-Marie Griffiths. Contact info on this page.

There is also a Contact Page for the Working Group, but I am unsure of its purpose.

Remember, though, all testimony (such a fancy word, eh? Input, comments, concerns,…) needs to go to Dr. Griffiths. Please do so! Particularly those of you in the public, special and school libraries. As you will see (eventually), it was noted that there was little representation from, of, or by, these communities. Do not let your voices and concerns go unheard.

Next up, David Bade…

Is the replication of information a form of activism, and can it even be so?

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I am assuming that most of you are aware of the current flap over the posting, printing, displaying, and reproduction of the 16-byte hexadecimal number that is one of the cryptographic keys that—with some more knowledge; the number is not in itself magical—can unlock the encryption of HD and Blu-Ray DVDs and, thus, allow for the copying of them. [See Wikipedia article.]

Some of my friends have even participated by posting the number on their blogs, perhaps even ordering a t-shirt.

I would like to ask you to read this [i d e a n t: "Rebellion by Numbers"] before finishing this post. It is not required but it is what shifted my thoughts in this direction. It is also more elegant that I can be, and links to several other writers.

Prime caveat: I do not mean to criticize those who have publicly reproduced this number. In fact, in some way, I applaud you. I, too, do not believe that numbers should be generally ownable property. But it is far more complex than that.

Having worked on a nuclear missile site in my earlier days I do not even want to think about this kind of “activism” getting hold of the PAL keys and spreading them around because someone thinks the military should not “own” these numbers. Now, while I don’t think they would actually claim to own these numbers, that delicacy would not prevent your swift removal to a detention camp or, perhaps even, your execution as a traitor to your country.

“Ownership” is only a small part of the issue here. Nonetheless, that is not my concern.

My concern centers around the last several and, in particular, on the last paragraph of Mejias’ post.

When activism is defined solely in terms of the exchange of information, we are reducing the options available for acting. That is how an encryption key (information in its purest form) was easily converted into a “subversive message” whose replication and dissemination was seen as a revolutionary act. As long as we’ve had media —and I’m afraid emerging “social” media don’t pose a significant alternative— we’ve seen this dynamic: the replication of information has itself come to define what it means to act, has become the source of meaning. The individual goes from being a social actor to an intersection of information flows. She possesses more information than ever before (about global warming, about genocidal poverty, about the false pretenses under which wars are started), but all she can do is replicate and pass on this information. The purer the information (09 F9 …), the more efficient the activism.

I feel that this may be one of the biggest [sets of] questions for our age and, particularly, for librarianship.

When is the replication of information activism?

Can it even be activisim?

If so, is it efficient?

It seems that the replication of information may [or should be] be a necessary condition for activism, but it does not seem to be sufficient to me. Perhaps there are some (small?) sets of circumstances where the simple act of replication of information constitutes activism; perhaps this current case is even one of them. But it seems to me that further action [of certain sorts] would clearly magnify the efficacy of the activism. Perhaps actual letters to your elected representatives, letters to your local newspapers to attempt to bring the issue to the attention of more of the citizenry, …?

Is this form of cyber-movement primarily a way to make people feel good about themselves? “I did something. I participated.”

Please. I do not mean to point fingers. I include myself in this—or even a lesser “active” group—as I have done nothing.

But truly—as Mejias and others ask—what other causes are there? What other issues of importance? Perhaps even of far more importance? In some ways this is a “free speech” issue, among others. But what about active police suppression of peaceful protesters for the last several years? Poverty, hunger, lack of medical care, wars of aggression in the name of democracy? All of these seem far more important to me than some DVD encryption key.

I’m not sure I’m even up to the task of engaging in this question; certainly not as well as I’d like. Someone like Rory Litwin or Jessamyn West are far better qualified than me. Nonetheless, I believe that these are some of the fundamental questions of our age, and that as librarians we have a responsibility to honestly and seriously—in a nuanced and critical way—ask, “Is the replication of information a form of activism?”, along with its associated questions.

Structures and Standards for Bibliographic Data teaser

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[Updated 7:20 AM Thursday, 10 May: see below]

[Update 2 8:20 AM Friday, 11 May; see below]

Today I went to the 2nd meeting of Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, held at ALA in Chicago. Seven of us from UIUC went.

It was quite interesting, I have extensive notes which I will post. But I am exhausted! I was up at 3:30 AM and have ridden to Chicago and back with a full day of sitting in between.

By the way, I mean that “interesting” in a normal sense, not any sort of “you just wait till I tell you” sort of sense.

I notice Diane Hillman has already posted her notes on the first half of the day at the LITA Blog. So, if your jonesin’ for some info see hers and keep an eye out for her 2nd part and perhaps a few other reports elsewhere. I’ll try to get mine up over the weekend, but I took a lot of notes! I have a “sore on my thumb lot” of notes.

Thank you for being patient. And if you aren’t, well, too bad.

Update:

I did not speak at the meeting yesterday, except perhaps to make supportive or snide comments—as they situation called for—to those around me. I awoke to find a link to this post stating that I had, and saw that Diane Hillmann had posted part 2 of her notes and seems to be the source of this claim. I have made comments at both places I have seen the claim.

Please, please, please. That was my boss, Michael Norman, Head of Content Access Management at UIUC, and not me. I have no idea how Diane Hillmann substituted my name for Michael’s.

But please do not replicate that mistaken information. As someone who will be looking for a job shortly (on my time scale anyway), it doesn’t seem to be a good way to start off by being given credit for something your boss did. Or, period.

I would also never deign to speak for my institution, at this point in my career, without explicit permission.

Other than that, I think Diane Hillmann has done a pretty good job of reporting on the events. In a few cases, my report will end up parroting hers, or more accurately the speaker’s slides. I only skimmed portions of part 2 of her report this morning, but they still look pretty accurate. Except for one glaring mis-attribution.

Update 2:

I see that the LITA Blog post has been corrected and my comment approved sometime in the last hour or so. Thank you.

I have started working on my notes and should have the 1st group up tonight.

Relationships in the Organization of Knowledge: a review

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[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.

Some things read this week, 29 April – 5 May 2007

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Sunday, 29 Apr 2007

Beghtol, Clare. “Semantic Validity: Concepts of Warrant in Bibliographic Classification Systems.” Library Resources & Technical Services 30 (2), Apr/Jun 1986: 109-125.

Argues “that the semantic axis of bibliographic classification systems can be found in the various warrants that have been used to justify the utility of classification systems” (109). Traces the evolution of literary, scientific/philosophical, educational and cultural warrants in the 20th century. Specifically considers the use that the Classification Research Group made of each of these warrants. E. Wyndham Hulme, credited with coining the term “literary warrant” in his 1911 paper “Principles of Book Classification,” also explicitly discussed all of these warrants at some point, except for cultural warrant, which he discussed implicitly in a series of lectures at Cambridge in 1921 and 1922.

Calls for “detailed examination of the interrelationships among various kinds of semantic warrant … before the underlying semantic theories of bibliographic classification systems can be clearly defined and their effects and advantages exploited with confidence” (122).

Recommended for anyone interested in the concept of warrant, or of the work of members of the Classification Research Group.

Thursday, 3 May 2007

Nielsen, Marianne Lykke. “A Framework for Work Task Based Thesaurus Design.” Journal of Documentation, vol. 57, no. 6, November 2001, pp. 774–797.

Cited by Tudhope, Binding, et. al. 2006. “Query expansion via conceptual distance in thesaurus indexed collections.” Journal of Documentation 62 (4):509-533.

Now that I look at the citation (p. 516), I have no idea why this was cited. Maybe I missed something when I read it yesterday; I was pretty much physically and mentally exhausted.

thesauri, thesaurus construction, task based design, group interviews, word association, content analysis, discourse analysis, person-in-situation, work domain, information environment, domain study, case study, information behavior, search behavior

Dahlberg, Ingetraut. “Conceptual Structures and Systematization.” International Forum on Information and Documentation 20 (3), 1995: 9-24.

Cited by Veltman, Kim H. “Towards a Semantic Web for Culture.” Journal of Digital Information 4 (4) abstract Read a few weeks ago.

The twentieth century brought new studies of Aristotle’s basic categories, namely, his accidents. Thinkers such as Ranganathan and Dahlberg linked form-categorical relations to syntax (Veltman, 10).

This is a good article that should have been in my relationships bibliography.

Reading Dahlberg is generally a treat, but every once in a while the Teutonic sentence structure is hard to parse out. Having lived in Germany a couple times and having had a couple semesters of college German probably make it easier for me, but every so often there’s an important and deep sentence where I can only say, “Please, this is critical to the argument. What is it saying?” I can’t seem to find it now, but I know there was at least one in this article. Anyway, anything of value is worth a little work.

Looks at the representation of knowledge by conceptualizing it in its most basic form, knowledge units or concepts. Discusses relationships between concepts, characteristics of concepts, conceptual structures for concept definitions, systematization of conceptual systems, conceptual systematization and functionality. It is in the discussions of systematization that the Information Coding Classification (ICC) is introduced. The final section is on the analytical, referent-oriented concept theory as this has been called.

It implies that any systemization of concepts presupposes an analysis of the characteristics of a concept and this analysis can only work if one can relate the necessary statements to an item of reference (22).

These ideas, written about in other venues, seem to be fundamentally important to the design of coherent and systematic conceptual structures as the basis for various classificatory structures, be they classification systems, thesauri, ontologies, etc. My concern comes with what seems to be Dahlberg’s views that these ideas can be the basis of universal conceptual structures. Dahlberg’s complaint about previous classification systems is that they were based on little in the way of principles, except the division of disciplines. Even Ranganathan fell back on disciplines as main classes after devising some true principles.

For one who has given up on a universal classification as attainable the above critique, while accurate, rings hollow. Any attempt at attaining a universal conceptual system is bound to fail. That said, these are important ideas which can and should be employed in the generation of more limited, local, classificatory structures.

Highly recommended, particularly for those interested in knowledge organization and representation.

conceptual structures, systematization, knowledge, knowledge representation, concepts, Knowledge Elements, Knowledge Unit, Concept Triangle, Concept Circle, conceptual relationships, formal relationships, form-categorical relationships, material relationships, generic relationships, abstraction relationships, partition relationships, opposition relationships, complementary relationships, functional relationships, concept characteristics, subject characteristics, meronymic relationships, concept definitions, definitions, conceptual systematization, principles, Systematifier, Information Coding Classification (ICC)

mm

Stuff and other stuff

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I’m beginning to get a bit caught up on blog and other social software-related things, but there’s still more to go. Trying to tackle the smaller, easier, shorter ones first. Luckily, those are the ones that mostly correspond to getting back to people, commenting on comments, and so on.

NASKO

I’ve added a 3rd conference to this year’s schedule and I am super excited! I’ll be attending the North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization (NASKO) in Toronto in mid-June.

It is the first symposium and chapter organizing conference for the International Society for Knowledge Organization – North America chapter. I have been wanting to go to this since I first heard about it many months ago, but it was discouraged for various (valid) reasons. But the stars, planets, concept senses, or something have aligned and it makes sense now. It is also going to be quite affordable.

I’m really excited to get in on the ground floor of this chapter. I can imagine this and ASIST being my organizational homes for the rest of my career.

I’ll also get to meet my intellectual crush! I’m not sure how many of these folks from the Program Committee will actually attend, but…:

  • Richard Smiraglia, Long Island University, Chair
  • Clément Arsenault, Université de Montréal
  • Pauline Atherton Cochrane, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Professor Emerita)
  • Clare Beghtol, University of Toronto
  • Allyson Carlyle, University of Washington
  • Anita Coleman, University of Arizona
  • Jonathan Furner, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Rebecca Green, OCLC, Dewey Decimal Classification
  • Kathryn La Barre, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Joseph T. Tennis, University of British Columbia
  • Hope Olson, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
  • Nancy Williamson, University of Toronto

These are some of the biggest names in my areas of interest! I have read things by all of them, many things by some of them. I have met Joe Tennis and Jonathan Furner (ASIST) and, of course, know Pauline and Kathryn.

For my bibliography I read a lot of Clare Beghtol and I have to say I’m impressed. I’d have to say she’s right up there with Elaine Svenonius and Rebecca Green right now. And whether or not I fully agree with the views or methods of the others, they are still top folks in our field, are to be respected, and one could learn an awful lot from them (even me).

My only complaint is this session line-up from which I’ll have to choose one:

Session 5

In the Margins : Reflections on Scribbles, Knowledge Organization, and Access, June Abbas SUNY Buffalo

Performance Works: Continuing to Comprehend Instantiation, Richard P. Smiraglia, Long Island University.

Anticipating New Media: A Faceted Classification of Material Types Rebecca Green, OCLC Dewey Decimal Classification and Nancy J. Fallgren, University of Maryland

Smiraglia, although I respect him, is the easiest for me to eliminate. Musical works are not my biggest concerns within the concept of works, and performance is even less of my concern. Please don’t misunderstand me, I think this is important work. I love music and especially musical performance, but I know little about any aspect of it intellectually. Which, of course, would be a reason to go but….

I met June at ASIST last year and she is important to someone important to me, and her talk sounds fascinating. But she’s up against Dr. Dr. Green. :(

What’s a boy to do? I’m pretty sure I’ll see Dr. Abbas at ASIST in Oct., but when will I get a chance to see Dr. Green again?

Anyway, I’m as excited as a five-year-old in a candy store. I hope it shows.

So, I have learned something

Wednesday evening I was at the ex’s having a conversation with her man about the mass of DVDs they have. He said something to the effect that “There is no rhyme or reason to their organization that anyone could discern.” To which I promptly disagreed. I told him that although there is no explicit organization, there is certainly organization. There are pockets of organization in that there are large groups of sets and series, most of the horror is together, as is most of the Westerns, and a few others groups. While I can’t state the explicit organizational principle—as there really aren’t any as he stated himself—there are some. They are fluid and not fully discernible, but relatively stable nonetheless. I generally know where to look for something, if only because I know where not to look. He hadn’t even realized the groupings that do exist until I pointed them out.

Of far more importance to the heading above, he then went on to ask me what he needed to do to “catalog” his DVDs. In under two and a half minutes I gave perhaps the best answer of my life to anything. I reduced the answer to a series of (mostly) questions, said from 3 slightly orthogonal views, that covered everything of importance in the most distilled form possible, and in the proper order the questions should be asked in, while acknowledging that many of them were recursive.

I was about 3/4s of the way into my answer when I realized the beauty of what I was saying, and knew that I would promptly forget it! Sure, I remember the gist of it. But now the same answer would take several more minutes, would not be anywhere as concise or coherent, nor in the right order. I want my answer back! Verbatim.

It is the kind of thing I want to say in my job interviews. Hell, it’s what I want to tell the Library of Congress group on Wednesday!

From there we went on to the follow-up sorts of questions, such as, how complete is the data you have available, in which formats is it available, how easy is it to get it into your “catalog,” and at what cost(s)? On the drive home, I realized how easy it was to extrapolate any additional questions from my succinct answer, say for an enterprise the size and nature of shared cataloging, OCLC, LoC, etc.

I must say I was a tad proud of myself for a couple of reasons. One was the sheer beauty and concise nature of my answer but also, more importantly, because it fully demonstrated that I have learned something of value in all my time here at GSLIS. But I’d happily give up those feelings of pride if I can only have my answer back! Damn you, mind!

Levinson, musical works, and being chided

After Ontologies last week Allen pointed out that I had been a bit harsh on Levinson. As he pointed out philosophers, textual criticism, music folks, aesthetics, art criticism and the humanities in general have been wrestling with the concept of the work for far longer than LIS. And while their purposes may be different than ours in doing so, they deserved a little respect. He is, of course, exceedingly correct in this.

I was a bit dismissive and in a rather harsh way. My lack of time to devote to proper criticism is no excuse. I will try and do better in that regard. I had stated that I think Levinson is doing important work in his article, just that it doesn’t seem to accord with our (LIS) concept of work.

I do think Levinson is explicating some important concepts about music here. I just don’t think that he is discussing works as the same concept as, say, FRBR, or Svenonius, Tillett, Smiraglia, or Vellucci does. And if, in fact, it is work that he is discussing then it is an extremely narrow and elitist notion of work. It is in no way a commonsense notion of work at all, even if he has saved some commonsense notions of artistic creation.

After agreeing with Allen, I did ask whether he thought my statement about Levinson’s idea of work being a different concept than the ones mentioned above—even if much younger notions of work—was correct.

Correct is good; but I think I’d prefer to learn how to state my views in a more congenial way first. One can always be “correct,” but if people won’t engage with you or your ideas then being correct is useless.

I love the way people like Allen Renear (and a very few others I know, e.g., Miss Mo) can chide you so gently that you don’t even realize it immediately, and that when a few seconds or a minute later you do realize it you can only be grateful that they did. :) People like that are an exceedingly rare breed. Unfortunately.

Marketing

Let me state right up front—ignoring everything I just said—that I despise marketing. Taking the above and what I’m about to say into account, I need to find another way to package that statement.

Recent “incidents” like the wonderful chiding by Allen, the temporary miscommunication between Ryan and me, the (thankfully) few previous examples on my blog, and many other life experiences, have led me to the notion that I must learn to market myself. Yep. Makes me even more nauseous than when I decided I needed to network. But I found a way to repackage that one to make it more palatable and it has been working for me. So, I’m going to try and repackage this one, too.

What I mean by marketing myself is not in a full-on way, but primarily my method of critique and questioning. One of my biggest “failings” back at my old academic library was that I could not communicate with the administration. And I was one of the few even bothering to try anymore. Many people from all levels of responsibility (except the top) agreed that I had important things to convey to them, and were willing to let it be my head in the attempt. But it was just not possible to do so for many reasons, with the primary one being my “tone.” There was simply way too much “attitude” and “tone” in my attempts no matter how many times I might rewrite and tone it down. I eventually just had to give up and leave somewhere I cared about deeply.

Due these assorted factors, I have become convinced that I need to market myself better, in that I want people to not only accept but to welcome my critiques and questions. Alright, some of you can pick your laughing selves up off the floor. I realize how stupid that really is. Some people will simply never welcome, much less accept, critique or questions. We even have a few in the biblioblogosphere but it’s pretty easy to ignore them.

But I have no doubt that I could be much better in almost every situation at making the questions/critique far more palatable and at least accepted, even if not outright welcome.

I’m not exactly sure how I’ll proceed into a subject that I despise so much, but I must try. I also know that I’ll fail, repeatedly. Sometimes it’ll be due to lack of time. Sometimes to failure to overcome my general annoyance at a situation. Sometimes to the simple fact that I’m human.

Many people whom I love and respect dearly seem to think that I have important contributions to make to this field, and on rare occasions I even believe them. Seeing as much of that contribution will come in the form of questioning and critique I must find a way to package it far better than I have often and lately.

See, Miss Mo? I truly am still growing. Thank you ever so much for helping me to do so. And, thank you, too, to all my friends and acquaintances “out here” who help me to do so.

One boy’s journey into relationships, or the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

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My final project for LIS590RO, Representing and Organizing Information Resources, was an annotated bibliography of all of the things I’ve been reading in and around the topic of relationships for the last half year or so. I also gave a presentation on the topic, which primarily centered around Bean & Greens’s (2001) edited monograph, Relationships in the Organization of Knowledge. This is also the book I did my book review of.

Included below is the introductory matter to my bibliography. It is somewhat “chatty” as are portions of the bibliography itself. Kathryn and I have spent a good deal of time discussing some of this. She was well aware of everything I explained about my method and content and, thus perhaps, it is included more for me than for her.

The annotated bibliography is available here—be forewarned, it is 32-pages single-spaced in RTF format and the same as a PDF. I am not entirely happy with it. I simply ran out of time in some cases to write a decent annotation, could not put my hands on things I know I have in print, and there is a small handful that never got read. I included them all anyway as explained below. Of course, there are a huge number of sources that I marked but never actually managed to acquire. Then there are all the others that could have been included, e.g., Svenonius, ….

[And for the vast majority of folks who find this through a search engine ... this will not help you "pick up" anyone of opposite, or even the same, sex. While most relationships are associative ones, these aren't that kind of "association." I cannot help you with that issue. Heck, I seem unable to help myself. And while the woman I desire might well find paradigmatic and syntagmatic arousing concepts, I doubt you do. "These aren't the relationships you're looking for. Now move along."]

Oh well, there has to be a where and a when to stop. Often they are not of your own choosing. So, without further ado:

One boy’s journey into relationships, or the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

My journey into the topic of relationships began in the late fall of 2006 while working on my paper for 590TR Information Transfer and Collaboration in Science. My paper was a “representative literature review on the topic of mapping different thesauri and the uses of such for the organization of information to meet the needs of interdisciplinary scientists.” As such, some article I read—now lost to me—pointed me to an ARIST article by Khoo and Na (2006) “Semantic relations in information science.”

Many of the articles I was reading on mapping thesauri raised the issue of whether or not inter-concept relationships within a single thesaurus could truly carry over into a multiply-mapped thesauri, especially in the context of multilingual thesauri. I was considering my problem of mapping across scientific domains to be very similar to “true” multilingual mapping, thus, I decided this might be a highly relevant piece to read. I ended up finding this excellent article fascinating! It is also the piece which put me on to Bean & Green and Rebecca Green, period. For that I shall be ever grateful.

This annotated bibliography is an attempt to provide some reflection on the things I have read in the intervening five plus months, to situate them amongst themselves, and perhaps among the larger set(s) of literature on the topic of relationships.

I am grateful for this excursion into this topic as it has gently reminded me that there are, in fact, whole branches of learning of deep relevance to library and information science—even the “little” corner I have made myself comfortable in—with which I am not even qualified for the label of neophyte; e.g., linguistics and grammar. This came at a time when I was beginning to get smug with myself about the lack of fields of direct relevance for me to venture into; not, of course, that there was nothing left for me to learn—I will never reach that hideous point of view, nor state—but more as a defense of my chosen second graduate degree. See, e.g., my blog post “Words.”

The vast majority of these articles, standards, books or book chapters were read between November 2006 and late April 2007. A few were also read for the first or a previous time in the preceding year and a half or so. There are approximately six articles included that I have not yet had a chance to read. These are primarily citations from Beghtol (2001); all are annotated as such. There are also a handful which I am unable to put into my hands for some reason and am thus unable to do a proper annotation. I have attempted in most cases to give a minimal account, even if only to list associated keywords assigned to them in my Zotero database. There are also about a dozen that are available to me but which I ran out of time to properly annotate. As unhappy as that makes me I must accept the reality. I have included all of the citations to the above categories because, as inadequate as the annotations are, they reflect my journey through this most interdisciplinary of topics.

I have attempted to give recommendations for specific contexts and individuals in most cases. Dates in brackets are the dates the annotations were written. These are often vastly different from when read, or perhaps first read. The dates I read most of them are available to me in the vast majority of cases. I try to record this information by writing it on any paper copies and recording it in my Zotero database. I also try to record this information in any electronic copies as the Mac makes this extremely simple. This information is probably of little value to anyone except myself, and seeing as I ran out of time to do the task to my own expectations, that information is not recorded here. If someone else were interested in it for some reason they could find it for a large percentage of these items by checking my weekly “things read this week” blog posts that began in January 2007. I have also assigned keywords to each source to provide another kind of access to the concepts covered in each source.

I had hoped to list all of the citations in and amongst these sources, also, but that is another portion that I had to let go. This data is available to me in many cases, as I have been trying to record it for myself. In a few cases I did list these intertextual links here, but the few that I was able to incorporate do not accurately reflect the amount of intertextuality that exists. Seeing as this could be useful information to others I feel worse about this lack of inclusion than I do about the lack of dates read.

All in all, this exploration into the topic of relationships has been a pleasant uphill climb ever since I began, and one I look forward to continuing.

I’m still here. Sort of…

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I know I probably don’t have to, but nonetheless I want to apologize to folks for not being as prompt as I’d like to lately—comments on blog posts (mine and others), emails, in-person, ….

It’d be nice to say that life trumps blogging but it’s generally most of life that gets put on hold while I try to end another semester. Only a few more of these, though.

So many people to get back to, so many things to say, or perhaps re-say. I finally had a little time yesterday but I was completely wiped out and only got to a few things. I need to recover quickly because summer is shaping up to be incredibly busy, and that doesn’t even include any of the longer-term things I need or want to do.

Anyway, just wanted to say to my friends out there that I’m trying to get back to you, and that my (lack or slowness of) accomplishing that at the moment has nothing to do with the value I place on you or our friendship.

Now if I could just get this one message out via all the various forms of social software, email, and in-person networks. <sigh/>

More real soon, I promise.

Best of luck to all those wrapping up a semester somewhere. And congratulations to all the new librarians!