Some things read this week, 3 – 9 June 2007

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Monday, 4 Jun

Young, Naomi Kietzke. “Formal Serials Education: A Problem We Can’t Solve or a Solution We Can Live With?” Serials Review 31(2), 2005: 82-89. doi:10.1016/j.serrev.2005.02.011

Johnson, Kay G. “Serials—The Constant Midlife Crisis.” Serial Review 32, 2006: 35-39. doi:10.1016/j.serrev.2005.11.002

Goldberg, Tyler and Neal Nixon. “Serials Control: Past, Present and Future Imperfect.” Serials Review 31(3), 2005: 206-209. doi:10.1016/j.serrev.2005.06.004

Tumlin, Michael and 8 contributors. “Everything I Need to Know About Serials I Didn’t Learn in Library School.” The Balance Point (column). Serials Review 29 (1), 2003: 26-35.

Cited by Young and by Goldberg & Nixon, see above.

Rothstein, Samuel. “Why People Really Hate Library Schools.” Library Journal April 1, 1985: 41-48.

Cited by Young, see above (except she mangled the citation).

Tuesday, 5 Jun

Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic Monthly July 1945.

I know, I know. But if I’m going to critique someone for making Bush references I need to make sure exactly what I’m critiquing.

Wolf, George and Nigel Love, eds. Linguistics Inside Out: Roy Harris and His Critics. Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science. Series IV, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, v. 148. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing, 1997.

Read the preface and prologue; looks quite interesting.

As I mentioned previously, Roy Harris has been put on temporary hold as I read some of the papers and extended abstracts for the 1st NASKO Conference just posted to dLIST today.

Green, R. and Fallgren, N. (2007). Anticipating new media: A faceted classification of material types. Proceedings of the North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization. Vol. 1. Available: http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1911

Abbas, J. (2007). In the margins: Reflections on scribbles, knowledge organization, and access. (extended abstract) Proceedings of the North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization. Vol. 1. Available: http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1914

Wednesday, 6 Jun

Pimentel, D. M. (2007). Exploring classification as conversation. Proceedings of the North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization. Vol. 1. Available: http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1893

I have some issues with this one. Not necessarily the idea of classification as conversation, but more so with some of the things that are said to be conversational. Many of us have expressed reservations about just how much conversation takes place, say, in blogs. Some happens, of course. But just how much and of what quality and depth?

At one point the author writes, “A great deal of conversational exchange occurs on the blogosphere, and other Web 2.0 phenomena are similarly conversationally oriented” (3-4) Support for the claim in the 1st clause comes from this note, “As of May 2007, Technorati claims to track 80.3 million blogs – http://technorati.com/about/” (7).

OK, that’s a fair few blogs. But what exactly does a large number do to support the claim of a “great deal of conversational exchange”? Not a darn thing! It simply assumes what it is being used to support.

There is some possibility here with some of the things mentioned and I agree we need some (lots) of research along these lines. I just worry that what “conversation” is supposed to mean here is extremely diluted. In other words, it makes of “conversation” as it relates to true conversation what social networks make of “friends” in relation to true friendship. I’ll track some of its sources and see what I can discover. Depending on what it’s up against I may try and attend this one.

Feinberg, M. (2007). Beyond retrieval: A proposal to expand the design space of classification. Proceedings of the North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization. Vol. 1. Available: http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/1892

Thursday, 7 Jun

Talja, Sanna, Kimmo Tuominen and Reijo Savolainen. “”Isms” in Information Science: Constructivism, Collectivism and Constructionism.” Journal of Documentation 61 (1), 2005: 79-101.

Cited by Pimentel above.

Friday, 8 Jun

Dervin, Brenda and Michael Nilan. “Information Needs and Uses.” Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 21, 1986. 3-33.

Cited by Pimentel above. Also read based on recommendations from Christina Pikas.

Chudnov, Daniel, Richard Cameron, Jeremy Frumkin, Ross Singer and Raymond Yee. “Opening up OpenURLs with Autodiscovery.” Ariadne Issue 43.

Ooh, ooh. This is just the sort of thing I spoke with Dan about after his presentation at NASIG. I’ll be writing more about my desires in this area later, but for now I’m trying to do some reading so I can write half-assed intelligently.

Seriously though, these weekly entries are literally crying out for some solution other than simple text in a blog entry. I tried adding a COinS for an entry earlier in the week using the COinS generator but WordPress just kept screwing it up completely. Even if it did work, it simply is not scalable. I want to enter my readings into Zotero and then do a right-click on the entry that will dump a COinS into my blog post. I also want them formatted so users local OpenURL servers will pick them up for use in their local context.

A boy can dream, can’t he? And honestly, if we can’t make these sorts of things work then we may well become as irrelevant to users as some claim we already are.

Saturday, 9 Jun

Lankes, R. David, Joanne Silverstein and Scott Nicholson. “Participatory Networks: The Library as Conversation.” Produced for the American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy. [lauren’s library blog.

Svenonius, Elaine. “Classification: Prospects, Problems and Possibilities.” In Williamson, N.J. and M. Hudon, eds. Classification Research for Knowledge Representation and Organization, Proceedings of the 5th International Study Conference on Classification Research, Toronto, Canada, June 24-28, 1991. FID 698. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1992

This is the Keynote for this conference. Also cited by Pimentel (above).

I love it when I already have a library book here at home with a cited article in it.

Looks at the influence of logical positivism, linguistic analysis (Wittgenstein of The Investigations), and systems analysis on classification research.

10 thoughts on “Some things read this week, 3 – 9 June 2007”

  1. Mark,

    Re COinS and Zotero integration, I couldn’t agree more. This is cool stuff (COinS and autodiscovery and all, I mean) but it is NOT user friendly yet.

    Since you spoke with me about Zotero I have been using it a lot more and find that I like it. It has taken me a bit to get used to, though.

    I just added a publications (miniscule amount) page to my blog and COinS-ized it, but with a lot of effort.

  2. That looks interesting, Steve.

    How did you generate the COinS? Did you use the COinS generator I linked to, a different one, or craft them by hand?

    I see you did something different than I was trying so I’ll have to redo my (minimal) experiment. Even if it works, as I said it is NOT scalable. I am NOT going to input the data into Zotero (or another program) and the COinS generator. I want my citation manager to generate them for me, AND preferably to be able to put them into my post or webpage, etc. automatically via a right-click context menu or such.

    Thanks for showing me that it is possible though.

  3. Mark, I used the COinS generator you linked to, and then copied and pasted into my WordPress page. What I have found problematic, in addition to the effort of using the COinS generator, is figuring out the best way to discover and show the COinS in Firefox. There are a multitude of plugins available but not all do what I want.

  4. Hi Mark!

    I was wondering if you could clarify this? Do you not think reading Bush is worth your time?

    “Bush, Vannevar. “As We May Think.” The Atlantic Monthly July 1945.

    I know, I know. But if I’m going to critique someone for making Bush references I need to make sure exactly what I’m critiquing.”

    Thanks!
    -karen.

  6. Hi karen,

    Generally, no, I do not think reading Bush is worth my time. I also don’t think it is worth most any LIS student’s time.

    In this case, it was because it helped me moderate the comments I was going to make. Unfortunately, I did not write down much of the context that the Bush reference was made in but re-reading it made me see that if one assumes what is generally assumed in the case of this “classic” article then the use was OK.

    My problems with Bush lie in several areas:

    First, one must be very generous in their reading to even begin to imagine that he foresaw (or anything else) the Internet/networks. One can argue that he was constrained by the technology of his time. Very true. But that does not give one license to extrapolate to the Internet because of it. If one is going to read that generously then why not go back to H. G. Wells, to Otlet, Briet and some of the early documentalists?

    Bush was a “bad man” (in many ways). He was an intellectual (idea) thief who gave no credit for where he got his ideas. One could say that he was a good synthesizer. OK. But he still needed to credit his sources.

    What about Emmanuel Goldberg? What about the many others he ripped off? I get really tired of our profession lionizing this guy. There are far better examples that could be used, although I realize that much of this knowledge is fairly recent. I can only hope that with time we will see less and less references to Bush. But then again once one has made it into the canon it is hard to remove them.

    Although this case–based on common assumptions (that I’d like to see go away)–was an OK use, I am sworn to make fun of anyone making gratuitous Bush references (see article by Jeffrey Garrett):

    http://marklindner.info/blog/2007/02/04/some-things-read-this-week-29-jan-3-feb-2007/

  7. Well, I think it’s good to read “As We May Think.” It provides a picture of the ideas and forces that were in place. Bush gives some good clues on why people have done some things the way they have. To me, it serves as a very nice set of the kind of assumptions that were being made at certain time and had significant influence on our field. By examining these assumptions and the role they have played, we might be able to get an idea of how to do things better.

    That is to say, it should definitely be read, and it should be read critically.

  8. Well said. I guess I have to agree with your phrasing.

    Let me back up and say that most of the many uses to which I’ve seen it put–in our LIS program and in many articles–have been anything but critical.

    Perhaps our faculty mean for us to read it critically, but I don’t think that most of our students have enough background knowledge of our field, the historical context, and many other pieces to do so. Doesn’t mean they can’t get there or that they don’t get there. Just that they may not have it at the time they read it.

    And based on (admittedly anecdotal) what I know about people’s lack of reading (and heave forbid, re-reading) of our literature and the calls for dumping even more of the historical from our education I can only wonder when or how that critical reading will happen for most.

    But you are right. “As We May Think” has value. I just don’t think it is it’s true value that is made use of (usually).

    Thanks for making me think more about it. ;)

  9. Thanks for commenting further on the Conversation Theory bit. I think, due to my interest in social epistemology, that I lean towards thinking of knowledge as social *in general*… perhaps that’s why I lean towards acceptance of CT. However, I can certainly see your hesitations. As you say… never enough time… I’m hoping that Pask book comes from ILL soon!

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