Off the Mark

Conference photos here. More touristy photos here [includes some conference attendees]. Everyone’s photos here [which means jennimi and me.]

Rebecca Green has a much better synopsis than I will produce at 025.431: The Dewy Blog.

• James Turner, Professor, University of Montreal.
• Clare Beghtol, Professor, University of Toronto.
• Jens-Erik Mai, Professor and Vice Dean, University of Toronto.

comments from panel and audience will be in Day 2, part 2 post.

Contributed Papers Session 3:

An Irrational Truth, Or the Marginalization of People Through Classification in Natural Disaster Settings. [Note: Paper title is different from presentation title.] Randall Kemp, University of Washington.

This was quite an interesting paper. The big issue here, though, is that there are so many classifications going on in a natural disaster situation. There is the immediate triage of various [multiple kinds of] caregivers and emergency responders. There is the preplanning classification[s] built into the disaster plans of the incident commanders. There are the classifications needed to communicate with the media. There are the classifications needed by policy makers. Some of these are immediate, some are long-term, some are flexible and changeable, some are fixed. And this only begins to scratch the surface. The question quickly becomes, “How do we find the people in all of these classifications?” Despite all the complicated issues, this is important work.

The Economic and Aesthetic Axis of Information Organization Frameworks [extended abstract]. Joseph T. Tennis, University of British Columbia.

Information Organization Frameworks (IOFs) “are made up of a distinct structure, work practice, and arise from a discourse.”

I think Joe is on to something here, but this economic axis is an oversimplification.

Tagging for Health Information Organisation and Retrieval. Margaret Kipp, University of Western Ontario.

For those interested in tagging, and in particular the intersection of tagging and traditional classification, Margaret Kipp’s work is worth watching. Go find her earlier stuff and keep an eye out for her future work. I believe Louise Spiteri is one of the few others working in this space.

Lunch

Contributed Papers Session 4:

Faceted Navigation and Browsing Features in New OPACs: A More Robust Solution to Problems of Information Seekers? [extended abstract] Kathryn La Barre, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

I’m really hoping that Kathryn’s research agenda can be funded. We really need to know whether these types of systems are actually effective or whether they just appeal to our beliefs.

Study on the Influence of Vocabularies used for Image Indexing in a Multilingual Retrieval Environment. Elaine Ménard, Université de Montréal.

While image retrieval is not my area, I found this fascinating [even though still in its early stages] based on my readings in the area of multilingual thesauri.

Coffee break

Contributed Papers Session 5:

In the Margins: Reflections on Scribbles, Knowledge Organization, and Access [extended abstract]. June Abbas, SUNY Buffalo.

June rocks! She has a tablet PC so was able to scribble on her own presentation.

She cites Wilson (1968) reminding us that “What a text says is not necessarily what it reveals or what it allows us to conclude … but what is not said may interest us more than what is said” (p. 18). Alert readers of this blog ought to have learned this lesson by now.

She asks whether “reasons and uses of annotation in the print environment [can] also be extended to the digital tagging practice as well?”

“Where do we go from here?” “What we need to consider now is how we can use these sources to adapt, augment, revitalize our knowledge organization structures.”

Motivations? Personal findability or organization; communal or familial sharing; meaning making; performative act?

Did I mention that June rocks?

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 Fallgren, University of Maryland).

While perhaps not the sexiest of topics, it is extremely important and far more complex than our general, in practice, orientation of a simple dichotomy of content vs. carrier, which itself is often highly confused. This is productive clarification of many of the involved issues, and I am really glad to see it for many reasons. Not the least of which is Hjørland’s comment regarding the need to record and qualitatively discuss our disagreements in the literature so that we may truly learn.

Content vs. carrier, or content and carrier, or perhaps content and carrier and what else? Content, infixion, and carrier per T. Delsey (see Delsey cites in her paper). When and in what ways does one facet limit or impose constraints on the other? They are interdependent (see L. Howarth 1997 cite in her paper).

The FRBR Expression entity: “Another development of the content vs. carrier issue questions whether there may be the need for intermediate bibliographic categories between pure intellectual or artistic content and pure physicality” (88). The FRBR Expression entity bothers her because it is being used to mean lots of different things: two editions of a work, two translations of a work (in the same or different languages), different interpretations of an artistic performance, printed text vs. audio recording of text being read (or performed) (88).

I fully agree with her here. IFLA FRBR folks did some wonderful work in their documentation. They also blew a few things, some of which are because they wanted to keep it simple, some perhaps because they were too close to the issues and document, while others may have been due to a compromise … or a mixture. The Expression entity is one such failure. Manifestation and that unfortunate line drawn between Manifestation and Expression level which supposedly shows the line between the intellectual and the physical. That diagram in, and of, itself is a disaster, imnsho. I think the committee knew what they meant, kept the documentation simple (which I agree can be a benefit usually) and thus blew it.

Both Manifestation and Expression are complex creatures. Neither is (only) what they purport to be; they are both so much more than that. And this is not a good thing. Manifestation is a purely conceptual entity that is composed of one or more physical items. Its component parts (if more than a singular instance) may never be all together in one physical space-time grouping.

Another reason the “line of demarcation” was unfortunate on that diagram that has now been replicated ad nauseum with a subsequent loss of the little nuance in the text is that the physicality of a Manifestation is a vastly different kind of physicality of an Item. But it is not a difference than can easily be explicated in a sentence or two.

Another issue with the physicality line and much along the lines of Dr. Green’s issue here is that, although non-physically instantiated Expressions are logically possible, they are generally not the sort of entity that libraries are in the habit of worrying about. Libraries do the recorded information and knowledge of humankind. Thus, almost every Expression has some form of physicality. And generally this physicality is of the sort in which we now have a conceptual and physical Manifestation and an Item. Electronic-based media is adding some twists to the mix, to be sure, but they can be accommodated if Dr. Green’s initial attempt at explicating these issues is furthered.

By the way, all of that from “I fully agree with her. …” was all me.

Dr. Green showed 4 ways in which DDC attempts to show content and carrier distinctions. She said that perhaps we’ll see some payoff from her work soon in the schedules. I am unsure of how I feel about the DDC, specifically, and classification structures like it, for many and complex reasons, but I am glad that Dr. Green is working on it.

I want to recant my opening line a bit to, “While I know some of you won’t find this a sexy topic, it should be considered far sexier than it is.” This is a complex and old topic, with plenty of hard practical and philosophical problems. I have the feeling that this is a prime bit of description that would be well served by faceting. But we need to do a good job conceptually, experiment, refine, implement, test and provide feedback in the literature.

Closing Session: Knowledge Organization in North America, Kathryn La Barre (synopsis of the symposium). The “charge.”

I will try to add some notes on this on the Day 2, part 2 post. Or not. See Rebecca Green for a good summary.

I apologize to all those authors/presenters whose papers I did not get to comment on. This is way “behind schedule” and I’ve just decided to start a 3rd post to finish this out. Unfortunately, I now have more pressing things than conference reporting. Of course, I think of this as far more than conference reporting. Which is why I didn’t say I have things of more importance; that would be so far from the truth.

Thanks again to all who made this symposium possible! It was an amazing time and experience.