Some things read this week, 1 – 7 July 2007

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Sunday, 1 Jul

Uta Priss, “Associative and Formal Concepts,” Conceptual Structures: Integration and Interfaces, Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, 2002, http://www.upriss.org.uk/papers/icc02.pdf (accessed July 1, 2007).

Cited by Tennis (2005) “Experientialist Epistemology and Classification Theory: Embodied and Dimensional Classification.” Knowledge Organization 32 (2), 2005: 79-92. Read 13-14 June 2007.

Monday, 2 Jul

RDA-related items:

Comments on scope and structure: I fully realize the status of FRAD and FRANAR but, according to section 1.2 and 1.3, subjects and subject relationships are currently out of scope for RDA as either descriptive data or access point control data. On what basis can RDA be a standard for access then?

Section 2.1 Part A – Description: Formalizes the content vs. carrier dichotomy [see my comments on Howarth below] and makes it worse by associating carrier with manifestation and item and content with work and expression. This is such a gross simplification of the real world. These folks really need to read Rebecca Green’s recent analysis of this situation. Content and carrier are far more intertwined than these folks are willing to admit. And failure to admit and plan for this means ambiguous, and conflicting interpretations of the, rules for description.

Same section: Acquisition and access. Restricts this to manifestation and item level elements. One might think they mean things like terms of availability, remote access privileges, etc. relate to commercial resources, and I believe that is their focus. But. Under the head of “obtaining access to a resource” and “restrictions on access” I would most certainly put content and expression-level attributes that affect access. You know. Like anything having to do with “pornography.” Cause I’m really failing to see how any manifestation or item-level attributes have anything to do with why we as a society try and restrict such expressed content from minors. It is most definitely the content and its expression to which we restrict access.

Comments on objectives: 2. Functionality of records produced using RDA: Principles: Relationships.

The descriptive data provided for in the guidelines and instructions should indicate significant bibliographic relationships between the resource described and other resources.

The access point data provided for in the guidelines and instructions should reflect all significant bibliographic relationships between works, expressions, manifestations, persons, families, and corporate bodies (p. 4).

I am elated to see this spelled out here. My concern is, though, just what constitutes a “significant bibliographic relationship,” much less all of them? I have not seen these enumerated anywhere.

Admittedly, if you look at the RDA-FRBR mapping beginning on page 7 you will notice that they are using Tillett’s taxonomy of 7 bibliographic relationships in the mapping. That’s good to see. As a start. But where are they explicitly explicated as the and all of the “significant bibliographic relationships?”

I have not read much of the actual Parts of RDA. I have only begun that task. RDA looks to be making significant progress in some respects. In others it has completely missed the boat. As for people actually learning to use this I have some serious doubts. I may not be a “new world order” metadata expert but I have had a class in it and have made assorted resources using MODS, TEI, DC, Topic Maps and a few others. I have spent a semester looking at FRBR, CIDOC-CRM and FRBRoo. I know how to read an ER diagram. I have written my own XML schema and modified others. I have a decent grasp of elements and attribute-value pairs and other related concepts. I say all this only to illustrate my concern for how more traditional folks doing description and access work are going to make the transition to RDA. Perhas it won’t be as difficult as I’m envisioning, but I worry ….

Tuesday, 3 Jul

Grice, H. P. “Logic and Conversation.” In The Logic of Grammar, edited by Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman, pp. 64-75. Encino, CA: Dickenson, 1975. This lecture was originally delivered at Harvard University in 1967.

Cited by Dewdney & Michell (1997) “Asking “Why” Questions in the Reference Interview: A Theoretical Justification.” Read 19 June 2007.

I think Grice makes some very valid points, but he’s also a bit too logical about it. Also, the assumption that much of human communication is conversational is flawed. And Grice’s view of conversation seems to be seriously based on a certain British, educated, and perhaps even classist view. [I really should have written about this shortly after reading it.]

Anyway, it is recommended. It is not very long and is useful goad to thinking about these matters.

Wednesday, 4 Jul

Pepper, Steve. Towards the Semantic Superhighway: A Manifesto for Published Subjects. (2006).

Pepper’s manifesto for Published Subjects and published subject indicators (PSIs). Here are my PSIs (so far) for my Topic Maps project.

Roy Harris, The Semantics of Science (London: Continuum, 2005).

Began; read introductory matter and 1st 3 chapters.

I would have liked to read the 2 previous books first, but this one has the shortest loan period, by far.

Monday – Wednesday, 2-4 Jul

The Successful Academic Librarian: Winning Strategies from Library Leaders (Medford, N.J: Information Today, Inc, 2005).

Read most of this, but not every word. Not sure if I want to recommend it or not, but (parts of) it might be very useful to some of you.

Thursday, 5 Jul

Lynne C. Howarth. “Content versus Carrier.” Proceedings of the International Conference on the Principles and Future Development of AACR, Toronto, Ontario, Canada October 23-25, 1997, 1998. [Green’s presentation at NASKO will be the beginning of a new canonical view of content and carrier and ….

Roy Harris, The Semantics of Science (London: Continuum, 2005).

Read chapter 4-5.

Friday, 6 Jun

Roy Harris, The Semantics of Science (London: Continuum, 2005).

Read chapter 6-7.

Saturday, 7 Jun

Roy Harris, The Semantics of Science (London: Continuum, 2005).

Read chapter 8-9 and App. 1 “Einstein on science and reality” and App. 2 “Heisenberg on language.” Finished. Fits in well with my views of science.

Highly recommended.

3 thoughts on “Some things read this week, 1 – 7 July 2007”

  1. I agree with you about RDA and subjects being missing. That’s one big piece of the jigsaw puzzle to be leaving out. It’s like a building a house and leaving one half of it unfinished.

    I’ve just started to read through the RDA drafts in the last two weeks and it’s literally been keeping me awake at nights. I’m excited by the work to bring into line with DCAM and RDF but the scale of implementing the changes is pretty daunting. Is it too dramatic to say the future of cataloguing is riding on this? ;-)

    From what I can gather there is no guarantee the early parts won’t be re-written. I would like to see it re-structured using FRBR and the RDA element set as the basis for the chapters rather than trying to use the old AACR structure. At the moment it’s like a caterpillar half-way on the way to emerging as a butterfly — neither one nor the other and not very pretty.

    Irvin

  2. While I’m at it …

    One thing that makes RDA very hard to read IMO is the terminology. It actually changes depending on how recent a draft you’re reading. For example, ‘resource’ seems to mean different things in different places. The later chapters use FRBR terms more than the earlier chapters. I haven’t read the carrier/content sections yet so I can’t comment on them.

    And the term ‘access’ seems to me a potential source of confusion. Elements are described as ‘access control points’ but what access do they provide? A naive user would probably expect ‘access to the resource’, but really it’s access to the bib record, isn’t it, in the old card catalog sense? The drafts are full of such atavisms. I can see why they have been kept: to reassure cataloguers that it’s ‘really still the old AACR underneath’, but it’s not the old AACR anymore so it’s time to bite the bullet and do a complete re-write.

  3. Hi Irvin, I do expect the early parts to be re-written. In fact, I’m fairly sure I’ve seen something that says so since the RDA-DC announcement, but I don’t remember where.

    Yes, terminology is a big issue. Both for us in the field, and for the user. Of course, with proper implementations the end user would never have to see such terminology anyway. But can we hope for our systems to be designed so they don’t?