… the wrong thing at the right time, or, perhaps, can it just be there are too many right things to do at overlapping right times?
I know I haven’t fully explicated my bibliography topic yet but a potential change has arisen already. This change is both negative and beneficial; as most changes are. [And as many who ardently advocate for change seem too often to ignore.]
I have chosen a “topic” of immense interest to me which will also allow me to pursue it (reading sequence, primarily) in a fundamentally different way. The topic is (much of) the work of one specific author who writes in areas of immense interest and importance to me. They often write about the larger issues, or at least situate their thoughts in context with the larger issues, argue for making our epistemologies (and assumptions) explicit, and argue for an explicit epistemological basis which I am clearly drawn to.
This person is also going to be visiting GSLIS in the near future and will also be at ASIS&T Annual. This will provide me several opportunities to talk with them. And while at ASIS&T I will also be able to speak with some of the other folks with whom my author has been engaged with in their own slice of “the grand discussion.”
I have spent quite a few hours and a score or two of $$ collecting, adding to Zotero, and printing the fairly sizeable output of my author, along with beginning my reading program “from the beginning,” as one might say.
Sounds just about perfect, doesn’t it? What could possibly be wrong?
Well, I am a CAS student, which means I have to do an 8 semester hour “project” as a capstone to my degree. I had always been hoping to do something a tad (or lot) more projecty than a large paper. The large paper was always, of course, a fall back since one of those is always imminently doable.
The final eight hours are the CAS project, a substantive investigation of a problem in librarianship or information science, which is followed by a final oral examination [from the CAS program description].
When I first signed up for Bibliography this fall several months back I was hoping to know what my project was going to be so I could work on my lit review, in particular. I began the semester without a project topic (as I was fully afraid that I might).
As many of you know—from my reading lists and otherwise—I maintain several deep interests at the same time. I imagine many of you do, too. That is one of the stereotypical traits of librarians that gets far less airplay than, say, love of cats.
Back in May or so, David Bade turned me on to the Oxford linguist/philosopher Roy Harris. [Thank you! Thank you! Thank you, David!] I have since read 6 of his books and am currently reading a 7th. I also have 4 more sitting at home. I have recently ordered 3 others from Amazon (2 have arrived).
Harris is a leading figure in integrational linguistics or, simply, Integrationism.
While I have some recorded stabs at thesis or problem statements [that I'm not ready to share], it ought [it seems to me] to be abundantly clear to everyone that everything we do in libraries, librarianship, and/or information science is based upon the use of language. I have so far found no way in which to take this as completely uncontroversial.
In some ways, though, it may not be entirely self-evident. On this point, I am a bit divided. I cannot personally see how it could not be self-evident, but I am unsure whether that is the case for everyone [in LIS].
Subject description and assignment, indexing, thesauri and ontologies (controlled vocabularies of all types), information retrieval (of any kind), librarian as intermediary/gatekeeper, relevance, user query statements, query expansion, …. Really, is there anything we do which is not based upon the use of language?
Honestly, that question is a little naïve. The same could be asked about lots of arenas of life. But considering how vastly broad the domain of LIS is—both theory and practice—I can think of nothing so completely dependent on language.
So the question now becomes, “What is the LIS view(s) of language?” Once we admit to the radical dependency upon language for a field involved in the use of recorded data/information/knowledge this seems a fairly basic question. Have any of you ever asked it?
On the [what I consider to an extremely off-] chance that you’ve ever asked it of yourself, did you ever try to get outside the “metalinguistic framework” of the educated Westerner (or of orthodox linguistics, which is founded on the same)? Did you even try to try to answer it based simply on your supposedly naïve sense of being a lay user of language? Probably not, to either of those questions.
The integrational critique has serious implications for our discipline. Deeply fundamental implications. If I thought I was the person to even begin to address them I would petition to change to the Ph.D. program immediately. Unfortunately [in this case], I am not even remotely as bright as some of my friends seem to think. If I was then perhaps I could actually produce a dissertation that was one of the rare few that actually adds to scholarship. I would so love to be able to do so. But, it is not to be. I am simply not this bright.
I can easily see how wedded our field is to orthodox linguistics, I can easily find examples across every aspect of our field to show this is the case, I can (soon) produce a good overview of the integrational critique of orthodox linguistics, I can see many of the implications this critique holds for our field.
Unfortunately, I cannot see them to the depth to which they truly go. Nor can I yet even begin to see what choice we have but to act as if orthodox linguistics is “correct” in our actual practice. And while I do think this admission is a start, as it implies that we’ve acknowledged the issue of reliance on a completely bankrupt theory of language, I do not particularly want to argue for a [further?] separation of our theory from practice.
I want to be able to “see” what a full embrace of integrationism might mean for the theory and practice of LIS! And without other people paving much of the way I am simply not that person. I certainly do not know all of my limits but this is one of them.
Based on my applying for jobs before I was particularly ready to [I'd prefer to be done with this degree] the question of how exactly I would finish my CAS [time frame, mostly] arose. I have a total of 5 years [started May 2006] so the 8 hr. project could be done over an extended period. Over the last few months as this issue arose in my mind—and I read more and more Harris books—I came to think that maybe it could be addressed if I took the longer route inherent in starting a job before completion. I thought that I couldn’t possibly do it in a semester. But after my talk with my advisor the other day I have decided that, yes, I can.
So. Perhaps I have my CAS project topic.
Without going into any more detail [I hadn't intended to. Yet.] it seems to me that I ought to switch my bibliography topic to Integrationism and Harris in particular.
What to do? What to do?
I imagine that I will still be really interested in my first topic for quite a while. I even think that if there is a way to “harmonize” integrationism and LIS then this author’s views are the (currently) only beginnings.
If I change my topic then I will certainly still be able to engage with my author while visiting us (as I had fully intended before I chose the topic anyway!) and at ASIS&T. My questions will just take a broader focus than before. While the $ spent on printing would become a currently “unnecessary” expense I really have no problems with it. It is all in binders in (primarily) chronological order and will be easily accessible in the future. At hand, so to speak.
Long and perhaps rambling. But maybe now you see the context for the opening questions. It seems to be another case of too many right things to do at overlapping right times. 
How is one to do the right thing at the right time when they conflict with what is actually doable?
Sure. I could put off the reading of more Harris until after the semester. Except for it isn’t happening that way. Or I could just keep on with my pleasure reading of Harris and put the more serious considerations off for spring. But unlike my current author, Harris has written both a ton of articles and a ton of books. I really need to be paying better (i.e. explicit, notated) attention to where I see connections between Harris and LIS.
What am I to do? It’s not too late but a decision needs to be made.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Helen // Sep 22, 2007 at 10:53 pm
This issue of language has plagued me as well, and not just in LIS. It seems that language is one of the most obvious and pressing, but also oft ignored issues of time, not just our time. I think, especially in the particular field of cataloging (where our job is to select language upon which search is based) that we all know what we do isn’t really working as we’d like it to. We see things like Berman’s Subject Authorities at Hennepin County Library System and know that he was both bold and totally on the right track. But how in the world do we get there? It seems that we are so wrapped up in so many different projects to provide an immediate solution to problems of our field that we just don’t get around to cross fertilizing in the field of linguistics. It both makes sense and is utterly foolish…afterall, they are the experts in their field and they’ve really hand delivered a lot of this food for thought, we just need to pick it up, ou know, in our ample spare time.
A couple years back when Miksa came, he suggested watching more television. What a simple, and brilliant, and indulgent solution!Reading your post, I remembered my college roommate who was so revolutionized by a particular philosopher/linguist/mathematician that she ended up changing her college and her major to language philosophy. I read some of his work and it completely revolutionized my writing. So, not to pile another on your plate, and you may already have stumbled upon him, but Ludwig Wittgenstein is incredible. Might be worth a browse.
2 Jenn // Sep 24, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Lakoff’s book pointed out the affect of language on information. It made me wish I had a degree in linguistics and anthropology so that I could pursue a PhD with a dissertation along these lines.
Such a complicated and fascinating topic scares the hell out of me, too, but of the two of us, I think you would stand a good chance of discussing it coherently. I think you have the same problem I do–you feel you have to know it all, understand the entire picture before embarking on a paper. But you don’t have to tackle the whole of it, you know; a small sliver would be more than enough for a PhD. All you have to do is dig a little bit; others will follow you and dig a little more; and so on and so forth.
As for the bibliography…if you’re going to change, change soon. I never thought compiling the actual bibliography would be so much work, but it was almost as intense as the search was.
3 Mark // Sep 25, 2007 at 6:17 am
Hi Helen and Jenn!
I don’t remember that comment by Miksa; maybe I just tuned it out.
Wittgenstein and Lakoff both have good insights into some of these issues. I have read some Lakoff and would like to read more. I will be getting to Wittgenstein (and have certainly read lots that others have said about him) since Harris makes a lot of use of him. Harris even has one book that focuses only on Saussure and Wittgenstein.
I think, perhaps, you ladies are pointing to some of the problems that many of us see, especially those of use involved in the applying of our systems. Complexities of terminology in DDC, LCSH that cannot adequately describe a topic, classification schemes that force us to misclassify something because the topic is too new (several years old with several books on the topic) to have its own class, professional language vs. the people’s language, ….
But Harris’ critique goes far further and much, much deeper. As for orthodox linguistics, they may be experts in their field, but according to Harris the field IS the problem and so far I fully agree. I’m not going to go into it now but I will be covering that issue and many more over time assuming I stay with this topic.
Got Kathryn’s blessing on the change and now I just need to talk to Dr. Krummel and see if my vision of what I’d be doing for my bibliography would be OK with him.
I would be treating my reading much more as my preliminary to middling lit review and research for my CAS project and not so much as a typical bibliography. I could, of course, produce a bibliography of what I’ve read but there could be two issues: (1) it might not be as general as it ought as now that I’ve chosen Harris’ work as the basis for my project my reading of him has (necessarily) altered drastically, and (2) scope becomes an issue. I won’t be reading “everything” and I have yet to look at Harris’ extensive article production except for a few that are in edited volumes. I am mostly reading his (many!) books right now, although a few of them may not be as applicable to my goals.
At some point I will have to turn to his articles, but I’m not sure I can draw any clear boundaries of scope at the moment (on the bibliography) except for what seems useful to me for my project. There is also the issue of there being other integrational linguists who I ought to be reading, too. But at this stage the best I can say about boundaries and scope is what seems useful.
We shall see.
Thanks for the input friends!
4 The Improbable Don Quijote // Sep 25, 2007 at 8:01 am
Mark:
May I suggest that you write to the man himself (after clearing this with your advisor) and ask if he would be willing to be on the committee that guides/reads/approves your paper? I am also on occasion not far away, available for conversation about Harris, and with an ample stock of books, papers and private correspondence, should you need or be interested in it. I should also point out that there are some real close correspondences between Hjorland and Harris, especially evident in the former’s JASIST 58:10 article this year.
5 Laura // Sep 25, 2007 at 10:48 am
My mother always used to tell me, when I presented her with similar (though smaller scale) problems, that I could write a paper that was merely an outline of the paper I really wanted to write. I can’t remember if I ever actually used that advice, but, lacking anything better, I figured I’d pass it along.
More will be revealed!
6 Mark // Sep 26, 2007 at 6:33 am
Dear IDQ, you are certainly in the forefront of my mind on this. I was going to contact you shortly about this once it was certain that I was taking this road. It is now appearing fairly assured.
Contacting the man himself seems a bit cheeky, but a darn fine idea, too. One of those things to certainly discuss with you further.
I appreciate the offer of your personal library. I have no doubt that there is much of value for my project in it.
I also agree with the (possible) close correspondences between Hjørland and Harris. I have commented to Kathryn a couple times that (for now anyway) of the more overarching “paradigms” in our field Hjørland’s is pretty much the only one which seems as if it could even begin to adopt an integrational view. So I will still be “staying” with Hjørland looking for the way(s) forward. In one sense, though, not as closely as if his work had been the subject of my bibliography but, on the other hand, far more in-depth with some of his ideas [Assuming I get permission to change my bib topic today].
Since so many people look at me like I’m insane when I discuss the scope of my ideas, I’d like to especially say “Thank you” for instead offering encouragement and support!
I know full well that it is a massive undertaking and that I’ll be offering no answers or solutions. But I hope to lay out the scope and depth of the problem across all areas of our field and to provide some pointers to what an embrace of integrationalism might mean in some of those areas.
7 Mark // Sep 26, 2007 at 6:43 am
Hey Laura, [nice mudflap post, btw]
Thanks for the advice. I once did exactly that [truly only an outline except for a 12-page intro] but that was in exceptional circumstances that are too long to go into here, but I did get an A on it. Too weird for words!
I doubt your Mom meant a true outline but more an abbreviated version–the essay instead of the book–but I see the point. While this isn’t my intentional mode, I think that’s often (mostly) what I end up doing anyway due to the strictures of an academic semester.
In this case, it may well be the best I can do.
And are you playing with that Magic 8 Ball again?