In Fall 2005 I took a class with Prof. Chip Bruce on Pragmatic Technology. One of our assignments was to:

Produce an analysis of one keyword of your choice (see Raymond Williams, Keywords A vocabulary of culture and society. Revised edition. New York: Oxford University Press) for examples. This keyword is not just an index term as in the bibliography, but a core concept for the field. The analysis is a short essay (1-2 pp.) on the definition, history, and multiple uses of a term, which is central to understanding a text or a field of study.

I chose “technology.” This assignment represented 10% of our grade.

I found this little piece the other day while poking around my hard drive and decided I was going to put it here for assorted reasons, if only primarily for myself so I might find it easier in the future.

LIS590PT Fall 2005  Keywords Assignment  Mark Lindner  14 Sep 2005
“Technology,” definition, history, and multiple uses of a term

Plato distinguished Techne (art) from empiriae (knack) as having a logos, a rationale which “necessarily includes a reference to the good served by the art” while knack consists of “rules of thumb based on experience but without any underlying rationale” (Feenberg).

Feenberg argues that we moderns have lost the connection between techne and the good.  “We can still relate to Plato’s emphasis on the need for a rationale, a logos, but we’re not so sure it includes an idea of the good. In fact, we tend to think of technologies as normless, as serving subjective purposes very much as did Plato’s knacks” (Feenberg).

What is the history of technology in between, and is Feenberg correct?  The OED lists several senses of technology that are of relevance to us:

1. a. A discourse or treatise on an art or arts; the scientific study of the practical or industrial arts. (1615 BUCK Third Univ. Eng. xlviii)

b. transf. Practical arts collectively. (1859 R. F. BURTON Centr. Afr. in Jrnl. Geog. Soc. XXIX. 437)

c. With a and pl. A particular practical or industrial art. (1957 Technology Apr. 56/1)

2. The terminology of a particular art or subject; technical nomenclature. (1658 SIR T. BROWNE Gard. Cyrus v.)

Oxford American lists the etymology of technology as from the Greek, tekhnologia systematic treatment, from tekhnê art.

Thus, as far as standard English usage goes technology was earliest applied to language about, or the language of, the practical or industrial arts.  Over time this meaning shifted to the practical arts collectively, and then finally as a referent to any of the individual practical arts.

It seems to me that in American usage that technology has come to shift meaning over the last half-century or so from referring primarily to technoscience or applied science to the machines produced and used by such to primarily refer to the electronic gadgetry of everyday life; personal computers, iPods, DVD players, etc.  Most “normal” Americans think of technology as normless, as Feenberg said.  Atomic bombs, depleted uranium shells, land mines—it all depends on what you do with them.  Their development and existence is morally neutral according to this view.

Philosophers of technology use technology differently than in standard usage, but even there the meaning has shifted over the last sixty or so years.  Classical philosophers of technology (Ellul, Mumford, Heidegger; et al.) thought that technology “…must not be thought of as applied natural science, that is less an instrument than a form of life, and that it must be understood as a “system” (in Ellul’s word) or as a “megamachine” (Mumford)” (Achterhuis, 3).  Ellul uses the French word technique specifically due to the narrower connotation of technology with machines.  For Ellul, “technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity” (xxv).

Newer philosophers of technology (Noble, Hughes, Scwartz and Thompson; et. Al.) have pointed out the intertwining of technology and society as “technosociety,” “technoculture,” “network of technological affairs,” and as a “social process that is extraordinarily inaccessible to us because we are so much a part of it” (Achterhuis, 6-7).

Pacey points out in Meaning in Technology that technology has both social and individual meanings.  He also points to the difference between the “political economy” of the use and development of technology and its wider role in society and, the “social construction” of technology through a “variety of “actors” responding to a complex of social pressures” (4).  Pacey’s point about the shift from the “political economy” of technology to its “social construction” is similar to the shift from the early focus on the material and historical conditions for the rise of Technology as a system to the more recent focus on technologies that impact society while being influenced by the same society.  Pacey’s book is an attempt to redirect some of the focus back onto the meaning of technology created by the individual’s experience of technology, not just of society’s experience.

Sources Cited

Achterhuis, Hans, ed. American Philosophy of Technology: The Empirical Turn. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001.

Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books, 1964.

Feenberg, Andrew. “Can Technology Incorporate Values? Marcuse’s Answer to the Question of the Age.” Paper presented at the conference on The Legacy of Herbert Marcuse, University of California, Berkeley, November 7, 1998.

Oxford English Dictionary, 2^nd ed. online, 1999.

Pacey, Arnold. Meaning in Technology. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.

“Technology.” Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Biggs, M. (1991). The Role of Research in the Development of a Profession or a Discipline. In C. McClure & P. Hernon (Eds.), Library and information science research : perspectives and strategies for improvement, Information management, policy, and services (pp. 72-84). Norwood  N.J.: Ablex Pub. Corp.

Read 19 October 2010

Argues that “Librarianship is neither a discipline nor a profession as traditionally defined, and it has no real prospects of becoming one” (72). This, though, is only to set the stage for what kind of research we should be doing and how it should be done.

This was an interesting article that I would like to see more widely discussed. Much in it could be debated. But most interesting would be the implications for the field if, in general, we ended up agreeing with the author’s major conclusions.

Sections:

• NEITHER A DISCIPLINE …
• … NOR A PROFESSION
• THE ROLE OF RESEARCH IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A DISCIPLINE
• THE ROLE OF RESEARCH IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PROFESSION
• THE ROLE OF RESEARCH IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF LIBRARIANSHIP
• “TECHNICAL RATIONALITY” VERSUS “REFLECTION-IN-ACTION”
• NEW RESEARCH STYLES FOR LIBRARIANSHIP

I imagine that her comments under the section THE ROLE OF RESEARCH IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF LIBRARIANSHIP could really start some flame wars if not read with an open mind and a deferred judgment, at least, until she gets to these lines: “This is not to say that they represent work that is trivial or easy or takes no training. But neither need they be the exclusive province of a particular “profession”" (78).

Another area that might start some “healthy” discussion is that she seemingly defends “how we do it good” articles (79).

The author’s claim is that, after some argument to get here, “Librarianship is neither a discipline nor a profession, but rather an occupation grounded in techniques and personal “arts” (79). This claim is what grounds the kind of research she argues for.

Citing an article of hers then in press, she states that she has “argued that we should discard the notion of library “science” as itself a cohesive research field and instead draw to us experts from appropriate disciplines and work with them to explore the problems of technology, communication, economics, politics, sociology, and cognition that affect libraries and information transfer generally” (80). The author then lists three possible ways to accomplish that (80-81). These also would stir some healthy debate; especially amongst those in or valuing the doctoral degree in LIS.

The bottom line is a call for researchers to partner with practitioners (81-82). She also calls for a greatly expanded grant-based support of this type of research (82).

The author then suggests three possible ways in which the divide between research and practice in the field might be overcome (82):

• Require and strengthen empirical research methods in the Master’s education.
• Create “more formal means of mingling practitioners and scholars, as equals, expressly to discuss research” (82).
• “Library and library school directors must provide time for their people to explore common interests together” (82). This, of course, would require a change in academic reward structures.

I’m betting a few of my friends would find the bit about “a faculty shortage in this field” perversely funny. Perhaps there was back when this was written. Then again, all of us have been hearing this siren call of impending jobs for too long of a time. Nonetheless, this was just an aside and is highly temporally contextual to a time now past. Still, I wanted to mention it as it is the kind of thing some people will write off an entire article for. Don’t do that in this case is all I’m saying.

There is much of value in this article; much that can be questioned, discussed or debated; and perhaps a little to make one roll one’s eyes. I’m keeping my cards close to my chest as to which is which for me. The most that I’m saying is that in the larger scheme of her paper I agree.

I read this at the coffee shop one morning a couple of weeks ago and, as usual, was quite impressed. She shows that a model of communication is mandatory for information science but that one of information seeking is optional. She also critiques the overuse of ‘information’ and makes the “radical suggestion” that we need a whole new language for library and information science (143). Yes, yes, and yes! [Was cited by Dick 1995; see below for citation. Or this blog post: 2 articles by Archie Dick]

Based on a linguistic analysis of phrases including the word ‘information,’ randomly sampled across a 20-year period from Library & Information Science Abstracts (LISA: 1969-Sep 1989), “establishes three predominant cognitive models of information and the information transfer process” (130, abstract).

Outline of article:

• Introduction
• Related Cognitive Models
• Method
• Results
• Analysis
  • Focus of models
  • Compatibility of models
  • Direct communication model
  • Indirect communication model
  • Information-seeking model
• Discussion
• Conclusions
• Appendix A
  • A. Direct communication (DC) model
  • B. Indirect communication (IC) model
  • C. Information-seeking (IS) model
• Appendix B. Syntagms evoking general frames
• References

Introduction

In trying to determine the cognitive models within the field the author made two basic assumptions: “(1) the literature of a field incorporates the cognitive models common to the discipline; and (2) linguistic analysis can be used to ferret out what those models are” (131).

Related Cognitive Models

Green discovered three models, two of which take the perspective of the information system and one which takes the perspective of the information user. The first two fall under the critique of

“the traditional paradigm of information transfer criticised by Dervin. In what she refers to as a positivistic or information-theoretic framework, information is perceived as a self-existent and absolute entity, independent of human minds. Information is stored within a variety of types of information systems, which users may approach in order to extract information relevant to their needs” (132).

Method

Pointing out that the phenomena of the information transfer process “is the key event around which library and information science is built,” Green states that

“If the positivistic model of information transfer observed by Dervin is truly representative of the thinking of the profession and if that mode of thinking is as dysfunctional as Dervin suggests (which, no doubt it is), library and information science educators and researchers would have some serious overhauling and restructuring of their cognitive models to accomplish” (132-33/133).

I adore her all over again for that “which, no doubt it is” aside.

There are a couple limitations of the method used that are listed (134). One of them, which is only a possible limitation or less of one than is suspected, would be partially answered if this study were repeated for the period 1990-2010. I would love to see that comparison.

Analysis

As one can guess from the outline of the article above, the three models found are: Direct communication (DC) model, Indirect communication (IC) model, and the Information-seeking (IS) model (135). I will leave it to the interested reader to delve further into this paper on their own if they are interested in these models and the specific support found for them via Dr. Green’s analysis.

Discussion

“As noted previously, communication models and information-seeking models are not inherently incompatible. Given that information transfer is the basic phenomenon around which library and information science revolves, the discipline must have a model of communication from information source to information user. Since the information user is often the initiator of the information transfer, we may have (and in general we would like to have) information-seeking models, too. Thus, a model of communication is mandatory; a model of information-seeking, although desirable, is theoretically optional. The upshot of this recognition is that the discipline’s models of communication are more crucial than its model(s) of information-seeking. … Sadly, our models of communication provide little insight as to how information transfer is actually effected” (141, empahsis mine).

While I will leave the concept of “information transfer” stand for now, this idea of a “transfer” is also to be rejected. Nonetheless, whatever fills the role of this so-called “information transfer” will still be “the key event around which library and information science is built” (132-33). Thus, a proper theory of communication is the basis for all that we do in library and information science, whether theory or practice.

Did the information-seeking model that was discovered accomplish its aims? No, it did not. Although ostensibly focused on the user, the IS model still emphasized the information system far too much, along with paying more attention to quantity vs. quality of the information retrieved (recall vs. precision) (141-42).

The issue is that

“the cognitive models of the user are not considered. Moreover, the cognitive models embodied in the information retrieved are also ignored; the relevance of information to a user’s need is defined solely in terms of shared ‘aboutness’, without respect to compatibility of underlying cognitive frameworks. Consequently, matching information retrieved to information needed is perceived mechanistically” (142).

This provides a an exceptional argument for domain analysis and a focus on epistemological relevance and viewpoint. Just because some source is ‘about’ a topic does not mean it will meet the needs of a user; any user much less a specific user.

The next paragraph warmed my heart to no end:

“Unfortunately, such a view of information retrieval, which is in the same vein as the positivistic or information-theoretic framework as criticized by Dervin, is, one may argue, built into our understanding of the word ‘information’. … This leaves us with the question why we have adopted such heavy use of the word ‘information’ throughout our discipline when the cognitive models associated with it are in at least some respects incompatible with what we are trying to accomplish” (142).

Conclusions

“Shortcomings discovered in the analysis … highlight the areas where our focus of research should be: the cognitive structures of texts; and how readers perceive them, re-mould them, and integrate them with the cognitive models they possessed at the outset of the interaction” (142, emphasis mine).

The question of integration is actually the foundation of all of these questions, as it is of the question of communication.

“A second recommendation stems from the observation that the word ‘information’ predisposes us to think of the retrieval process in a mechanistic sense, which goes counter to our modern understanding of how the process should be viewed. (Ironically, the word ‘retrieval’ also carries this bias.) … The recommendation offered here is a radical one: we need to change the basic inventory of words we use to communicate about our field. We should be more concerned with learning and knowledge than with retrieval and information” (142-43).

Change our language? Yes, yes, yes!

This article provides me the following:

• A theory of communication is mandatory for LIS
• A theory of comm is prior to a theory of information-seeking
• An argument for domain analysis and epistemological considerations
• A critique of ‘information’ as the basis for my discipline
• A call to radically change our language within the field

Officially, I am registered for one 8-hour “class” this semester, LIS593 CAS Project.

Individual study of a problem in library or information science; forms the culmination of the Certificate of Advanced Study program. Only 8 hours will apply to the CAS degree [catalog].

As to what I’m doing there pick pretty much any post from last year, but especially starting mid-May. Or, perhaps this is best?

More on this topic <patented hand-waving> in the future </ patented hand-waving>.

Besides working 60% which is beginning to seem like a lot again, I am sitting in on 2 seminars. There are several of us nuts in each of them and some folks actually taking the classes for grades.

Both are on Tuesday, which is my only non-work day, in the afternoon and at night. Both are on campus. I love my distance peeps but I am a bad LEEP student.

590SA Topics in Subject Access : Pauline Cochrane and Kathryn La Barre

An advanced topics seminar in subject access and subject analysis that covers a range of topics including aspects of the traditional bibliographic canon regarding OPACS, the challenge of universal subject access in a digital world, ongoing discussions about Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), new search and discovery tools (including experimentations with hybrid folksonomic and corporate taxonomic approaches (syllabus version). [catalog]

Pauline is emphasizing the duality between subject access and subject analysis, as she says there “is a split in focus in library science [specifically]; these two vantage points are our heritage.”

Early readings/assignments include reading 2 chapters from her festschrift (Wheeler). We’re reading Robert Fugmann, “Obstacles in Progress in Mechanized Subject Access and the Necessity of a Paradigm Change,” and our own Linda Smith’, “Subject Access in Interdisciplinary Research.” I’m not sure if I’ve read the Fugmann but the Smith is excellent. I’ve read it at least 3 times before.

There is another assignment that involves the Clinic book but I am not concerned with doing it.

Readings for next week are the 2 chapters of the festschrift I previously listed, and 2 from Visualizing …: Elizabeth D. Liddy’s “Natural Language Processing for Information Retrieval and Knowledge Discovery” and Joseph A Busch’s “Building and Accessing Vocabulary Resources for Networked Resource Discovery and Navigation.”

Wheeler, William J, ed. 2000. Saving the Time of the Library User Through Subject Access Innovation: Papers in Honor of Pauline Atherton Cochrane. Champaign, IL: Publications Office, Graduate School of Library and Information Science. [WorldCat]

Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. 1998. Visualizing Subject Access for 21st Century Information Resources. Eds. Pauline A Cochrane and Eric H Johnson. Champaign, IL: Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. [WorldCat]

We also are reading an unpublished paper (1979) of Pauline’s on universal subject access and advising her on its suitability for publication today as a means to think about these issues and, I would add, historically and contemporarily.

590OD Ontology Development : Allen Renear

An introduction to formal ontology focusing on development and implementation issues and contemporary ontology software tools and languages. In spring of 2008 we will use as example ontologies one for museum and heritage information (CIDOC-CRM) and one for biological information (the Functional Model of Anatomy). Students may also do projects on other ontologies in other areas if they wish. The ontology editor Protege will be used throughout and the representation of ontologies in W3C semantic web languages RDF(S) and OWL will be emphasized. [catalog]

This is an odd class for Allen as it involves a hands-on component using Protégé to view, edit, build ontologies. Protégé is a free, open-source ontology editor.

Some of the topics we will be becoming “familiar” with are RDF and OWL, which I certainly need more knowledge of.

Related miscellanea

On a side note, I’m thinking of taking the TEI workshop again later in Feb. I did it 2 years ago on my birthday weekend. The then draft P5 version was formalized this past year so it can’t hurt to have a look again over a weekend.

While in one sense, these classes are completely extraneous to me, although in a larger sense they are important. Luckily I’ll have the flexibility to commit any level of effort, including none, to them. I foresee far more than none most of the time, though. Time will tell.

Technically, I still have an incomplete for my vocabularies independent study from last spring. Four hours. In truth, those 4 hours along with those from Bibliography will be extra hours when completed. This needs to be cleaned up as it has finally turned to an F. There is also the possibility of having it dropped, or more likely changed to Withdrawal.

I am hoping that one of these 2 classes will inspire me to spit out “a school assignment” somehow on the topic of vocabularies that I can turn in to be graded. I’d still really like to do what I had planned all along, but it will not happen, now.

Somehow it seems likely one or both will generate a topic. But will it be one that I can just generate something from? Something of quality, of course. But. Normal-sized.

Except this is no game to me.

I seem to be really struggling with writing my bibliographical essay and bibliography (primarily as an ancillary issue). I have realized that this is vastly new writing territory for me. There are, in fact, several pieces of writing by me of which I am particularly proud. Many of these are publicly available; some were turned into blog posts either at my previous blog (now residing here) or at this one.

Many of those pieces were written while engaging primarily with one text (often only one), along with a few supporting texts and/or class discussion to that point. This would be true of things from my early philosophy days or through history, anthropology, and sociology on to my LIS stuff with something like, “Is Bibliography a Science?” (590EB, Summer 2005) which had a handful of citations and a few dictionary definitions to “A Tale of Two Properties; or, CIDOC CRM P88 and P89“(590OH, Spring 2007) which is one standard, a small number of significant supporting, or critiquing standards and documents and a parcel of Wikipedia citations. [I never believed I would ever turn in anything with Wikipedia citations but the prof is fine with them, and I am for the sorts of things I used them for.]

Then in Fall 2006 (590TR) I wrote my first significant lit review with 42 citations (hopefully) woven into a particular story about “Mapping Thesauri for Interdisciplinary Work.” I did get an A but for various, legitimate reasons I do not yet have the comments that the prof wants to make. So. I know I did well—which has a pleasant habit of recurring—but I don’t know why or what could be improved—which has a similarly recurrent, but nasty, role in my education.

My lit review involved a fair few sources, most of which were articles, but they simply had to be woven into a coherent narrative that told the story I intended. There were many more good ones to choose from so it was mostly tell the story and then pick the sources that make the specific points you need to support, ensuring they cohere “internally” when telling the story.

Now I find myself facing, primarily, the mutli-decade output of two prolific scholars who, each in their own way, question and probe the foundations of their disciplines. Certainly I am representing Integrationism a bit more broadly than just Harris, but he is well represented as he should be. As for Hjørland I am letting him speak primarily for himself. But that implies that the people he cites are in conversation with him [Winograd & Flores, Wittgenstein, Goody, ....]

I am trying to make, show, demonstrate, suggest, … and inspire connections between the ideas, sources, and (partial) published output of two prolific scholars. And although Harris has written a boatload of articles, I have been mostly reading his (almost equally prolific) book output.

So this is an entirely new kind of analysis, synthesis and writing (process especially) for me. [Here's the unannotated bibliography for now.] And I’m struggling. Badly.

I will get there, but it’ll take time. I hope so anyway as the amount of interlocking citations is only going to double, and probably triple, at a minimum, when I switch to the overall CAS paper for Spring [defend early May].

At the moment I am only supposed to be focusing on the direct and passably direct connections between Harris and Hjørland. But I simply cannot stop my mind (nor do I want to) from making connections that are important for the larger paper but not at the moment. They need to be recorded, processed, and hopefully remembered or refound when needed. So much new and interesting stuff to read and so much need for re-reading and synthesizing/synopsizing.

I still need to do some annotations and they could all be done differently … and I need to write the bibliographical essay making the one explicit (one-way) link and the others that I choose to weave into my narrative tying these two together as a start.

I have an “idea index” on my internal wiki, although the most up-to-date version is in my draft bibliographical essay Word doc. It almost seems as if real 3×5 cards would be best for this to avoid any multiple versions problem but they are useless from a portability option when one is already carrying a laptop. I need to do something with it though as it has become broader than the current essay and is geared toward the overall CAS paper now.

So if anyone has any good tips/views/ways/rubrics for dealing with large bodies of works—bodies comprised largely of two prolific scholars and their associated colleagues and citees—that need to be interwoven please feel free to pass along what you may.

… we may also say that until we make clear and explicit to ourselves, by reflection on our activities and goals, what it is we know and how that knowledge is related to the rest of our knowledge, we do not fully understand or fully realize what we have been doing and pursuing.

…

… Analysis is not in practice separable from criticism, nor elucidation from reform and rebuilding. But a little clarification in one place is likely only to expose further obscurities and difficulties in neighboring places, and there is some truth in the claim that we cannot clarify anything unless we clarify everything. Since we cannot manage that, we must be content with relative clarity and a bit of precarious understanding (2)

Wilson, Patrick. 1968. Two Kinds of Power : an Essay on Bibliographical Control. Berkeley: University of California Press.

I really have the utmost respect for Birger Hjørland. I may not agree with everything he says but I do see him evolving in ways that I do more agree with. And I’m hoping to prod him into using more of Harris’ and other’s Integrational ideas. But my respect comes not for his agreeing with my views (Forfend!) but from his public attempt to formulate a coherent account, as comprehensive as possible, of his chosen discipline and its overlap with ancillary or adjoining fields. He seems to be after a “systematic philosophy” the likes of which is rarely attempted anymore, at least by philosophers, and even more rarely by others.

His belief in the centrality of epistemology for our field resonates with the entire course of my life.

Many of the ideas and sources which have led me to this place have pretty much been my life for the past year [look at my "Some things read this week" posts for 2007]. And will be for at least the next 5 months more. Due to the nature of the problems, they, if not the readings, will (and have) been with me for all of my life.

Language, communication, epistemology, meaning, definition, knowledge, …

Monday, 22 Oct

Oops, I forgot the Alumni Reception in the evening. They had awesome food this year. Kudos!

Tuesday, 23 Oct

Poster Session III

Those of most interest to me:

Searching for Books and Images in OPAC: Effects of LCSH, TOC and Subject Domains. Youngok Choi, Ingrid Hsieh-Yee and Bill Kules (Catholic U of America)

Tagging and Findability: Do Tags Help Users Find Things? Margaret Kipp (U of Western Ontario)

Browsing with a Metadata Infrastructure for Events, Periods and Time. Ray R. Larson and Michael Buckland (UC-Berkeley)

I had a very nice conversation with Ingrid Hsieh-Yee and was able to thank her for her LC report generated as an action item from the previous “future of bib control” conference. See here for my initial comments on this report and a link to it. [If there had been wifi at the conference I could have looked this up and discussed some of these questions with the author.]

Larson and Buckland have presented on their project a couple times and it is a wonderful example of what can be done if we were to have vocabularies and authorities widely available.

Took a trip to Downtown Books for a fairly priced, used copy of the 2 v. set of John Lyons’ Semantics. I also picked up a copy of Borgmann’s Crossing the Postmodern Divide for a really good price. I’m pretty surprised that carrying those books around in the same bag for several hours didn’t result in a rift in the fabric of space-time. Hat tip to Tom for alerting me to Lyons availability in Downtown Books.

Social Computing, Folksonomies and Image Tagging: Reports from the Research Front. Samantha Hastings (moderator), Hemalata Iyer (SUNY-Albany), Diane Neal (NCCU), Abebe Rorissa (SUNY-Albany), and JungWon Yoon (USF).

Iyer:

• User supplied image category labels. Thinks prototype theory is applicable to tagging.
• In social tagging group labels tend to be superordinate. Individual labels = more Related Terms/non-hierarchical associative terms.
• Not much structure; is structure desirable?
• Influence of the 1st tagger is great – thus initial tags by author or professional. [Excuse me? Why the desire for control?]
• Further exploration of prototypes and basic level needed in tag research.

Neal – PhotojournalsmAndUADs geotagged:ASSSIST2007MilwaueWI topresent [title; misspellings on purpose]

Rorissa:

• There is no single model, nor any single method.
• Change Ranganathan’s 2nd law to “Every user his or her overview of the document collection.”

Yoon – Semantics of User-Supplied Tags

Awards Lunch – sat with Christina

Tagging and Social Networks: The Impact of Communities on User-Centered Tagging. Heather D. Pfeiffer (NMSU), Edward M. Corrado (College of NJ), Margaret Kipp (Long Island U/UWO), Qiping Zhang (Long Island U), Heather Moulaisen (??) and Emma Tonkin (U of Bath).

Corrado – Social Tagging: Community Tagging or Personal Tagging in Communities? Tried to answer the question, “Are people really tagging socially?” by looking at the code4lib community.

Kipp – Patterns in Tagging: Collaborative Classification Practices in Social Bookmarking Tools. Looked at del.icio.us, Connotea and CiteULike.

Zhang – Social Tagging in China (co-researcher is Zhenzhong Sheng). Is looking at cross-cultural patterns in tagging in the long-run. This work reported on their attempt to answer what tagging is and how it is viewed in China.

Moulaisen – Social Tagging in France: The Evolution of a Phenomenon. Looked at the Tecktonic killer (dance) phenomenon among some French youth on YouTube and how tagging is used in that context.

Tonkin – Community in User-Centred Tagging.

• Characteristics of tags depend on: interface, use case, user population, user intent/motivation for tagging.
• Assertion: tags = ‘language-in-use.’ Informal, transient, intended for a limited audience, implicit
• What’s in a tag? Marshall’s dimensions of annotation. [The Future of Annotation in a Digital (Paper) World, Catherine C. Marshall]
• Participatory mechanisms in language development
• Speech/discourse community
• The ‘C’ words: Context, Community, Confusion … ?
• Caution: seeing named social entities in a dataset may reflect preconceptions…

This was a very coherent panel. More folks who should be well funded if we want any answers.

Dinner with a large group of students from assorted places at the Water Street Brewery.

SIGCON. Quite a different attitude than last year regarding tagging. This year it was sanctioned and even the tools were provided and yet I saw very little of it happening. Last year a small handful of us illicitly made it happen. And call me bitter, if you will, but a little bit of props for SIGTAG would have been in line, not to mention intellectually honest.

I know I’m about the only one who doesn’t find LOLCats humorous. But that was not funny at all.

And what is it about IS/librarian-types that they have to pick on others in their humor? Is it because we feel so powerless ourselves? Sorry but I do not find it funny for librarians to diss paraprofessionals. In fact, it is unprofessional. Last year it was picking on the disabled.

Can I just say that I enjoyed myself far, far more last year. No disrespect meant to my friends that I sat with this year, but last year my posse was all new to me and we were actively involved.

Wednesday, 24 Oct

SIG HFIS (History and Foundations of IS) breakfast meeting. Breakfast and conversation with Marcia Bates, Michael Buckland, Toni Carbo, Trudi Hahn, Thomas Haigh, Barbara Kwasnik, Kathryn La Barre, Julian Warner, Cheryl Knott Malone, Howard White and Margie Avery. Business meeting after breakfast.

Plenary, Clifford Lynch. For a recap suggested by Dorothea see this one at RSS4Lib.

Lunch at The King and I with Christina Pikas, Jack Vinson and Jordan Frank.

Headed home after lunch. Without driving through Chicago during rush hour on a Friday night it was a 4.5 hour trip.

You were missed deeply and by many, my dear friend. I hope you caught some of the healing love sent your way.

And, Ben, we talked about you too, boy. Missed, indeed, you were.

Saturday, 13 Oct

Goody, Jack. The Interface Between the Written and the Oral. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

• Preface
• Ch. 1: The historical development of writing (Sat-Sun)

Highly recommended by Dr. Hjørland in several places.

Chen, Hsinchun. “Semantics Issues for Digital Libraries.” In Harum and Twidale, Eds. Successes & Failures of Digital Libraries. 35th Annual Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing, 1988: 70-79. [Not yet in IDEALS, but will be.]

Sunday, 14 Oct

Zelle, John M. Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science. Wilsonville, Or: Franklin, Beedle, 2004. [LIS452 text]

• Ch. 11: Data Collections

Downey, et. al. How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (2nd ed). at Open Book Project. [Text for LIS452]

• Ch. 14: Classes and methods
• Ch. 15: Sets of objects
• Ch. 16: Inheritance
• Ch. 8 List

Hjørland, Birger and Karsten Nissen Pedersen. “A substantive theory of classification for information retrieval.” Journal of Documentation 61(5), 2005: 582-597. doi: 10.1108/00220410510625804

Assorted draft standards and proposals for standards as part of my ASIS&T Standards Committee work.

Sunday – Monday, 14 – 15 Oct

Goody, Jack. See above.

• Ch. 2: Literacy and achievement in the Ancient World (Sun-Mon)
• Ch. 3: Africa, Greece and oral poetry
• Ch. 4: Oral composition and oral transmission: the case of the Vedas
• Ch. 5: The impact of Islamic writing on oral cultures
• Ch. 6: Literacy and the non-literate: the impact of European schooling

Monday, 15 Oct

Downey, et. al. How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (2nd ed). at Open Book Project. [Text for LIS452]

• Ch. 9: Tuples
• Ch. 10: Dictionaries

Love, Nigel. “The Fixed-Code Theory.” In Harris, Roy, and George Wolf, eds. Integrational Linguistics: A First Reader. 1st ed, Kidlington, Oxford, UK: Pergamon, 1998.

Tuesday, 16 Oct

Goody, Jack. See above.

• Ch. 7: Alternative paths to knowledge in oral and literate cultures
• Ch. 8: Memory and learning in oral and literate cultures: the reproduction of the Bagre

Hjørland, Birger. “The Concept of ‘Subject’ in Information Science.” Journal of Documentation 48(2), June 1992: 172-200.

Wednesday, 17 Oct

Santana Martinez, Pedro. “Some comments on the relations between organised knowledge and language: Rhetorical devices and the role of semantics.” In Inchaurralde, Carlos (Ed.) Perspectives on Semantics and Specialised Languages. Universidad de Zaragoza, Departamento de Filología Inglesa y Alemana, 1994: 147-153.

Book as a whole cited in this book by Hjørland in “Domain analysis in information science: Eleven approaches — traditional as well as innovative.” Journal of Documentation 58(4), 2002: 443 re semantics and specialized languages.

Goody, Jack. See above.

• Ch. 9: Writing and formal operations: a case study among the Vai (with Michael Cole and Syliva Scribner)
• Ch. 10: The interface between the sociological and psychological analysis of literacy (Wed-Thu)

Dillon, A. (2007). “LIS as a research domain: problems and prospects.” Information Research, 12(4) [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/12-4/colis/colis03.html]

Found via Caveat Lector.

Friday, 19 Oct

Goody, Jack. See above.

• Ch. 11: Language and writing
• Ch. 12: Recapitulations

As I said above, this book is highly recommended by Dr. Hjørland in several places. I concur. I must say that the last few chapters, especially those read this morning, have resonated greatly with me. Perhaps this is due to my reading them after making a comment at Pegasus Librarian‘s post, “Desperately Seeking Search Boxes,” earlier this morning.

There are clearly other reasons, too. Some personal. Some due to much overlap I see between Goody, Hjørland and Harris. I may well need to re-read this book with a definite view to issues such as the Googlelization of search, IM, Twitter, and so on.

Hjørland, Birger. “Nine Principles of Knowledge Organization.” Knowledge Organization and Quality Management (3rd ISKO Conference, 20-24 June 1994). Advances in Knowledge Organization v.4, 91-100.

This article also resonated deeply with me re my comments at Iris’ place and on the “one search box to rule them all” phenomenon. I’ll pull out a few quotes that directly and/or indirectly address this issue.

For practical purposes, knowledge can be organized in different ways, and with different levels of ambition: … (93).

Any given categorization should reflect the purpose of that categorization. It is very important to teach the student to find out the lie of the land and apply ad hoc classifications, pragmatic classifications or scientific classifications when each kind of classification is most appropriate. … It is very important that you teach how to exploit subject-information already at hand, … (94, emphasis in original).

Different approaches, “paradigms” have different implication for categorization. There is no “a priori” scientific method of classification/categorization (96, emphasis in original).

The concept of “polyrepresentation” is important (96, emphasis in original).

To a certain degree different arts and sciences could be understood as different ways of organizing the same phenomena (97, emphasis in original).

It seems as if the priorities become more and more short-sighted, that less efforts are made to develop long-sighted, well-organized and well-cared for bodies of knowledge and literature (98).

Instead, IS much have a much more limited and humble scope: help facilitate the fruitful principles of knowledge organization and avoid the unfruitful ones by analyzing the different criteria for knowledge organization developing in all kinds of human activities, as well as their implicit or explicit goals, functions and consequences (99).

All of these address fundamental issues with the “let’s just give ‘em one search box ala Google” approach, especially in the context of higher education. If we are not going to require that students learn something about the ways in which knowledge is structured, and why, then why are we allowing them into colleges and universities? Why are we even continuing such an institution if this is not a, and perhaps the, fundamental goal of said institution?

And, yes, I would argue that this needs to happen at a much earlier stage of education. We are a long way from that desiderata, though, so it seems to me that this should be the main idea to be imparted by a college education.

How far down the rabbit holes can I fall, and can I then tunnel between them whilst still falling?

Do I deserve my “little ducklings” or would I be better served by spectators at my self-immolation?

I offer the ducklings/spectators the option of deciding for themselves and changing their minds as they see fit, just as I reserve the right to change what I think I’m doing here.

I’m not sure that I’m really ready for this (the announcement, not the work) but I have decided on the topic for my CAS project, which since it came “soon enough” in the semester has changed my topic for my bibliography in Bibliography class this semester.

For Bibliography I had decided, and significantly begun, on the (primary) English-language publications of Dr. Birger Hjørland. Based on my wide-ranging interests and readings of the last several months I had been attracted to more and more of his articles and ideas. He also has a fairly representative list of publications available on his website, though it is not complete. A few A&I searches, luck, and ensuring that the “right people” know of my interest and I quickly have a pretty close to exhaustive list. Much of it is available electronically and much more will be as soon as Knowledge Organization gets online. I now have almost everything printed or photocopied and in 2 large binders (except for his book which remains pristinely non-hole punched).

I was really looking forward to (and had begun) reading this substantial amount of material chronologically. How many of us have ever had the opportunity to do such a thing and literally observe (as much as possible via published output) someone’s views develop over time?

But a choice of CAS project topic forced a shift. As I said previously (and even earlier in other venues), one of the possible things to address during Bibliography was “compiling my working bibliography for my CAS project.” But as the semester began I still had no idea what I was going to do for my project.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I “knew” my topic. But it has taken several weeks and multiple conversations to go from the idea that my topic could only be addressed as a dissertation, to it being doable if I take the “long route” to finishing my CAS by getting a job first, to “Suck it up, dude! You can do this in a semester” to “Yes, I have it and damn it, I’m excited about it!”

So what is my topic? Well, I actually did a better job giving it away the other day than I feel up to at the moment. But simply put, I am going to attempt to apply Integrationism to the field of LIS [see both links for more details.]

What does this mean for my immersion in Dr. Hjørland’s work? At least two points come immediately to mind. First, of the major epistemological viewpoints or “paradigms” in LIS, I see his approach “(the ‘sociological-epistemological paradigm’ or the ‘domain analytic approach’)” (Hjørland, 1998, 611) as the only one (currently) capable of embracing an integrationist perspective. Second, it is a handful of his articles which have seriously allowed me to see (or perhaps crystallize for me ) some of the overarching themes, stances, viewpoints, paradigms, and so on in our field. Thus, much of his work remains critically important to my further work and, in particular, to my CAS project topic.

For instance, I took myself out for dinner and drinks this evening and read the intro chapter to his book (1997) and took notes. There are several places where his language practically screams Integrationism.

As for my bibliography itself, it has gone from being boldly reaching in quantity but well defined and bounded to highly amorphous and about as vaguely defined as possible. But I absolutely adore Dr. Krummel for allowing me to take this route. I have not completely shifted to Harris (and/or Integrationism) as that is a much bigger topic for a bibliography. What I am theoretically focusing on at the moment are the points of contact between Harris and Hjørland. Depth and not quantity is the operative word now. Quality was always the operative word and still is.

Dr. Krummel said he is completely unconcerned about the number of entries that are in the final bibliography and that my focus is on the direct points of contact while including and defining the grey areas to either side as best as I can. That leeway and trust seriously frees me up to do some important exploratory work. I can read the things I was reading anyway, albeit in a different light, and include the things I consider important without having to worry about reading pretty much a whole body of work.

Have I leapt in over my head? Again? Probably. But I am fired up about this whole project! Hell, I even seem to be turning into a proper researcher and doing well thought out searches, considering what kind of sources I need for each aspect of my project, talking to subject librarians, and so on.

I have been making so many book purchases lately that the credit union contacted me to make sure someone hadn’t stolen my debit card info. I have mostly been buying Harris books, but I ordered 2 proceedings last night with papers by Hjørland in them. In most cases I have library copies available and even in my possession. But I want and/or need these for myself.

Today I had another productive conversation with Kathryn because she is my advisor and because Dr. Krummel insisted that I keep in touch with her about all of this. What an easy demand to meet! As my ideas have been coalescing to morphing to coalescing again I have been wavering about whether I was going/needed to meet with Dr. Hjørland one-on-one when he comes to visit soon. Today I scheduled this meeting.

Now I have an ambitious list of things to address in preparation for making this a productive meeting for both of us. I need to read some of and re-read some others of Dr. Hjørland’s publications, same for Harris, hopefully have a productive talk with The Improbable Don Quixote, make some short overview sketches, and try to have a short overview document of “the issues” as I see them for Dr. Hjørland’s convenience a day or two in advance.

“Yeah.” Anyone got a match?

Seriously though. I am absolutely stoked! Perhaps I’m just too stupid to be more than a itty-bitty bit concerned about what I’m getting myself into. Perhaps I expect too much of myself. But I want this.

I do not expect to revolutionize the world or even LIS. I certainly do not expect to solve anything. Even if I managed the first I wouldn’t accomplish the second. But I can do a good job of laying out what I see as a major problem area in our field. I can point to some overlap and points of contact between two major theoreticians.

Best of all possible outcomes? Who knows?

Success? Spark a few interests and start a conversation. That is what I am aiming for. Well, and a tad bit of learning for mself along the way.

The upside for the moment is that it keeps me out of the biblioblogosphere for a while. Perhaps a very good thing? Cause some of you folks … yeah, I got some things to say and they may not be exactly endearing. But some of you really need to come down off your high horses. Sure, you’ve got some valid points but it simply is not the case that we all learn the same nor is it always the case that trying to take a middle road or questioning is meant to be obstructionist. The place has become mighty fractious (and worse) again. Disagreement I like. Veiled name-calling, belittling, “just get on board,” and “my way is the right way” are not disagreement and they are certainly not discussion. They are condescending, they are threatening, and they are wrong. OK, done.

See what I mean? Probably best I have no time to get into all this at the moment.

Hjørland, Birger. “Theory and Metatheory of Information Science: A New Interpretation.” Journal of Documentation. 54.5 (1998): 606-621.

Hjørland, Birger. Information Seeking and Subject Representation: An Activity-theoretical Approach to Information Science. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1997.

… 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.

Thursday – Sunday, 6 – 9 Sep

Capurro, Rafael and Birger Hjørland. “The Concept of Information.” ARIST 37, 2003: 343-411.

This is an excellent and lengthy review article on the concept of information. It is much broader in coverage than just IS, though, looking also at the concept interdisciplinarily and, in specific, in the natural sciences, the social sciences and humanities, and in LIS.

It is, as one might imagine for a lit review, full of useful sources. My only complaint—and it is mostly inwardly focused on my monolingualism—is that the authors cite a lot of German sources, including some of the more interesting sounding ones. [I know David, it is not too late to learn.]

For instance, although I did not fully accept some of the ideas attributed to Weizsäcker, I can fully accept these ideas:

Finally, Weizsäcker points to the “unavoidable circle” between language and information; that is, between word plurivocity and conceptual univocity, as a characteristic of exact thinking. The reason is that we are finite observers and actors within language as well as within evolution. We cannot, in Kantian terms, understand things as they are in themselves and therefore we never have fully univocal concepts (Weizsäcker sources omitted, emphasis mine, 363).

Contrast this with this view from Priss, commented on here.

The advantage of formalizations, however, is that notions are defined with absolute precision within the formal realm and that they therefore may be implementable in software (draft 12).

The implications of Weizsäcker’s comment run deep for machine inferencing.

There are even a fair few decent looking sources for the more politically active/socially conscious amongst us. For example:

Braman supposedly shows the different approaches to defining information for policy makers and how this is, in fact, a political decision (373-74).

Braman, S. (1989). Defining information: An approach for policymakers. Telecommunications Policy, 13 (1), 233-242. This article is also cited on p. 345 and on p. 346.

“Romm (1997) shows that serious ethical implications are involved in defining something as factual as opposed to meaningful” (387).

Romm, N. (1997). Implications of regarding information as meaningful rather than factual. In R. L. Winder, S. K. Probert & I. A. Beeson (Eds.), Philosophical aspects of information systems (pp. 23-34). London: Taylor & Francis.

Lengthy, but recommended.

Sunday – Saturday, 9 – 15 Sep

Harris, Roy. Introduction to Integrational Linguistics. 1st ed, Kidlington, Oxford, UK: Pergamon, 1998.

Read chaps. 1-5.

Wednesday, 12 Sep

Harel, David. Computers Ltd.: What They Really Can’t Do. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. (Text for LIS452)

Read ch. 1. [book arrived late.]

Saturday, 15 Sep

Downey, et. al. How to Think Like a Computer Scientist (2nd ed). at Open Book Project. (Text for LIS452)

• Ch. 3: Functions
• Ch. 4: Conditionals and recursion
• Ch. 5: Fruitful functions
• Ch. 6: Iteration

I actually read a lot more this week but it was mostly a different kind of reading as I began work on my bibliography. More on that topic later.