Sunday, Oct 21

Who Is Tagging Information? – Edward C. Lomax (Georgia State U), Hsin-liang “Oliver” Chen (U of MO-Columbia), and June Abbas (SUNY-Buffalo).

Lomax spoke about Social Tagging in K-12 Education; Chen spoke about Social Tagging and Newspapers; Abbas spoke about Tagging and Libraries and Museums.

The panel was down two members so that had some impact on the program.

I’m not going to get into details as I took few notes but despite June’s best efforts this panel was only the first of several that really left me depressed about this portion of my field. I later had a conversation with June (and have had a few on other occasions) and I know she gets it. But what the heck is most everyone else’s problem(s)?

There are fundamental issues with tagging (as with anything else) in libraries and, in particular, as a means of access and retrieval. But these can be dealt with. Anyone who reads me regularly well knows that I am quick to play devil’s advocate and ask the tough questions while all the cool kids are espousing how great something is. But good God! Can we please move forward with some real research in this area? I most certainly do not mean to disparage June’s or Margaret Kipp’s (and a very few others) here. They are doing good work, but can we please support them?

My conference roommate was also quite disturbed by the state of research in this area and it was having a serious impact on his view of his first ASIS&T. When he questioned me as to why this was it sounded like he was putting much of the blame on the researchers. But this is not the case at all. Tag researchers in no way control the systems (OPAC, tag systems,etc.) that (may) implement these tools. Let’s hope PennTags is doing something useful with their data; even better would be if they’ll share that data with outside researchers.

Another big issue in this equation is that large-scale, easily implementable tag systems are fairly new. Certainly far newer than the 10 years of research in tagging.

Here are only some of the disparate reasons why my roommate and I are so depressed about this:

Much is based on audience reaction(s): complete misunderstanding of tagging and/or how it even works [researchers have to give demonstrations of how tagging works in a session before presenting their research or the audience will be completely lost]; what about Internet predators?; do tags need to be vetted?; what about bad words?; are we just going to throw out privacy?; we can’t have the public adding things to our records, ….

In some cases it is the presenters themselves who are not really prepared to investigate such a multiply complex topic that they have happened to find interesting. One of the presenters in this session offered Amazon.com as the gold standard of tagging sites. Excuse me? There were several other non-starters offered up by two of the panelists but perhaps in the sake of mental health I have repressed them.

Yes, there are serious issues to be addressed in this area. I do not mean to make light of them. But if we cannot move further quickly now that we have systems that will allow us to do some real and useful research then we are failing ourselves and, more importantly, users.

Can someone please provide funding and access to a quality system to folks like June Abbas and Margaret Kipp?

Theoretical/Methodological Exploration (Papers)

Megan A. Winget (UTA) – “A Methodology and Model for Studying Boundary Objects, Annotations and Collaborative Practices: Musicians and Musical Scores.”

Jason M. Turner (Air Force Inst. of Tech.) – “Towards a Social Affordances Perspective of Media Capabilities and Interface Design.”

Miles Efron (UTA) – “What Crossword Puzzles Teach Us About Information.”

Upfront admission, I went to this session primarily based on the crossword paper. Boy, was I ever surprised!

I may not be a musician but Winget’s presentation was fascinating! I look forward to reading the whole thing. She looked at score annotations across amateur, semi-pro, and professional musicians in chamber group and orchestra settings. Annotations are almost always fascinating and this area was especially so.

As far as I’m concerned, this is one of the few must reads from the sessions I attended. Get your hands on the proceedings and read this one.

Efron on crossword puzzles was, for me, a big disappointment. As far as I’m concerned his title is a complete misnomer and a big unanswered and unaddressed question.

He took a mathematical approach to determining the difficulty level of the weekday New York Times crossword puzzles. As you may know, the difficulty level of the NYT puzzle (generally) increases from Monday to Saturday. The puzzle editor is the one to determine which puzzles are printed on which days. This work is an attempt to formalize that determination.

On one hand, it is kind of interesting and it works reasonably well. He also made sure to restrict his claims to being able to determine the difficulty level of a puzzle as to which day of the week it should be offered on and not as to the difficulty level of a specific puzzle for any individual puzzle solver. Kudos for that! Nonetheless, it really doesn’t seem to teach us anything about information and, more importantly, this sort of mathematical approach to word play is an anathema to me and many other word lovers. Color me mostly disappointed in this one.

Dinner at The King and I (Thai) with Karen, Wei and Gina (fellow UIUC students).

Welcome Reception/SIG Rush.

Monday, 22 Oct

Assuring Quality in the Information Professions – Nancy Roderer (moderator), Ann Prentiss (for José-Marie Griffiths), Charles Henry (CLIR), and Libby Trudell (Dialog)

Prentiss presented some early results from a 2006 IMLS study for Griffiths who could not be there at the last moment. Due to this we couldn’t get much beyond the slide content and it is early results. There may be something interesting to come out of this study, and I hope there will be, but not so much yet.

Henry as the President of CLIR had some interesting things to say.

Context: higher education, specifically the profound changes in HE, and the continual redefinement of libraries in HE

1 Rise of cyberinfrastructure – 3 major reports recently on the sciences, social sciences, and humanities are all in agreement

• technical layer
• software
• new kinds of expertise [these 3 are the definition of cyberinfrastructure]

leads to new research methods and new intellectual strategies [CLIR is more interested in these, along with the incredible collaboration that arises (from Q&A)]

2 Rise of new disciplines

3 Rise of undergraduate research

4 New models of scholarly publishing – books and articles less and less as growth of knowledge, more and more as accreditation

Trudell (Senior VP at Dialog and on SLA Board of Directors)

Context: Information industry and the role of info pros in business

Roles:

• Service supply side: large number of roles
• Product development end: design, QA, editorial, product documentation
• Senior management roles

Professional competencies across this broader perspective:

• core competencies
• people skills
• business savvy
• strategic perspective
• attitudes – assertiveness, proactiveness, flexibility, driver for change

Spectrum – varies by role

technical vs. content

knowledge of particular target area, e.g., pharma, …

Person should have an interest in a wide variety of ways info can contribute to success of the organization.

How can industry contribute?

• expand core curriculum
• partner in creative ways
• professional organizations, continuing certification, advocate for values of profession

What is role of service provider?

• on-going education and training: product/content, “Quantum program”/leadership development
• provide support for prof. orgs./library schools to do their jobs

Key is vendor participation in prof. orgs., not just as vendor display & funding, but as colleagues, and investment in education.

Q&A

Archivists and info managers are much more embedded in orgs. than libraries.

What about the downsides?

• HE doesn’t study itself closely. Info pros see these changes more clearly. Thus, we have an opportunity to lead. Onus is on us to do so.

Plenary: Anthea Stratigos, Outsell, Inc.

I took a few notes that I am not going to reproduce. This was highly disappointing on so many levels. ASIS&T is full of corporate and business types along with academics and practicing professionals, but I resent being sold a message of the market economy, which is all this boiled down to!

She really rubbed some of us the wrong way when she started off the section on the Library Environment with a slide with a picture of a card catalog and the caption, “It Used to be Simple.” While there is some truth to what she was trying to get at there are much better ways to get at that truth visually. There simply is nothing simple about the card catalog as a technology and/or information environment! While I am well aware that many of my colleagues think there was, it only goes to show their lack of education and understanding of history and systems.

I was so proud of Karen for going up during the Q&A and correcting Ms. Stratigos on this point. Oh, one should know that Karen is highly mathematical and her research focuses on the application of logic in our field. Way to represent, Karen!

One of her main claims is that libraries are not keeping up and/or moving fast enough. Of course, this claim was across libraries broadly. Enough said.

Under What Does this All Mean? we get the claim that all of this is “creating a permanent shift in consumer habits.” Sorry, Ms. Stratigos, but there is nothing permanent about this shift (these shifts, would be truer, also)! Shifts have happened before and will happen again. Shift may be permanent, but this shift is certainly not.

Under A New Order Emerges we get the shift from product-centric to market-centric. We also get Information as Entertainment and Entertainment as Information (ala Richard Saul Wurman). As something to celebrate. Perhaps I ought to learn to play the fiddle at this point?

Essential Actions gets summarized in the statement, “Be a digital marketer delivering a digital experience.” Um, no thank you.

So, yes, a marketing talk delivered by a marketer.

Lunch at the mall with Christina Pikas.

Poster Session II

Most interesting to me:

How Incorrect Information Delivers Correct Search Results: A Pragmatic Analysis of Queries. Jin Ha Lee and Allen Renear (UIUC)

What Exactly Is an Item in the Digital World? Ingbert R. Floyd and Allen Renear (UIUC). How often do you find research with two different views presented?

Tag Decay: A View into Aging Folksonomies. Terrell Russell (UNC-CH)

Tagging the Tags … Process, Observations and Analysis of Conversations in Metatagging at an ASIS&T Interactive Poster Session. Jennifer E. Graham and June M. Abbas. (SUNY-Buffalo). This was an initial follow-up to their amazing poster at last years ASIS&T. [Photo from about the mid-point.] Great stuff!

Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) Standards – Marcia Zeng (Kent State U), Margie Hlava (Access Innovations), Jian Qin (Syracuse U), Gail Hodge (Information International Associates), and Denise Bedford (World Bank Group)

Zeng covered some of the work that the ASIS&T Standards Committee did this past year [I am a member of this committee].

Hlava covered KOS standards, focusing primarily on the US and British controlled vocabulary standards.

Qin covered Encoding KOS: Languages for Machine Understanding and Processing.

Hodge covered KOS in the Government Environment: From Traditional Thesauri to Standards Integration.

“Agencies are interested in how better management of semantics can improve organization and access.” This quote makes me smile (as long as I ignore a literal parsing of “management of semantics”).

Bedford discussed Popularization and Use of Standards at World Bank. This was real-world usage on a vast scale across many languages. Fascinating stuff. My jaw about hit the floor when she said they use MultiTES! Primarily due to its reporting capabilities. Now MultiTES is just one small part of a very complex system, but still ….

I was also quite impressed when she said that recently one group within WB wanted to add an area to the system. Something like 91,000 terms reduced to under 15,000 and properly related in something like 2 weeks! Clearly she has better systems and more people than when I was doing real-world thesaural work, but I still find that amazing.

Standards Committee meeting

Dinner at The King and I with Edward Corrado, Heather Pfeiffer, Emma Tonkin, Margaret Kipp and Qiping Zhang.

Tuesday and Wednesday to follow

Saturday evening, 18 Aug

Nhat Hanh, Thich. Peace is every step : the path of mindfulness in everyday life. New York N.Y.: Bantam Books, 1991.

Finally got back to some of this.

Sunday, 19 Aug

Three NISO standards are up for reaffirmation so I read these this morning to provide my input:

ANSI/NISO Z39.77-2001 Guidelines for Information About Preservation Products

Abstract: Specifies the information that should be included in advertisements, catalogs, and promotional material for products used for the storage, binding, or repair of library materials, including books, pamphlets, sound recordings, videotapes, films, compact disks, manuscripts, maps, and photographs.

ANSI/NISO Z39.79-2001 Environmental Conditions for Exhibiting Library and Archival Materials

Abstract: Establishes criteria to minimize the effects of environmental factors on the deterioration of library and archival materials on exhibit. Specific parameters are recommended for exposure to light, relative humidity, temperature, gaseous and particulate contaminants, display techniques, and case and support materials composition.

ANSI/NISO Z39.82-2001 Title Pages for Conference Publications

Abstract: Explains how to structure title page information for conference publications so metadata and bibliographic citations can readily access the publications. The standard applies to all disciplines, to all conferences (e.g., meetings, symposia, institutes, colloquia, workshops), and to all formats (e.g., printed documents, videos, Web sites). It applies to published conference proceedings in various manifestations (e.g., papers, abstracts, summaries) and in all languages, subjects, and formats.

Z39-77 and Z39.82 are quite interesting in that we are attempting to tell others what to do. Now, yes, if they do what we ask then it should be mutually beneficial.

Libraries are more likely to buy a company’s products if they can easily identify that it meets their needs. There are a few more benefits I could guess at but they would all be highly related to the first. Seems to be a fairly direct benefit to those wanting to sell preservation products to libraries.

The benefits to publishers/distributors of conference proceedings provided by accurate cataloging of their products by libraries seems a fair bit less direct, though. Sure. There’s the random, odd freak like me who likes to buy his own copies of these things after discovering them in the library, but I truly have to wonder what carrot we have to offer publishers to follow these guidelines. And what is the compliance rate? And then there’s the citation formats, and they do some vastly different things even when a proceedings follows this standard to the letter.

Interesting stuff, nonetheless.

Litwin, Rory (mostly). Library Juice Concentrate. Duluth, Minn: Library Juice Press, 2006.

Read the introductory matter and “Section One: Foundation Building,” which includes (all by Litwin except as noted):

• “The Library Juice Manifesto.”
• “Neutrality, Objectivity, and the Political Center.”
• “Classic and Neo-Information.”
• “Why Our Relevance Lies in Not Being Information Professionals.”
• “Questioning the Techie Mission.”
• “Print Virtue and the Ontology of Bo-ring.”
• Rosenzweig, Mark. “Aspects of a Humanist Approach to Librarianship… A Contribution to a Philosophical Foundation.”

I believe that I read them all in their original manifestations (not sure about the Rosenzweig), but there is value in re-reading them. Which is to say, that there is value in them.

If I had time I would love to engage with Rory at a deeper level, particularly on “Classic and Neo-Information” and “Why Our Relevance Lies in Not Being Information Professionals,” but I doubt either of us have time for that. I do look forward to meeting and talking with this clearly deeply thinking librarian someday.

If you have not read this material before then you ought to have a look. In the case that you do not prefer to read lengthy arguments, do not worry, as all of the above fits into less than 38 pages.

I do not expect you to agree entirely; if at all. I do not agree entirely. But I guarantee that it will make you think.

In the spirit of the old Library Juice serial, I leave you with one of Rory’s “Selected Quotes of the Week”:

The more we try to get a grip on information, the more it slips through our fingers like a ghost. Information, in fact, is the ghost of meaning, and our society’s worship of the ghost signals a continuing loss of meaning. – Stephen Talbot (quoted in Library Juice Concentrate, p. 197)

Tuesday, 21 Aug

Crawford, Walt. Cites & Insights 7 (10), September 2007

Wednesday, 22 Aug

Litwin, Rory. Library Juice Concentrate. See above.

Began Section Two: Librarianship: Professional Issues. Read:

• Litwin, R., Luis Acosta, Mark Hudson, and Margaret Myers. “Critical Discussion of the Better Salaries Initiative of Mitch Freedman’s ALA Presidency.”
• Litwin, R. “Undone by Flattery.”

There are some interesting points made by all in the Better Salaries discussion, but I have to wonder about something Luis Acosta wrote. At least at the time (mid-2003), Alcosta seemed to firmly believe in the looming, or even then extant, shortage of librarians and crisis in recruitment. He also made a direct connection between better pay and having an adequate number of MLS students. Perhaps perceived low pay is an issue in recruitment to the profession.

My main issue is with his contention that by having a large crop of entry-level workers to go into better paid positions when the huge crop of pending retirements happens library administrators will be less willing to replace these retiring librarians with non-MLS positions or not at all.

Besides all the other factors that go into whether or not a position is filled and with whom, and the problem of replacing (mostly) upper-level positions with entry-level ones, I really am having a hard time understanding just how having to pay more is going to positively effect whether management hires someone with an MLS. Seems the opposite is more likely.

Thursday, 23 Aug

Harris, Roy, and Christopher Hutton. Definition in theory and practice: Language, lexicography and the law. London: Continuum, 2007.

Read Preface & ch. 1 “On Stipulative Definition.”

Friday, 24 Aug

Harris and Hutton. See above.

Read ch. 2 “On Definition and Common Usage” and ch. 3 “On Real Definition.”

Litwin. See above.

Finished Section Two: Librarianship: Professional Issues. Read:

• Litwin, R. “On Google’s Monetization of Libraries.”
• Litwin, R. “The Central Problem of Library 2.0: Privacy.”
• “Rory Litwin interviews Barbara Tillett.”

Read all of these in their original manifestations, also.

Saturday, 25 Aug

Zelle, John M. Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science. Wilsonville, OR: Franklin, Beedle, 2004.

Finished ch. 1 (began Thurs. eve) and read ch. 2.

Litwin. See above.

Read Section Three: Intellectual Freedom and Media Independence and began Section four: Librarians: Culture and Identity:

Litwin, R. “Four Popular Errors About Free Speech …An Attack on Complacency and Dissociation.”

Oliphant, Tami. “The Invisibility of the Alternative Media.”

D’Adamo, Chuck. “Some Alternative Press History.”

Horne, Doug. “Information-Seeking During Wartime: Reconsidering the Role of the Library in Increasing User Sell-Sufficiency.”

Litwin, R. “A Librarian’s Confession.”

Downey, Allen, Jeff Elkner and Chris Meyers. How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python. Green Tea Press. [Ha ha, I was drinking green tea when I read this.] Available here in assorted forms.

Raber, Douglas. The Problem of Information: An Introduction to Information Science. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2003.

Read the final chapter, “Semiotics for Information Science.”

What can I say about this book that I haven’t already over the last few weeks? I don’t really know. Perhaps a little recap will suffice.

This is, by far, the most poorly edited book I have read in an extremely long time! This is a shame.

I feel that this is an important book and yet I cannot recommend it. Perhaps in a discussion with a specific individual and for a specific purpose I might, but otherwise no.

I am glad I read it and I would like to own a copy for future referral, but I will wait until I can find a good used copy for cheap.

Style is certainly an individual thing, but I feel this could have been written much more clearly.

In its defense, it did provide me with a long list of references to many good sources.

According to the Preface, this “book was written with beginning LIS students in mind; it should be accompanied by the reading of contemporary journal articles from the literature of information science” (vii).

I wholeheartedly disagree! Please do not inflict this book on beginning LIS students. And while I do agree that it must be read along with accompanying articles I question the use of contemporary. If this means the last 40 years (at least), then OK. If that means more like 5-8 years then No. Many of the important articles to this discussion are not exactly what I’d call contemporary, although there certainly are some.

Thanks to Christina, I was alerted to the posting of the program for this years ASIS&T Annual Meeting in Milwaukee in Oct.

It looks really exciting! Some time slots have a lot of competition for my attention, some not so much. I also know my interests will change some between now and mid-Oct. Nonetheless, it looks like my poor brain will be overloaded with amazing amounts of information.

The full-day, Friday pre-conference, Taxonomies in Search, looks like it could be amazing but this kid doesn’t have $245 on top of conference registration!

Saturday, is the SIG/CR Classification Research Workshop pre-conference.

This half-day pre-conference on Sunday, Information Architecture 3.0 with Peter Morville looks good. But $300 for a half-day? Hahahaha. Dude, I already bought that piece of crap “find me” book of yours! People tell me Morville is a librarian; I say he is a huckster. I guess when I can charge people $600/day to hang out with me then I’ll be a professional librarian and not a minute sooner. Update: This is far too much money for me to pay, but my overly snide comments were perhaps inappropriate. My current state precludes me from deciding if they truly constitute a “nasty personal attack” or not. Either way, they were found offensive by the subject and for that I truly apologize.

On to the real conference and people more on my level:

Sunday, Oct. 21

Dang it! June Abbas is up against Michael Buckland, et. al. Tagging vs. History and foundations applied to the current situation (you know, that little bugaboo of mine).

The late afternoon session looks a little weaker as regards my interests, but crossword puzzles could be interesting.

Monday, Oct. 22

Everyday classification in the AM. Or, perhaps, live usability testing with Dorothea and others.

Early afternoon has several interesting presentations, like these folks who claim some LIS schools are teaching us about social computing, but I’m not missing danah boyd.

Late afternoon has another presentation with danah boyd, which I’m guessing jennimi will be at. An interesting presentation on personal info management by my friend, Christina Pikas. And a 3rd one on KOS Standards. Seeing as I’m on the Standards Committee ….

Tues, Oct. 23

Early AM: Kind of open at the moment, but probably this on the applications of traditional & non-traditional KM.

Mid-morning: Oh, boy! Improving Online Dating with Virtual Dates! I am so not there. Pretty much open at the moment. Break time is always good.

Mid-afternoon: Social epistemology in LIS.

Late afternoon also seems kind of open for now.

Evening: SIG CON. Woohoo! And notice, my friends, it is labeled “Tag Me!” Seems a certain rogue group had some influence last year.

Wed, Oct. 24

AM looks like tough choices: Next generation catalogs, Christina and others on blogs & wikis, or another look at Randall Kemp’s humanitarian relief organizations work and the traveling road show of Renear and Dubin on FRBR Group 1 entities in a slot entitled “Standards/Restrictions/Reinterpretations.”

I’ve heard sketches and pieces of this argument and I agree:

We examine the conceptual model of the “bibliographic universe” presented in IFLA’s Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and argue, applying the ontology design recommendations developed by N. Guarino and C. Welty, that three of the four Group 1 entity types should be considered roles (relationships) rather than types. We then show how this analysis generalizes the solution to a previously identified puzzle in entity type assignment and is supported by John Searle’s notion of a cascade of social facts established through collective intentionality — which we take to be confirmation that this re-factoring results in a more accurate picture of the bibliographic domain. Finally we make some suggestions as to why it seemed that these entities were types rather than roles and note that in specific applications there may in fact be good practical reasons for models that treat types as roles.

Mid-morning: Plenary with Clifford Lynch.

Early afternoon: Digital natives research or social capital. Probably the 2nd since I have serious issues with most claims made about the 1st.

Late afternoon: More social capital stuff, or perhaps time to head home?

There is so much more going on and as I said my interests will shift. Dorothea will be there. I sure hope she’s staying for more than her presentation. Other friends who I’ve seen more recently than Dorothea will also be there.

I’m so excited and it’s only a little over 3 months away. Alright, GSLIS students. Time to do some serious planning!

Sunday, 25 Mar 2007

Schmitz-Esser, Winfried. “Language of general communication and concept compatibility.” Compatibility and Integration of Order Systems: Research Seminar Proceedings of the TIP/ISKO Meeting, Warsaw, 13-15 September 1995. Warsaw: Indeks-Verlag, 1996. 11-22.

This book is very difficult to get a hold of. I could have sworn that I had blogged about receiving this book from the Library of Congress back in January, but I am unable to find any such post. I did post photos on flickr, though [1 2 3]. I had requested it via ILL in October and got it in late Jan. There are only two copies in WorldCat and only one in Open WorldCat. LCs is in both and there is a reference copy at Baker & Taylor. Surprising that I actually got it; even months later.

This was also the first book that I ever had to sign for from circulation. Kind of odd, but I was just happy to have the book in hand. My advisor didn’t even know it existed, so I shared it with her for the short period that I had it.

Friday I had to sign for a second book. This one is from Cornell University, and while there are few copies of it [9], too, I think they’re just being uppity. I asked the clerk at Circ if this was something new or if I just managed to ask for odd books and she happily concurred that it was just me.

Riesthuis, Gerhard J.A. “Theory of compatibility of information languages.” Compatibility and Integration of Order Systems: Research Seminar Proceedings of the TIP/ISKO Meeting, Warsaw, 13-15 September 1995. Warsaw: Indeks-Verlag, 1996. 23-31.

Paglia, Camille. Break, blow, burn. 2005. Read:

George Herbert, “Love”
Andrew Marvell , “To His Coy Mistress”

Monday, 25 Mar 2007

Dahlberg, Ingetraut. “The Compatibility guidelines — A re-evaluation.” Compatibility and Integration of Order Systems: Research Seminar Proceedings of the TIP/ISKO Meeting, Warsaw, 13-15 September 1995. Warsaw: Indeks-Verlag, 1996. 32-45.

Sacchanand, Chutima. “Workplace learning for information professionals in a changing information environment.” Proceedings IFLA Council and General Conference (66th : 2000 : Jerusalem), Jerusalem (Israel). [from E-LIS]

Baca, Murtha. “Practical issues in applying metadata schemas and controlled vocabularies to cultural heritage information.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 36 (3/4), 2003: 47-55.

For Representation & Organization. Very basic article, but a decent overview. I have really got to get off my rear and start writing if this is the kind of stuff that gets published. It’s not that it’s bad, because it isn’t. It’s just so very basic. Is there really a need for this kind of article, especially in this journal?

[Update: I asked my fellow students in RO Wednesday morning about their feelings about this article. Most agreed that at this point in their education it was pretty useless, but that it would make a most excellent 501 article (one of our 2 required courses). I wholeheartedly agree with that.]

Yee, Ka-Ping, Kirsten Swearingen, Kevin Li, and Marti Hearst. “Faceted metadata for image search and browsing.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. Fort Lauderdale, FL: ACM Press, 2003: 401-408 [Portal] [pdf]

For Representation & Organization.

Tuesday, 27 Mar 2007

Jordan. J. and T. Hickey. “Metadata trends.” In Chen, C., ed. Global digital library development in the new millennium : fertile ground for distributed cross-disciplinary collaboration. Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2001. 115-120.

Park, Taemin Kim. “Library education in information organization and access of networked resources.” Extended abstract. Same source as above. 525-526.

Cruz, José Manuel Barrueco and Thomas Krikel. (2003) “Subject description in the Academic Metadata Format.” In Proceedings VI Congreso del Capítulo Español de ISKO, Salamanca (Spain). [pdf at E-LIS]

White, Bruce and Rae Gendall. (2005) “Barriers to the use of digital information by university researchers.” In Proceedings Educause Australasia 2005, Auckland, New Zealand. [pdf at E-LIS]

This short article gives a good overview of the issues that have arisen for faculty and researchers due to the proliferation of electronic resources and tools. Most bibliographic instruction has focused on students, while the people who seriously need to understand the interaction and use of these tools are basically ignored. What is the impact on research thanks to this state of affairs?

Soergel, Dagobert. “Data models for an integrated thesaurus database.” Compatibility and Integration of Order Systems: Research Seminar Proceedings of the TIP/ISKO Meeting, Warsaw, 13-15 September 1995. Warsaw: Indeks-Verlag, 1996.47-57.

Wednesday – Thursday, 28 – 29 Mar 2007

Hillman, Diane E., Stuart A. Sutton, Jon Phipps and Ryan Laundry. (2006) “A metadata registry for vocabularies up: The NSDL Registry Project.” Submitted to Dublin Core 2006 Conference. [pdf at arxiv]

Read for Metadata Roundtable 28 March 2007.

Thursday, 29 Mar 2007

Muraszkiewicz, M., H. Rybinski and W. Struk. “Software problems of merging multilingual thesauri.” Compatibility and Integration of Order Systems: Research Seminar Proceedings of the TIP/ISKO Meeting, Warsaw, 13-15 September 1995. Warsaw: Indeks-Verlag, 1996: 11-22.

Friday, 30 Mar 2007

Gradmann, Stefan. “rdfs:frbr—Towards and implementation model for library catalogs using Semantic Web technology.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 39 (3/4), 2005: 63-75. [pdf at E-LIS]

Chmielewska-Gorczyca, Ewa. “Compatibility of indexing tools in multidatabase environment.” Compatibility and Integration of Order Systems: Research Seminar Proceedings of the TIP/ISKO Meeting, Warsaw, 13-15 September 1995. Warsaw: Indeks-Verlag, 1996: 68-75.

Saturday, 31 Mar 2007

Perkins, Jody. “Marcia Zeng, PhD: From indexing to knowledge organization systems, one woman’s journey across the globe and into the future of Library and Information Science.” Journal of Internet Cataloging 7 (2), 2004: 9-18. doi:10.1300/J141v07n02_03

Stumbled over this interview while looking for something else. Found it very interesting as I have been reading several articles by Dr. Zeng recently, and she is the current chair of the ASIST Standards Committee that I serve on.

Negrini, Giliola. “Towards structural compatibility between concept systems.” Compatibility and Integration of Order Systems: Research Seminar Proceedings of the TIP/ISKO Meeting, Warsaw, 13-15 September 1995. Warsaw: Indeks-Verlag, 1996: 76-87.

Sosinska-Kalata, Barbara. “The Universal Decimal Classification as an international standard for knowledge organization in bibliographic databases and library catalogues.” Compatibility and Integration of Order Systems: Research Seminar Proceedings of the TIP/ISKO Meeting, Warsaw, 13-15 September 1995. Warsaw: Indeks-Verlag, 1996: 143-151.

Dahlberg, Ingetraut. “Philosophical foundations of conceptual ordering systems.” Advances in Knowledge Organization, Vol. 3 (1991): Documentary languages and databases. Papers from the Rome Conference Dec. 3-4, 1990. Frankfurt: Indeks Verlag, 1991: 103-119.

Olson, Hope A. “Reading “Primitive Classification” and misreading cultures: The metaphysics of social and logical classification.” Advances in Knowledge Organization, Vol. 7 (2000): Dynamism and stability in knowledge organization. Proceedings of the Sixth International ISKO Conference 10-13 July 2000, Toronto, Canada. Ergon Verlag: 3-9.

Probably the last Hope Olson I will read. I’m tired of wasting 95% of the time doing so. And the 5% that isn’t a waste I generally already know. So maybe it really is a complete waste for me. I think she, at least, summed it up pretty well for me in these 2 sentences if one substitutes “Olson’s work” for Primitive Classification and “Olson” for “Durkheim and Mauss”:

Having found these significant flaws in Primitive Classification it seems that its study should simply be discouraged. However, Durkheim and Mauss also offer some insights that point toward ways of moderating the culturally specific nature of classification (7).

So, there is value in Hope Olson’s work, at least probably for others. For me, not so much. I wish that were not the case. I was hoping for a lucid and engaging voice of critique of our systems of organization.

I had started a separate post about the Olson things I read, but I don’t know if it’ll ever get finished. I really would like to finish it, but with very limited time lately it certainly is nowhere near the top of my priorities.

Beghtol, Clare. “A Whole, its kinds, and its parts.” Advances in Knowledge Organization, Vol. 7 (2000): Dynamism and stability in knowledge organization. Proceedings of the Sixth International ISKO Conference 10-13 July 2000, Toronto, Canada. Ergon Verlag: 313-319.

590IML – Information Modeling — We got our marked exercises on conceptual modeling (ER, EER) back a couple of days ago and I was super excited to discover that I had aced it. Yay me!

I’m working on my DTD and document and got an early but nearly complete version to validate earlier today. Yay! Now I need to add an element with mixed content and maybe another attribute somewhere and then validate that. I also need to add comments for everything and then revalidate to ensure I didn’t dork anything up. I have until Monday for this.

[Right before I went to the GSLIS Holiday Party early this evening I add a mixed content section, added some mixed content to the document and validated it. I went to the party momentarily ecstatic. Now I just have to add a few minor touches and revalidate.]

I ran into Allen yesterday and asked him about finishing the 1st assignment or what. He said just go ahead and finish it. Seems kind of silly [for various reasons], but fair, too.

590TR – Information Transfer and Collaboration in Science — I have finally found a paper topic; just a little late in the semester, which means once I get my advisor’s signature my semester will go on for just a bit longer.

My topic is, for me, a bit like climbing over the wall with the sign that says, “Here be monsters! Keep out!” Some of you might be able to guess where this is heading with all my “word issues” lately.

I am going to look at the mapping of multiple, conceptual vocabularies for use by interdisciplinary scientists. Mapping work (for various purposes) has been going on for decades now; much of it “lost,” some of it found again, much of it being redone.

The reason this “be monster” territory for me is because I have serious doubts about how well these techniques can work. I have no doubt that they can in some limited domains, but how generalizable are the techniques, intellectual or machine? Another issue is the limited number of relation types in most thesauri. Much research, in many disciplines, has gone into lexical-semantic relations. Some researchers have discovered as few as 5, 7 or 9 types of relations, while some have found as many as 400+!

I don’t know what the “real” number of relation types is, or if there even is one “true” number that holds across languages. My guess is certainly not, especially to the latter. But I am well aware that a thesaurus with only BT, NT and RT is sorely lacking in its relationships and is a poor model of the rich lexical-semantic relationship between words and concepts. But do I want to be the one coding those relationships? Hard to say, but I’m guessing ….

I also owe Carole some comments on the assigned readings for the week I led discussion since I said I would provide them.

590CS – Seminar in Classification Systems for the Organization of Knowledge — Been finished. Ha ha ha. Now that‘s funny! One is never finished with Pauline. I’m still doing thesaurus work since early summer and I’m now hip deep in CS stuff, and it seems like I will be for many a year. So, yes, class is over and I got an A, but the work continues …. I am so blessed to be able to learn from, and be guided by, Pauline.

Dang! I need to get my coffee date scheduled.

Oh, on a non-school note, it’s official … I am a member of the ASIST Standards Committee.

Yes, Virginia, we, too, have been having unseasonably warm weather. In late November. Had to open my window last night; after turning off the heat several days ago. It’ll be in the 60s today, getting rainier, and then sleet and 20s for tomorrow. Yay! November is back.

Seriously though, we had some great weather over break. Warm, sunny and calm winds. We had at least 3 days like that. I did get to the disc golf course on Black Friday. If I had been paying attention I could have went on Thanksgiving or Sat. It’s been warm in assorted ways for even longer. Up till today, anyway.

I got in to talk with Carole about my class yesterday. It’s all good; I’ll just be taking a little longer. Carole was awesome, as usual. Discussed many of the same things as I did with Kathryn last week; this discussion was far lass abstract, though. Seems I have a better handle on how to possibly get the rest of my education restarted. I don’t necessarily have an “answer;” I have a path that may provide an answer. It feels ok.

It is odd, but I seem to be stitching together my recent past, present, and near future education into a (possibly) coherent vision. Probably the main reason the story couldn’t be constructed, much less told, was I needed to come to grips with how dichotomous it has all been and seemed, lately. I let Carole in on some of that oddness yesterday; but again, eight days later I have more of a plan.

She was great, and in advisor role, not professor. She knows me well enough to take a more long-term and growth-oriented perspective. I have been lucky to have people like Carole and Kathryn (and others) to talk to here at GSLIS.

In other news, I heard from Dr. Marcia Zeng yesterday that I am on the ASIS&T Standards Committee. Dr. Zeng is the incoming Chair of the committee.

Today I picked up a book I ordered via ILL to evaluate personally and as a possible recommendation for the LIS Library to purchase: Advance Topics in Information Technology Standards and Standardization Research, Vol. 1. / Kai Jakobs, ed., c2005. It looks like a current overview of (some) issues in standards and could be very helpful. I’ll have to have a look at the previous title, also: Information technology standards and standardization : a global perspective / Kai Jakobs, c2000.

This morning when I headed out of the house the day was just like a warm day in late November “should” be, that is, blustery, gray and overcast. It still is that way in mid-afternoon. Said cooling off is still scheduled for tomorrow morning. In fact, if it stays as currently forecast, I’ll be able to leave the window open tonight and close it when I get up tomorrow.