Category Archives: Vocabularies

Some things read this week, 27 May – 2 June 2007

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Note: Sorry for the non-existent annotations. It was a light week as I prepped for and then attended NASIG.

Sunday, 27 May

Harris, Roy. The Language-Makers. London: Duckworth, 1980.

Finished chap. 2.

Monday, 28 May

Harris, Roy. The Language-Makers. London: Duckworth, 1980.

Read chap. 3.

Tennis, Joseph. “SKOS and the Ontogenesis of Vocabularies.”

Cited by Harper, Corey A. and Barbara B. Tillett. “Library of Congress Controlled Vocabularies and Their Application to the Semantic Web.” Co-published simultaneously in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 43 (3/4), 2007: 47-68 and: Knitting the Semantic Web (ed. Jane Greenberg and Eva Méndez) Haworth Information Press, 2007: 47-68. doi:10.1300/J104v43n03_04

Vizine-Goetz, Diane. “Terminology Services: Making Knowledge Organization Schemes More Accessible to People and Computers.” [pdf] OCLC Newsletter, no. 266.

Cited by Harper, Corey A. and Barbara B. Tillett. See above for full reference.

Monday – Tuesday, 28 – 29 May

CISAC. Outline for ISO Standard ISPI (International Standard Party Identifier Code) [pdf].

Cited by Harper, Corey A. and Barbara B. Tillett. See above for full reference.

Tuesday, 29 May

Fallgren, Nancy. “Brief Meeting Summary: May 9, 2007. Structures and Standards for Bibliographic Data (Chicago, IL).”

Miles, Alistair, Brian Matthews, Michael Wilson and Dan Brickley.”SKOS Core: Simple Knowledge Ogranisation for the Web.” International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications: Vocabularies in Practice. Available: http://purl.org/dcpapers/2005/Paper01

Cited by Harper, Corey A. and Barbara B. Tillett. See above for full reference.

Harris, Roy. The Language-Makers. London: Duckworth, 1980.

Read chap. 4-5.

Wednesday, 30 May

Harris, Roy. The Language-Makers. London: Duckworth, 1980.

Read chap. 6-8. Finished.

Some things read this week, 13 – 19 May 2007

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Saturday, 12 May [due to early posting last week]

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

  • Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” [a snippet]
  • Emily Dickinson, “Because I Could Not Stop for Death
  • Emily Dickinson, “Safe in Their Alabaster Chambers”

Tuesday, 15 May

Ward, Jewel. “Unqualified Dublin Core Usage in OAI-PMH Providers.” OCLC Systems & Services: International Digital Library Perspectives 20 (1), 2004: 40-47.

Hutt, Arwen and Jenn Riley. “Semantics and Syntax of Dublin Core Usage in Open Archives Initiative Data Providers of Cultural Heritage Materials.” JCDL ’05 June 7-11, 200, Denver, Colorado: 262-270.

Both of these were read for Metadata Round Table tomorrow.

Wednesday, 16 May

Shreeves, Sarah L., Ellen M. Knutson, Besiki Stvilia, Carole L. Palmer, Michael B. Twidale, amd Timothy W. Cole. “Is “Quality” Metadata “Shareable” Metadata? The Implications of Local Metadata Practices for Federated Collections.” ACRL 12th National Conference April 7-10, 2005, Minneapolis, Minn.: 223-237.

Also read for Metadata Round Table today. I even attended this presentation at ACRL.

Priss, Uta. “Multilevel Approaches to Concepts and Formal Ontologies.” In Efthimis N. Efthimiadis, ed. Advances in Classification Research, Vol. 12: Proceedings of the 12th ASIST SIG/CR Classification Research Workshop, held at the 64th Annual ASIST Meeting, November 2-8, 2001, Washington, DC. Medford, NJ: Information Today, c2004: 93-111.

Argues for viewing the “classical” or symbolic approaches to representation and that of fuzzy or category-based approaches as complementary forms of representation that can and should be combined.

ontologies, symbolic representation, formal logic, category-based representation, categories, fuzzy logic, neural networks, formal concepts, associative concepts, knowledge systems, emergent structure, cognition, feedback, ASIST SIG/CR

Tennis, Joseph T. “Layers of Meaning: Disentangling Subject Access Interoperability.” In Efthimis N. Efthimiadis, ed. Advances in Classification Research, Vol. 12: Proceedings of the 12th ASIST SIG/CR Classification Research Workshop, held at the 64th Annual ASIST Meeting, November 2-8, 2001, Washington, DC. Medford, NJ: Information Today, c2004: 113-129.

Proposes a multilayer conceptual framework for a system for subject access interoperability, where levels of meaning, relationships, extension and intension are individually controlled. Claims this will solve the problems Lancaster identified as inherent in switching between vocabularies: 1) overlap of subject matter, 2) specificity, 3) degree of pre-coordination, and 4) hierarchical, synonymous and other relationship structure.

subject access, interoperability, subject access interoperability, vocabularies, mapping, switching, compatibility, ICC, BSO, intension, extension, meaning, relationships, supra-thesaurus, reconciliation, conceptual warrant, literary warrant, Universal Source Thesaurus, conceptual framework, concepts, subjects, classes

Thursday, 17 May

Greenberg, Jane and Eva Méndez. “Introduction: Toward a More Library-Like Web via Semantic Knitting.” Co-published simultaneously in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 43 (3/4), 2007: 1-8 and: Knitting the Semantic Web (ed. Jane Greenberg and Eva Méndez) Haworth Information Press, 2007: 1-8. doi:10.1300/J104v43n03_01

This is the introduction to the issue of CCQ that was mentioned several times at the LC Working Group meeting. Basically sets up the issue and then gives a brief overview of the articles. The issue is divided into 2 parts: Semantic Web foundations, standards and tools; and Semantic Web projects and perspectives.

Semantic Web, web, libraries, introduction

Harper, Corey A. and Barbara B. Tillett. “Library of Congress Controlled Vocabularies and Their Application to the Semantic Web.” Co-published simultaneously in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 43 (3/4), 2007: 47-68 and: Knitting the Semantic Web (ed. Jane Greenberg and Eva Méndez) Haworth Information Press, 2007: 47-68. doi:10.1300/J104v43n03_04

This article was also mentioned several times during the LC Working Group meeting. Discusses how historically-library controlled vocabularies and classification schemes “can serve as some of the building blocks of the Semantic Web” (47). Talks about how they might fit within the structure of the Semantic Web, possible uses, how they can be encoded, and some early collaborations. Also discusses authority control and how this can fit within the Semantic Web.

Is at a fairly big picture view and falls short of any discussion of the economics and rights management. Based on all the discussion at the LC Working Group meeting I thought this was supposedly some “radical” call to “Free the Authorities!” Alas, it is no such thing. Jennifer Bowen was far more radical than this. That isn’t saying much, btw.

Semantic Web, web, LC, controlled vocabularies, compatibility, authority control, standards, XML, OWL, SKOS, MODS, MADS, DCMI, DC Abstract Model, MARC relator terms, DC, MARCXML, RDF, DDC, LCC, LCSH, TGM I, TGM II, GSAFD, TGN, AAT, classification schemes, UDC, MeSH, NLM, Terminology Services (OCLC), identification, disambiguation, collocation, VIAF, AUTHOR, metadata, FOAF, markup, encoding

Weibel, Stuart L. “Social Bibliography: A Personal Perspective on Libraries and the Semantic Web.” Co-published simultaneously in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 43 (3/4), 2007: 227-236 and: Knitting the Semantic Web (ed. Jane Greenberg and Eva Méndez) Haworth Information Press, 2007: 47-68. doi:10.1300/J104v43n03_13

Billed as “present[ing] a personal perspective on libraries and the Semantic Web” (227). Major sections are: Computing power, Processable text, Social software and Web 2.0, and the final section, Social bibliography and the declining hegemony of catalog records.

Weibel begins by asking if perhaps we are not seeing the same sorts of claims for the Semantic Web as we did for artificial intelligence two decades ago. He then sets out to show what is different in this situation, and seems to have a fairly balanced perspective. Part of the problem as he says is that the “Semantic Web isn’t primarily about semantics at all” (228). As the W3C states:

The Semantic Web is about two things. It is about common formats for interchange of data, where on the original Web we only had interchange of documents. Also it is about language for recording how the data relates to real world objects (228)

A few sentences that resonated with me:

Libraries need to support not the Semantic Web, but the semantic lives of our users, … (231).

MARC cataloging remains one of the most successful structured data exchange standards in use (and one of the most long-lived, as well) 232.

The specification of an ontology implies a thorough understanding of the scope and structure of a knowledge domain. Semantic coherence of this kind is rare outside a tightly constrained domain, and leads one to wonder whether ontologies are likely to play a practical role on the open Web (233).

[This is extremely interesting considering Ontologies make up one of the main layers of the Semantic Web Stack, and that this layer has been implicated in the slow progress of the Semantic Web by Berners-Lee, for one (See Harper & Tillett (above p. 49).]

The last section talks about “social bibliography” and I must admit I am not really familiar with this concept. Hmmm … there’s a book by this title by Ranganathan, although I don’t think this is the same use as some of the web pages I saw using this term. I’m not convinced it is even one concept, but perhaps many. I wish Weibel had said more about what he meant by this concept. The discussion was mostly about online reviews at places like Amazon.com and how reviews should be first class objects and, thus, need to have persistent identities, be harvestable on the open Web, and be “managed intellectual content in their own right” (234). In other words, be curated, be citable (linkable), and claimable by their authors (234).

I’m not really sure what work “social” is doing in this concept, although it is doing some. I’m just ready for the day when “social” is no longer applied as a modifier to almost every concept. But then perhaps we need to grow past “friends” first.

Semantic Web, web, libraries, social bibliography, Web 2.0, computing power, processable text, social software

Tennis, Joseph T. “Diachronic and Synchronic Indexing: Modeling Conceptual Change in Indexing Languages.” [pdf] In online proceedings: Clément Arsenault and Kimiz Dalkir, eds. “Information Sharing in a Fragmented World: Crossing Boundaries” Canadian Association for Information Science. Held at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, May 10 – 12, 2007.

The 1st important point is that there are several years worth of proceedings of the Canadian Association for Information Science available online. The link for this article was sent to me by my advisor for my controlled vocabulary-related work, along with a few others from these proceedings.

Outlines a model of conceptual change in indexing languages; in other words, provides for diachronic indexing. Demonstrates conceptual change in an indexing language by looking at eugenics in DDC. Describes3 ways in which meaning and relationships are established and change in n indexing language: structural, terminological, and textual.

I hope to get a few minutes to talk with Joe Tennis at NASKO. I’m not sure how his work has been progressing the last few years, but most of his papers that I’ve been reading (see above for another) are at this fairly abstract level. They sound like great ideas, but can we code them (currently) and make them work? And, if so, do they actually make a positive difference towards any of our needs? Maybe he can fill me in on such work, or point me to the work itself.

indexing, conceptual model, diachronic indexing, synchronic indexing, annotation, revision, concept record, classification format, transfer encoding, structurl change, terminological change, textual change, intertextuality

Thursday – Friday, 17 – 18 May

Lakoff, George. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things, ch. 15 “Putnam’s Theorem.”

Discusses Putnam’s logical critique of objectivist semantics as internally inconsistent.

Friday, 18 May

Harris, Roy. “Epilogue: Saying Nothing.” In The Language Machine. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987.

This is quite good as David Bade said a few days ago. I read the Epilogue and have now begun at the beginning. I also picked up 3 other Harris books.

Saturday, 19 May

Harris, Roy. The Language Machine. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987.

Read Introduction and chapters 1 – 3.

LC Working Group – Structures and Standards, part 6 – Public Testimony and Wrap-Up

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I was quite disappointed with the amount [not the quality] of public testimony. I did not work up anything to say as I figured that there would be many people far more “qualified” than me jostling for room at the microphone. Sadly, that was not the case. The 3 hours set aside for public testimony lasted about 30 minutes with only 3 people signed up.

I will be providing written testimony to the Working Group and I highly encourage anyone and everyone to do so! All written testimony (such a fancy word, eh? Input, comments, concerns,…) must be sent to Dr. José-Marie Griffiths. Contact info on this page.

Please do so! Particularly those of you in the public, special and school libraries. As you will see (shortly), it was noted that there was little representation from, of, or by, these communities. Do not let your voices and concerns go unheard.

Public Testimony

Sara Shatford Layne -Principal Cataloger – UCLA and professor in SJSU distance program

(1) Don’t forget the needs of research faculty members. There is a danger in trying to do the best for the largest number. Who will do this if not the academic libraries. An example. One researcher creates the cure for cancer vs. 4000 undergraduate papers on Hamlet.
(2) Seem to need more, not less structure and people are asking for the structure
(3) Systems we use are a kind of structure; we need to influence system creation
(4) Authority data has been underutilized
(5) What can be automated?
(6) Cataloging as a public good, we need to lobby for this over the business model – the business model does not apply here. [An economist told her at a meeting she attended that "Cataloging is a public good."]

Kevin Randall – Northwestern University, Head of Serials Cataloging

Interested to hear about the conflict between Bade/Hillman. I saw none; one is talking about WHAT, the other HOW. There is a loss of balance, too much emphasis on improving the container at the expense of content. My concern with the container is that it not leak!

Relating to CONSER standard level record:
We are focusing too much on Access, not Identify. This is being rushed to implementation. We need a graduated level of standards; the present ones are like an opaque un-marked measuring cup. It is difficult for cataloging managers to give guidance. Here it would seem that a cooperative program is being pushed by one member at the inconvenience of all other library/cooperative members. We must ask, what is the essence of cooperation? The standard level record is touted as “a floor, not a ceiling,” but with Encoding Level marked as blank it inference is full-level cataloging.

Don’t manage mortgage the future of FRBR user tasks in catalogs, we need to build up user services, but not at the expense of bibliographic control which connects our users to resources. [Updated 15 May via feedback from Kevin Randall, and in his own words: "I would suggest a correction to the last paragraph, though: instead of "manage", I said "mortgage". The point being, with the direction currently being taken in stripping things out of catalog records, we're mortgaging our future in terms of being able to meet FRBR user tasks. Without proper bibliographic control, we won't be able to connect
users to resources."]

Michael Norman – UIUC, Head of Content Access Management

Discussed U of I digitizing efforts. In our current project we have opportunities to augment/enhance records but find that current structures do not accord places for this. We are working to convert MARC records to MARC XML with a METS wrapper. We are looking to integrate MARC with other standards. (out on the web) there are examples of books with the table of contents displayed as tag clouds, we need standards for this.

The U of I digitizing effort will double the size of our catalog, and the records will go into OCLC. We need more discussion about single vs multiple records, this is a different world. How do we build these structures?

How can we use OAI/PMH to make records better and refresh them as changes occur?

We need to be where the user is and we are working on this at the U of I: by creating widgets to assist with library searches across assorted databases and the OPAC as well as digital collections.

As to looking to automate records – they are imperfect, especially with regard to subject analysis, but there are parts that can be automated. One publisher, for example, Springer-Verlag generates metadata for e-book packages at the title and chapter level and these records are not too bad, though they may need tuning.

Clifford Lynch – Director of the Coalition for Networked Information; Working Group member

Summation

Speaking for the task force:

This is a process and I urge you to submit comments.
The next meeting will be about Organization (Systems) and Economics and I will build/ frame questions for the third meeting.

An extract from the comments today:

There have been important reminders about quality control starting with Bade’s questions about the scope of bibliographic resources we are trying to manage. Is the scope national? International? Quality control relates to this question intimately. Perfect quality is easy to talk about and advocate for – is a moral position, and few human systems can provide this. [To which Bade replied later].

Discussions of quality control operationally must consider:

  • How will we measure it? With what metrics?
  • We are constrained by economics (funding is not infinite)
  • What are the trade-offs? We must think deeply about these.
  • What do user communities have to do with quality? Is it collaborative? Should it result only from internal efforts?

Many insightful comments today about legacy vocabularies and related tools. I agree, especially with the issue of the economic models for opening these up. If these can become components of infrastructure their values will increase. Presently the economic models are impediments and need to be revisited. There has been surprisingly little discussion about rethinking the content of these vocabularies. How should something like the Name Authority File change in a networked environment? What is the role of the author ID that is being discussed in different communities? We need to think in a much broader context. Discussions about the author ID are vigorous elsewhere.

There has been much about the interplay of traditional bibliographic practices and “new bibliographic practices” such as user tagging, etc. More central questions come with the implications of fully digital objects. The argument is not between user tags and LCSH, but about text retrieval computations or representation and retrieval but little has been said about this.

As to a new term for bibliographic control: It is easy to become intoxicated by visions of the digital future. Physical artifacts won’t go away. We need to help people find them. Surrogates will become the order of the day.

What is a bibliographic record? Is it a structure to populate with the digitized text of a book and an bibliographic record? Do we want to go further? What about computational derivatives – forming a concordance of the most common words. What about fully digital items? Do we need to think about the whole spectrum or draw some line in the sand? This is no longer a theoretical question posed in order to come up with best practices.

There were also valuable comments about interactions between tools, systems and standards. We need to be mindful that the systems themselves can affect our viewpoint.

Regarding better tools for cataloging: What is our goal? What are the priorities? I want more correct records, speed for copy cataloging and deeper records.

[Yes; we should do more than just say we need better tools for cataloging. But anyone who has spent more than a day or two using our current tools can easily start down this road! Nonetheless, I agree with him. Hmmm.

What would be the best context for starting and recording this discussion? Another wiki? Perhaps the NGC4LIB list? LITA and/or ALCTS? Catalogers and metadata specialists, what do you say? How should we go about documenting what we need to do our jobs—perhaps even faster, better and with less expense?]

Let us return to the point about making it easier to contribute to or improve collective metadata. There is a group called the proof-readers collective [Distributed Proofreaders] in which individuals sign up to do as many pages of proofreading a day as possible for Project Gutenberg. Can we think of ways to do this?

Comments regarding systems and economics; i.e. questions for the 3rd meeting:

(1) We need to move from “absolute perfection” to resource allocation.
(2) We need to open up our vocabularies to achieve maximum value
(3) We need notification of changes and propagation of system improvements.
(4) The locus of responsibility for maintaining, notifying and improving standards is too diffuse now. There are many different players with many different ideas. The process is complex, to the extent that we want wide use, we need coherent explanations for outside communities.
(5) We need to think about public accessibility of standards. These products should be easily worldwide accessible like NISO standards. This is urgently necessary. “Our descriptive standards are dead in the water if not widely and readily accessible, in electronic form.”

[And I do not believe Cliff meant the current RDA product model, but more directly like NISO. If I want a copy of the Z39.19-2005 monolingual controlled vocabulary standard I just download a FREE copy. But he also means available in a "Webified" version, not just as a pdf.]

Public comments on Cliff Lynch’s Summation

Richard Stewart – Indian Trails Public Library District

Seems to be a serious lack of representation of much of the library community here today, especially with the invited speakers. Public, special and school libraries have needs that all need to be addressed; I hope they’re being considered in the overall process.

Lynch asked that these communities please provide feedback via the written testimony process.

James Nye – Asian bibliographer, UIC

What about the international and multilingual communities? The area of the world that he covers is composed of approximately 2 Billion people; think of the extensive opportunities for collaboration and learning from each other.

Scripts and character sets are still major issues.

Joan ?? Schuitema - Head of Cataloging at UIC [Sorry; I tried to find out who this might be, but UIC servers seem hosed this morning.] [Updated 15 May thanks to Kevin Randall.]

Wants to confront the “all or nothing” thinking that seems prevalent

Is also a therapist. When people are under stress, black and white thinkers (catalogers, by training) will shift even more to black and white. We need to move back to the center to address the gray areas.

Marc Gartler – Director of Library Services, Harrington College of Design

In our description fields, ‘ill.” is not sufficient. Access even to just titles [of images in resources] would be of immense value to the study of visual design. More granularity.

Deanna Marcum – Summation

Thanks to the speakers and for the commentary.

Bowen referred to gray areas in this discussion of the bibliographic future: LoC is in the middle of a large gray area. It may be helpful for you to hear the considerations that LoC is making as we discuss the future:

Are there roles and responsibilities of LoC that we want to continue or to embrace?

As part of this strategic planning process in library services I read all of the annual reports of the Librarians of Congress back to the beginning. In the early years these were philosophical documents, that contained views of what LoC could or should be.

For decades LoC has been the leader in bibliographic control:

(1)Because of volume
(2) Because it assumes professional and moral responsibility for creating records to be used by the library community. This is a valuable contribution.
(3) Because of a belief that LoC should be an innovator. My article: “Too much consensus” (2000) discusses our standards and structures. They provide quality and support but such a stance may not also allow for innovation. How much should we allocate to support and maintenance of our bibliographic structures?

We know that libraries depend on us. We will continue to innovate where we can in concert with the library community.

As to the future structure of LoC: It would be helpful to know for which community we are working. LoC serves all libraries, all citizens of the US, all citizens abroad and national libraries internationally. In policy discussions we serve all communities, but at a time when funds are declining, this decline will not reverse in the foreseeable future. We must decide where to invest.

Only 30 million of 130 million items at the LoC are under bibliographic control. The tradeoffs are this: do we digitize for direct availability or do we invest in bibliographic control?

As to work in other communities – should LoC do work ‘as good as’ theirs, or in collaboration with them. If it is a piecework approach, we all become part of the information network and this makes a lasting contribution to society.

LoC works in approximately 470 languages. These are almost all very underrepresented; should they (or who) fund script/character set development?

When I met with the ALA board 2 summers ago the first question was: How much money is allocated in support of LoC services to other libraries? The answer is zero. Congress has generously funded LoC and LoC has supported other libraries in turn, but Congress has never directly funded this work. It is our tradition. We want to do what is beneficial for the library community

[A few comments and questions followed, including Bade’s assurance that he was never talking about the perfect record, for he knows this is impossible, rather bibliographic control at the level suitable for the users at a given library].

May 9 2007 Chicago, IL ALA Headquarters
Meeting of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control.

Many thanks to Kathryn La Barre for providing me her copious notes in electronic format and for allowing me to use them as I saw fit. I hope someone finds this material of value.

If anyone has any corrections to anything I may have gotten wrong from the beginning or perhaps mistyped, or any of the speakers who might have an issue with my transcription, please feel free to comment or contact me via my Contact Page.

Comments from any and all others are also certainly welcome!

I may try to add another post with my overall impressions and thoughts on this meeting and the Working Group process, but I need to step back for a bit. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, flowers are blooming, it’s Mother’s Day, and I have friends graduating who I need to support and help celebrate. And since Kathryn ordered me to get offline and enjoy myself I thought I might listen for once.

BTW, Kathryn, I did read something non-LIS related yesterday; 3 poems and Paglia’s commentary on them.

LC Working Group – Structures and Standards, part 4 – Jane Greenberg

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Jane Greenberg – Associate Professor at UNC SILS; AMeGA project (automatic metadata generation); Director of UNC Metadata Research Center <MRC>

“Structures and Standards for Bibliographic Data”

Discussed current research and the current issue of CCQ, which she co-edited, “Knitting the Semantic Web”

Sees Bade and Hillmann not on different planets, but as part of a continuum. [Ah yes, a good word.]

Discussion of the landscape and challenges of Standards and Structures

Provided a conceptual map of bibliographic control:

  1. Data structures (standards) as labels, containers and semantics providing element ordering functions
  2. Data communication standards for encoding, markup, exchange (ex MARC ISBD) as grammar
  3. Data value standards (NAF/ontologies/taxonomies) as syntax
  • These are not discontinuous but are often collapsed into each other.

Structures for bibliographic control include:

FRBR/FRAR/RDF/OWL/DCMI Abstract Model/METS/SKOS

We use/encode/package bibliographic data using agreed upon statements which provide control.

Professional consensus consists of agreed upon statements of best practices representing the knowledge and experiences of practitioners, thinkers and leaders.

Likes to think of structures as standards.

Problems with our structures:

  • Complex/overwhelming/inflexible/vary in scope
  • Discussion of these is infused with politics and emotions

Yet these are helpful in order to give a sense of the scope and continuum of the bibliographic universe which has/is evolved/evolving from the world of recorded knowledge into the world of information output (info, data, knowledge):

  • Traditional – recorded knowledge: Bibliographic entities (books, images, sound recordings, archives, music, etc.)
  • Evolving – information output: Bibliographic entities AND people, places, activities/events, data, relationships

In response to the Working Group questions she produced a taxonomy of ?s:

  • Need
  • Use
  • Development
  • New applications

Need

Dependent on functions, users, information, objects (continuum) –

  • Which standards to use in which context? It will take work but we can provide guidance to others
  • Do we need an Übermodel [she kept referring to this übermodel but I never got a feel for what she meant]
  • Are the standards adequate?
    • YES because we have CVs and SKOS, and the Application Profiles (AP)s from DCMI
    • NO because CVs are still developing, nothing BETTER exists

Use

How can we make better use of current standards?

  • Make them easily accessible and shareable. Look to the W3C thesaurus links as a model. :)
  • Look to the open standards like XML, MARC-XML, SKOS, etc.
  • Registries – look to the NSDL registry sandbox and Harper and Tillett’s chapter in the current issue of CCQ

How best to take advantage of legacy data?

  • Convert to XML or another interoperable standard
  • Do not dumb down; streamline these traditional structures with care to prevent data loss.

Development

What communities need to have input?

  • All! In open forum with leadership from the library community, “society’s chief information custodian”
  • We need to close the Semantic Web/Library gap (Greenberg 2007 in CCQ)
  • See Greenberg (2005) AMeGA Final Report [pdf]/ functionalities (in response to section 4.2 of the BCBC) [See here for commentary on the AMeGA report from Jenn Riley]

What organizations and organizational structures?

  • Standards making organizations: NISO, W3C, etc.
  • Professional associations/committees
  • Organizational structures … doesn’t know … streamline the process … defer to the 3rd meeting?

New Applications for the Future

What is the relationship between traditional bib control, the Semantic Web and tagging?

  • View this as a continuum
  • We can harness everyone’s bibliographic activity and data
  • The intermediary role of librarians and catalogers is evolving to include the promotion of good bibliographic practices and the extension of standards.

What standards requirements are becoming evident due to new emphases (data integration, sharing/reuse)?

  • Make trackable preservation metadata, contextual metadata, the ability to track the life cycle of an object
  • Make trackable – data integrity, authenticity, use, reuse

Greenberg’s Questions for the Working Group

  1. What structures for which contexts? Will FRBR work for institutional repositories? Should we push for CVs in social networks? Create an übermodel?
  2. Which data creation methods should be used? How rich? Which creators? (People, methods, costs)
  3. How do we improve metadata quality? Metadata evaluation? (See JCDL; Lagoze, 2006; Mitchell, 2006; Paytner, et. al., 2005)
  4. Interoperability – what are the limits to this goal? Open access is critical.

Conclusions

  • The bibliographic universe is changing to one of information output
  • Be positive; this is an exciting time
  • Take the time to reconceptualize the right research questions. Have we identified the right problem? What research methods and questions will examine these challenges?
  • Balance in our approach

Questions

Q1: [Schottlaender] Why do we keep talking about bibliographic control? Will that phrase itself stand in the way of convergence?
[Swan Hill] We are inventing so many new terms. WE may need a new term but not yet.
[Greenberg] Organization of information = bibliographic control, what ever you call is at the introductory level for LIS. UNC is working on the “Knowledge Trust”** to create a new vocabulary for our field in order to recognize and value the characteristics of libraries and librarians.
[Jose-Marie Griffiths] This is all part of a wider discussion of values as the school doubles in size and this process of creating the “Knowledge Trust” will become part of how the school defines itself/is defined. (SILS). “Knowledge” here is an umbrella concept
[Bade] Bibliographic control is a simple notion – I just want it – help me find it.

**[For those of you waiting for my snide comments, it was at this point that I leaned over to Kathryn and said, "We need to be careful here. UNC has a "Knowledge Trust" and a Metadata Research Center, while we only have a Metadata Round Table. If we don't watch it we won't be No. 1 for much longer!" To which she "reminded" me that we are tied for No. 1. That, of course, just makes my point even quicker. ;) ]

Thanks goes to Kathryn whose notes provided much of this. I had a lot of it down—and changed/added/subtracted some pieces here and there—but being able to cut and paste from her file was much simpler than typing it all in by hand.

Next up: Jennifer Bowen on RDA

Structures and Standards for Bibliographic Data teaser

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[Updated 7:20 AM Thursday, 10 May: see below]

[Update 2 8:20 AM Friday, 11 May; see below]

Today I went to the 2nd meeting of Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, held at ALA in Chicago. Seven of us from UIUC went.

It was quite interesting, I have extensive notes which I will post. But I am exhausted! I was up at 3:30 AM and have ridden to Chicago and back with a full day of sitting in between.

By the way, I mean that “interesting” in a normal sense, not any sort of “you just wait till I tell you” sort of sense.

I notice Diane Hillman has already posted her notes on the first half of the day at the LITA Blog. So, if your jonesin’ for some info see hers and keep an eye out for her 2nd part and perhaps a few other reports elsewhere. I’ll try to get mine up over the weekend, but I took a lot of notes! I have a “sore on my thumb lot” of notes.

Thank you for being patient. And if you aren’t, well, too bad.

Update:

I did not speak at the meeting yesterday, except perhaps to make supportive or snide comments—as they situation called for—to those around me. I awoke to find a link to this post stating that I had, and saw that Diane Hillmann had posted part 2 of her notes and seems to be the source of this claim. I have made comments at both places I have seen the claim.

Please, please, please. That was my boss, Michael Norman, Head of Content Access Management at UIUC, and not me. I have no idea how Diane Hillmann substituted my name for Michael’s.

But please do not replicate that mistaken information. As someone who will be looking for a job shortly (on my time scale anyway), it doesn’t seem to be a good way to start off by being given credit for something your boss did. Or, period.

I would also never deign to speak for my institution, at this point in my career, without explicit permission.

Other than that, I think Diane Hillmann has done a pretty good job of reporting on the events. In a few cases, my report will end up parroting hers, or more accurately the speaker’s slides. I only skimmed portions of part 2 of her report this morning, but they still look pretty accurate. Except for one glaring mis-attribution.

Update 2:

I see that the LITA Blog post has been corrected and my comment approved sometime in the last hour or so. Thank you.

I have started working on my notes and should have the 1st group up tonight.

Some things read this week, 29 April – 5 May 2007

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Sunday, 29 Apr 2007

Beghtol, Clare. “Semantic Validity: Concepts of Warrant in Bibliographic Classification Systems.” Library Resources & Technical Services 30 (2), Apr/Jun 1986: 109-125.

Argues “that the semantic axis of bibliographic classification systems can be found in the various warrants that have been used to justify the utility of classification systems” (109). Traces the evolution of literary, scientific/philosophical, educational and cultural warrants in the 20th century. Specifically considers the use that the Classification Research Group made of each of these warrants. E. Wyndham Hulme, credited with coining the term “literary warrant” in his 1911 paper “Principles of Book Classification,” also explicitly discussed all of these warrants at some point, except for cultural warrant, which he discussed implicitly in a series of lectures at Cambridge in 1921 and 1922.

Calls for “detailed examination of the interrelationships among various kinds of semantic warrant … before the underlying semantic theories of bibliographic classification systems can be clearly defined and their effects and advantages exploited with confidence” (122).

Recommended for anyone interested in the concept of warrant, or of the work of members of the Classification Research Group.

Thursday, 3 May 2007

Nielsen, Marianne Lykke. “A Framework for Work Task Based Thesaurus Design.” Journal of Documentation, vol. 57, no. 6, November 2001, pp. 774–797.

Cited by Tudhope, Binding, et. al. 2006. “Query expansion via conceptual distance in thesaurus indexed collections.” Journal of Documentation 62 (4):509-533.

Now that I look at the citation (p. 516), I have no idea why this was cited. Maybe I missed something when I read it yesterday; I was pretty much physically and mentally exhausted.

thesauri, thesaurus construction, task based design, group interviews, word association, content analysis, discourse analysis, person-in-situation, work domain, information environment, domain study, case study, information behavior, search behavior

Dahlberg, Ingetraut. “Conceptual Structures and Systematization.” International Forum on Information and Documentation 20 (3), 1995: 9-24.

Cited by Veltman, Kim H. “Towards a Semantic Web for Culture.” Journal of Digital Information 4 (4) abstract Read a few weeks ago.

The twentieth century brought new studies of Aristotle’s basic categories, namely, his accidents. Thinkers such as Ranganathan and Dahlberg linked form-categorical relations to syntax (Veltman, 10).

This is a good article that should have been in my relationships bibliography.

Reading Dahlberg is generally a treat, but every once in a while the Teutonic sentence structure is hard to parse out. Having lived in Germany a couple times and having had a couple semesters of college German probably make it easier for me, but every so often there’s an important and deep sentence where I can only say, “Please, this is critical to the argument. What is it saying?” I can’t seem to find it now, but I know there was at least one in this article. Anyway, anything of value is worth a little work.

Looks at the representation of knowledge by conceptualizing it in its most basic form, knowledge units or concepts. Discusses relationships between concepts, characteristics of concepts, conceptual structures for concept definitions, systematization of conceptual systems, conceptual systematization and functionality. It is in the discussions of systematization that the Information Coding Classification (ICC) is introduced. The final section is on the analytical, referent-oriented concept theory as this has been called.

It implies that any systemization of concepts presupposes an analysis of the characteristics of a concept and this analysis can only work if one can relate the necessary statements to an item of reference (22).

These ideas, written about in other venues, seem to be fundamentally important to the design of coherent and systematic conceptual structures as the basis for various classificatory structures, be they classification systems, thesauri, ontologies, etc. My concern comes with what seems to be Dahlberg’s views that these ideas can be the basis of universal conceptual structures. Dahlberg’s complaint about previous classification systems is that they were based on little in the way of principles, except the division of disciplines. Even Ranganathan fell back on disciplines as main classes after devising some true principles.

For one who has given up on a universal classification as attainable the above critique, while accurate, rings hollow. Any attempt at attaining a universal conceptual system is bound to fail. That said, these are important ideas which can and should be employed in the generation of more limited, local, classificatory structures.

Highly recommended, particularly for those interested in knowledge organization and representation.

conceptual structures, systematization, knowledge, knowledge representation, concepts, Knowledge Elements, Knowledge Unit, Concept Triangle, Concept Circle, conceptual relationships, formal relationships, form-categorical relationships, material relationships, generic relationships, abstraction relationships, partition relationships, opposition relationships, complementary relationships, functional relationships, concept characteristics, subject characteristics, meronymic relationships, concept definitions, definitions, conceptual systematization, principles, Systematifier, Information Coding Classification (ICC)

mm

Some things read this week, 22 – 28 April 2007

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Seems I snuck a bit more reading in yesterday; although I’ll leave the things I re-read out. I did manage to finish FRAD.

Saturday, 21 Apr 2007

Levinson, Jerrold. “What a musical work is.” The Journal of Philosophy 77 (1), Jan.. 1980: 5-28. (JSTOR)

Keep in mind that this is only my opinion and that I could be completely wrong. Also, honestly, I have little education in music. That said, this is one of the worst articles that I have ever read. It is surely the worst I have read that was published in The Journal of Philosophy. There were perhaps two actual claims in this article with which I could agree, and one I had to qualify.

I almost gave up reading this article several times last night. I literally had to force my way through it as I repeatedly reminded myself of the moral obligation I had to my class (Ontologies). Except for the fact that I respect my classmates and our guest lecturer this week, Dave Dubin, I would not have read past the first couple pages. And, honestly, I want the hour or so it took me to read it back.

Levinson makes it clear that he is restricting his discussion to what he calls, “that paradigm of a musical work, the fully notated “classical” composition of Western culture, for example, Beethoven’s Quintet for piano and winds in E-flat, Opus 16″ (6). One of his aims is to retain the concept of composing as a truly creative act. While this is a noble aim, which accords with our commonsense notion of artistic creation, one should not end up with such a ridiculous theory just to support commonsense.

I will primarily try to keep my mouth shut in class while we discuss this, but I also know that that will be impossible. I do have a few specific questions, though. My main one will be along the lines of, “Do we speak of textual works like this?” “Is it the case that the reception of, interpretation of, and experience of a textual work are part of what defines it as a work?

I do think Levinson is explicating some important concepts about music here. I just don’t think that he is discussing works as the same concept as, say, FRBR, or Svenonius, Tillett, Smiraglia, or Vellucci does. And if, in fact, it is work that he is discussing then it is an extremely narrow and elitist notion of work. It is in no way a commonsense notion of work at all, even if he has saved some commonsense notions of artistic creation.

His logic is also incoherent at times, or, perhaps, I ought to say that the implications of his logic are incoherent. He seems to choose what he uses logic for and which implications he wants and which he can ignore.

A complete waste of my time. I am not looking forward to discussion of this article.

Update: Discussion went pretty well, actually. I am certainly no more enamored of Levinson’s theory, but several people including the class musicologist seemed to think that Levinson would gladly accept my contention that under his theory he has not heard any works of Beethoven, but only performances of … what I don’t know. They also agreed that this theory leads to an explosion of entities. Whether or not this is good or bad, or can be handled by catalogs elicited vastly different responses. All in all, I was proud of myself during discussion despite my utter uselessness for this piece for the purpose of which it purports. Again, I think Levinson is discussing some important issues in music, and broader, but it is not the concept of works.

Saturday – Monday, 21 – 23 Apr 2007

Khoo, Christopher S. G. and Jin-Cheon Na. (2006). “Semantic relations in information science.” Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 40 Medford, NJ: Information Today, p. 157-228.

This is an excellent article that I first read last December while working on my paper for 590TR Information Transfer and Collaboration in Science. My paper was a “representative literature review on the topic of mapping different thesauri and the uses of such for the organization of information to meet the needs of interdisciplinary scientists.” As such, some article I read—now lost to me—pointed me to this article by Khoo and Na. Many of the articles I was reading on mapping thesauri raised the issue of whether or not inter-concept relationships within a single thesaurus could truly carry over into a multiply-mapped thesauri, especially in the context of multilingual thesauri. I was considering my problem of mapping across scientific domains to be very similar to “true” multilingual mapping, thus, I decided this might be a highly relevant piece to read. I ended up finding it fascinating!

It is also the piece which put me on to Bean & Green and Rebecca Green, period. For that I shall be ever grateful. I re-read it as I work on my presentation on relationships for RO this Wednesday morning.

I highly recommend this piece to all and sundry. Since it is a lit review you could certainly skip over the parts you aren’t so interested in, although I seriously recommend the entire piece. To tempt you, here is an outline based on the section, subsection headings:

    • Overview
    • What are Semantic Relations
      • Semantic Relations in Language and Logic
      • The Psychological Reality of Semantic Relations
      • Semantic Relations in Semantic Memory
    • Types of Semantic Relations
      • Overview
      • Lexical-Semantic Relations
      • Case Relations
      • Relations Between Larger Text Segments
    • Selected Semantic Relations
      • Hyponym-Hyperonym Relation
      • Troponymy Relation
      • Meronym-Holonym Relation
      • Synonymy
      • Antonymy
      • Cause-Effect Relation
    • Semantic Relations in Knowledge Structures
      • Semantic Relations in Thesauri
      • Semantic Relations in Indexing Languages
      • Semantic Relations in Ontologies
    • Automatic Identification of Semantic Relations
      • Overview
      • Automatic Identification of Semantic Relations Using Pattern Matching
      • Automatic Construction of Extraction Patterns
      • Text Mining for Semantic Relations
      • Automatic Construction of Case Frames
    • Semantic Relations in Information Retrieval
      • Overview
      • Semantic Relations in Query Expansion
        • Query Expansion Using Term Association
        • Query Expansion Using Lexical-Semantic Relations
      • Relation Matching for Precision Enhancement
      • Question-Answering with Full-Text Documents
      • Semantic Relations in Automatic Text Summarization
    • Conclusion
    • References (approx. 20 pages)

Sunday, 22 Apr 2007

Sanger, Larry. “Who says we know: On the new politics of knowledge.” Edge (The Third Culture column, 2007.

This could be a bit old by now as it was the Library Link of the Day yesterday and I find them to be a bit behind on many things (and, of course, I’m not posting this for almost a week).

Reasonably interesting article from one of the co-founders of Wikipedia, and founder of Citizendium.

[Somewhere this week I saw a link to an article taking on Sanger, but I have no idea where anymore.]

Smith, Barry. “John Searle: From Speech Acts to Social Reality.” In: John Searle. Cambridge University Press, 2003. pp 7-35. [pdf]

Read for Ontologies this week.

Searle, John. “The Structure of the Social Universe: How the Mind Creates an Objective Social Reality.” In: John Searle. Mind, Language, and Society Basic Books 1998. pp. 111-134.

Also for Ontologies this week.

Monday, 23 Apr 2007

Hjørland, Birger. “Library and information science and the philosophy of science (Introduction to the Special Issue).” Journal of Documentation 61 (1), 2006: 5-10.

Cited by Lee, Renear and Smith. (2006). “Known-item search: Variations on a concept.” Read 3 Mar 2007. Available at E-LIS.

Hovy, Eduard. “Comparing sets of semantic relations in ontologies.” In Green, Bean and Myaeng, eds. The Semantics of relationships: An interdisciplinary perspective. Information Science and Knowledge Management series, v. 3. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002: 91-110.

Is an attempt to develop a method for comparing ontologies, both at a general level and at the level of terms and relationships.

Friday, 27 Apr 2007

Lancaster, F. W. and Virginia Gale. (2003). “Pertinence and relevance.” Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science.

Does a good job disambiguating the differences between pertinence and relevance and their applicability to information retrieval. Differentiates the following components of an information retrieval request and their interrelationships: Information need, Recognized need, Request statement (expressed need), Search strategy, Documents, and Representations of documents. Covers some of the literature on relevance (and pertinence). While the article goes to pains to point out the transience of pertinence decisions, it fails to cover many of the variables that affect these decisions. For a better explication of such see Green (2001) and Bean & Green (2001) [See here for the 2nd citation, Green is the overview article in the same book].

Thursday – Saturday, 26 – 28 Apr 2007

Beghtol, Clare. “Bibliographic classification theory and text linguistics: Aboutness analysis, intertextuality and the cognitive act of classifying documents.” Journal of Documentation 42 (2), June 1986: 84-113.

Distinguishes between a document’s aboutness and its meaning and then utilizes the text linguistic theory of T. A. van Dijk to suggest a theory of the cognitive process of classifying documents. Discusses two forms of intertexuality: “that between documents classified in the same class of the same classification system; and that between the classification system as a text in its own right and the documents that are classified by it” (84). Describes an experimental study that could be used to test the model presented. Also comments on the uses of text linguistics for theories of bibliographic classification.

This is a fairly complex article which bears close reading and, in truth, deserves a second reading. I did find, though, that it offers the best explication that I’ve seen so far as to what it is I am doing when I classify items. Should be required reading in all advanced cataloging classes, and perhaps late in the semester of intro classes.

The first several sections would also be usefully read in conjunction with Lancaster and Gale (2003, see above), and Bean & Green (2001) or Green (1995) and Green & Bean (1995) regarding “relevance.” [See here for full cites to these 3 articles.]

Highly recommended, but deserves some effort.

Cited in Beghtol, Clare. (2001) “Relationships in classificatory structure and meaning.” In Bean & Green, Relationships in the Organization of Knowledge. 99-113.

Saturday, 28 Apr 2007

Coates, E. J. “Classification in information retrieval: The twenty years following Dorking.” Journal of Documentation 34 (4), December 1978: 288-299.

Traces the developments in both classification theory and practice in the approximately twenty year period since the 1957 International Study Conference on Classification for Information Retrieval held at Dorking. Considers developments in both syntactic and semantic issues, along with implementation.

Two overarching trends are: (1) the lack of fundamental progress in classification theory at a fundamental level compared to earlier work by Ranganathan, and (2) a amazing output of new, and updating of previous, classifications, and indexing tools. Progress on the theoretical side included a refinement of concept of facets analysis, and, more importantly, “the realization that facets are themselves essentially the functions or superficial manifestations of relations between concepts belonging to different facet categories” (290).

Relational indexing schemes, such as those by Farradane, SYNTOL, Kergèvant, and Perreault are discussed. The work of the Classification Research Group on a new general classification that was abandoned, but eventually led to PRECIS is discussed.

Impressive developments in practice that were finally catching up to theory are brought out. Bliss Bibliographical Classification (BC2) is hailed as a major success on that head. One major disaster in classification is also discussed; that of the British National Bibliography (BNB) highly supplemented and faceted version of DDC 14 for an unsupplemented DDC 18. PRECIS, UDC, and BSO are also discussed; BSO primarily in the context of a switching language and for its accord with current theory.

A very interesting discussion, perhaps of serious import today, is a discussion of the initial impact of computerization on classification. The final topic is “Classification under fire,” which takes on suggestions of the day that “classification for information retrieval is obsolete or of dubious utility” (298).

Although this article is rapidly approaching 30 years of age, it is of extreme relevance today. In many ways, it points to the lack of further progress on the practical, implementation side of indexing languages writ large. It is also instructive in its final sections of the mistaken calls for classifications obsolescence in the face of full-text indexing and keyword indexing.

Highly recommended for both its succinct historical overview and for its applicability towards issues of the day in 2007. Should be required reading in advanced cataloging and indexing classes.

Cited in Beghtol, Clare. (2001) “Relationships in classificatory structure and meaning.” In Bean & Green, Relationships in the Organization of Knowledge. 99-113.

I’ve also done some re-reading of things for my annotated bibliography on relationships, as some of these are for it. But it’s time to post this as I doubt I’ll be reading anything else new tonight.

One down, more to go … but it’s reward time

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Earlier today I gave my presentation of my paper in Ontologies. My presentation is entitled, “A Tale of Two Properties.” It is about using thesaural standards and practice to disambiguate the scope notes and examples of two CIDOC CRM properties (relationships).

It went pretty well.

After class, and the usual after-class discussion, I walked myself downtown to the Blind Pig for a reward. I enjoyed my 1st Guinness outdoors while I caught up with Bloglines and a lot of posts from CiL. I am now enjoying my 2nd pint sitting just inside the doors, but the doors are wide open. Which in the case of the Pig means basically the whole front “wall” is wide open.

I kind of wish I was at CiL as so many of my “diner friends” (see comment 3 & 4) are there, but I have a place I need to be right now. And that is school.

I now have a week to incorporate the additional material that I had in my presentation into my paper as my second paper. Shouldn’t be too difficult, except 1) I have another presentation to prepare for next Wednesday (and I have way too much stuff to choose from), and 2) Allen is talking about posting my paper to the CIDOC CRM discussion list.

I am happy with my efforts at disambiguating the P88 and P89 properties within CIDOC CRM for “geographical places,” but the entity (class) E53 Place is far broader than that, and FRBRoo (F12 Place) just makes it worse. I did take a 1st stab at giving examples for P88 and P89 in a FRBRoo world, but I’m unsure how far my analysis can be stretched. But the E53/F12 Place is already seriously over-stretched in the 1st place! Insanely overstretched! It definitely needs some subclasses.

My presentation for next week is for RO and is on “relationships.” Mostly those from the “bibliographic universe,” but I’ve read much wider than that. For instance, Green on relationships within the context of cognitive semantics.

After I give my presentation I have one more week to finish writing my book review (Bean & Green) and finish my annotated bibliography on my readings on relationships.

After class this evening I mentioned to Allen that I wish we had time to look at FRAD in Ontologies. He suggested that I suggest it for a discussion in Metadata Roundtable. Excellent idea, except I said I’d feel bad suggesting it but saying someone else needs to lead the discussion. He suggested a splitting up of the workload in a sort of team approach and even volunteered himself. Hmmm? Like I need more work! I still have to do my Terminology Services presentation, which may well end up being for this group.

But perhaps Allen, Kathryn, and I? Like Kathryn needs more work, too. But comments aren’t due until 15 July; maybe we have time to end the semester, me to “do” Terminology Services,” and for us to do this in MDRT, too. Hmmm? I’m crazy enough to try.

Some things read this week, 1 – 7 April 2007

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Sunday, 1 Apr 2007

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

William Blake, “The Chimney Sweeper”
William Blake, “London”
William Wordsworth, “The World Is Too Much With Us”

Babik, Wieslaw. “Terminology as a level for the compatibility of indexing languages. Some remarks.” Compatibility and Integration of Order Systems: Research Seminar Proceedings of the TIP/ISKO Meeting, Warsaw, 13-15 September 1995. Warsaw: Indeks-Verlag, 1996. 157-162.

Aitchison, Jean. “A Classification as a source for a thesaurus: The Bibliographic Classification of H. E. Bliss as a source of thesaurus terms and structure.” Journal of Documentation 42 (3), Sep. 1986: 160-181.

This was a good article that looks at using BC2 to generate thesauri. It seems as if it could be a very useful tool; but what is the status of BC2 today? Was it completed? Has it been kept up-to-date? Need to look into that at some point….

Doerr, Martin and Patrick LeBoeuf. “Modelling intellectual processes: The FRBR-CRM Harmonization.” The CIDOC Conference, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2006 [pdf]

For Ontologies.

Monday, 2 Apr 2007

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

William Wordsworth, “Composed upon Westminster Bridge”

Broughton, Vanda. “Structural, linguistic and mathematical elements in indexing languages and search engines: Implications for the use of index languages in electronic and non-LIS environments.” 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: 206-212.

Farradane, J. “Relational indexing.” The Indexer: Journal of the Society of Indexers 2 (4)Autumn 1961

Wow! Über-classic article.

Monday – Tuesday, 2 – 3 Mar 2007

Doerr, Martin and Patrick Le Bouef. FRBR object-oriented definition (version 6.7) August 2006.

This is the version Allen linked to for Ontologies, but he and several others had the newest which is 7.1. That made me a little grumpy, to say the least. This is an attempt to harmonize FRBR with the CIDOC CRM.

These guys really are brilliant people, but this thing is a mess. If you had any squishy thoughts about FRBR at all, but particularly “works” or “manifestations,” be ready to have your brain pulled out through your rear end, kneaded until soft(er), pureed in a blender and put back in with a turkey baster up your nostrils. Seriously. A small part of that was trying to keep straight the newer model used in discussion from the one I had read, but mostly it was the several types of “manifestations” and, oh perhaps, a dozen kinds of “works.” Seriously guys, logic is not always your friend. I understand the logical purpose for the reification of multiple kinds of works, but is it useful?

I guess I truly need to see a bare-bones catalog and cataloging module that’s been designed with this model, play with it a bit, and then have a look at the innards. But I seriously cannot see anybody building something that will be used based on this. Maybe I’m just not the proper middle man here, but since that’s the role I see myself in in my professional life I consider that an issue. I really want to know how anyone will get from this model to a workable system that practitioners will buy in to.

Tuesday, 3 Apr 2007

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias”

Wednesday, 4 Apr 2007

Dousa, Thomas A. “Towards a clarification of the superwork in Svenonius’s set-theoretical model of the bibliographic universe.” Seminar paper for LIS590OH Spring 2007.

Good jeebus! Tom is a freaking genius! I need to re-read this—very closely—at least one more time. I’m not sure I see the same problem in Svenonius that Tom saw and solved. But, for now, I am assuming that he is right about the problem being there. Because as I said, Tom is a freaking genius! And if the problem is there. He solved it. And he used a few words that I’m going to have to look up, so that’s a bonus.

I’m just really sad that I’ll miss him presenting it next week. The week after I get to present my little paper on clarifying P88 and P89 in CIDOC CRM. I was so excited to find out Allen liked my paper! But now, after reading Tom’s, I feel so inadequate. Oh well, I’ve already warned several fellow students not to compare themselves to Tom. I best take my own advice for once.

Thursday, 5 Apr 2007

Albertsen, Ketil and Carol van Nuys. “Paradigma: FRBR and digital documents.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 39 (3/4), 2005: 125-149.

This is from the special issue of CCQ edited by Patrick Le Boeuf, Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR): Hype or Cure-all? Well worth checking out if you are new to FRBR.

This paper is about some FRBR Group 1 extensions implemented by the National Library of Norway for handling composite entities at all abstraction levels. I may have read it before as I read most of this issue, but it was cited by Tom in his paper.

Perreault, Jean. (1965) “Categories and relators: a new schema.” Reprinted in: Knowledge Organization 21 (4), 1994: 189-197.

Another Über-classic article.

Friday, 6 Apr 2007

Efthimiadis, Efthimis N. (1996) “Query expansion.” ARIST 31

Read to get some idea about the topic of query expansion and so I can say something about the role of relationships in this portion of search for my Representation and Organization project.

Buckland, Michael K., et. al. 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: 48-53.

Interesting report of some preliminary work I need to look into. Functional relationships may well be more important, or at least as important, as semantic relationships in providing access to organized knowledge/information.

Saturday, 7 Apr 2007

Vickery, Brian C. “Knowledge representation: A brief review.” The Journal of Documentation 42 (3), Sep. 1986: 145-149.

A decent early overview of ways of representing knowledge, particularly for use in computer systems.

A crazy mishmash of life

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Sickness and death

Been having odd sick-like things going on for a couple months now. Went to the doc last week. Sinus x-rays showed an infection and I’m a third of the way through 20 days of antibiotics. My electrolytes were also off and I had to have them retested. Go back Monday for a follow-up.

I need to call the pest control dude back. Maybe it’s the cold snap, but I have had a couple ants the last couple days. I have about 3 more weeks to get a free touch-up spray. It’s stressful enough right now with the semester’s end rapidly approaching without needing to kill more ants. “Stay outside, you little bastards!”

End of the semester

Speaking of the end of the semester … I’m OK, but really need to get productive quickly! I’ve been reading a lot as you can see, but now it’s time to do something with what I’ve read and to actually research some (i.e., visit and play with) some terminology services-type projects. I’ve been entering many of my readings in Zotero, too, so I can do my bibliography.

My project for Representation and Organization is probably going to be an annotated bibliography. Kathryn’s left it up to me to produce something useful for the class on my topic, relationships, although she suggested a few things including the bibliography. I am going to structure it around Bean & Green’s 4-way grouping from the introduction to Relationships in the organization of knowledge:

  1. Bibliographic relationships between units of recorded knowledge
  2. Intratextual and intertextual relationships, including those based on text structure, citation relationships, and hypertext links
  3. Subject relationships in thesauri and other classificatory structures
  4. Relevance relationships (vii)

I will, of course, expand on these (non-mutually exclusive) categories and try to include at least one good article on each topic. Many topics will have several good or even great ones. And, if you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that I’ve even gone back and read some of the early classic articles.

Allen really liked my first paper for Ontologies and now I just need to do a bit of expansion and try to add a couple sentences here and there on some points he said I’d get nailed for if it were a conference paper. Our initial limit was 3 single-spaced pages and now I have 1-3 more to “play” with. Of course, I’m supposed to explain the notion of hierarchies, my choice of methodology (chose the right one, but need to say why), and also what I mean by “fundamental category.” I love how he said that “I need to do something (about “fundamental category”), that it’ll be hopeless, and that I won’t be satisfied.” Truer words of advice from a philosopher were never spoken. In 1-3 sentences I need to stave off criticism from those who think they know what they are and that I don’t, and criticism from those who think no one knows what they are. Certainly a simple task, eh? ;)

I really had no idea what to expect from Allen when I went in to talk to him last Sunday since I had never written an actual paper for him before, but it was delightful. We chatted for a good while about a fair few things and it did my heart good. Those memories are mine, though.

I need to get on this paper, though, as I present it to class on Tuesday the 17th. I’ll post it here at some point. I’m even considering posting both versions, but I want to have the expanded version written before I post the original.

Assistantships

I just realized that my thesaurus assistantship is over May 15th, and I verified that they have no money to pay me (hourly) after that. At least I didn’t get let go like several other folks a month or two back. That means I will not completely finish my first pass through FireTalk, although possibly all Top Terms except TT00 General. The problem is, I’m still waiting for node labels (maybe next week) and it will really need a 2nd pass. ::sigh:: “‘ferris wheel rescue’, ‘ferris wheel rescue’, ‘ferris wheel rescue’…”

I think I’m set for Fall, though. I scored another assistantship in Rapid (monographic) Cataloging and kept my Serials gig. Sweet! I’ll get to sit at my own desk all week, and get some great monographic copy cataloging experience. I’ll certainly see a vastly wider range of subjects, class nos, and some other MARC fields than I do now. My only concern is that if some adjustments aren’t made it’ll be 60% total, and those extra few hours/week make a big difference.

My serials gig is through the summer, but I need to find some way to make up the $$ from the Fire Service gig. Cause it only adds up to rent and utilities for 3 months. Else it’ll be a very boring summer as I basically sit in my house and it ramen.

Blogging, or not so much

See the next post…

Future classes

This summer I’ll be taking a class on Topic Maps with Patrick Durusau via LEEP. This Fall, who knows? Registration opens Monday and we don’t have all the classes listed yet! Now this is certainly abnormal for us, but it sucks nonetheless.

I am taking Bibliography with one of our amazing emeritus professors, Don Krummel. After that, hmmm? There really aren’t many decent courses being offered in my opinion. But one should keep in mind that I’ll have 74 semester hours of LIS credit by the time Fall semester starts. Maybe it is about time to move on. ;)

There are a couple that might be interesting in light of my previous socio-technological work, but they are with someone I don’t think I’d take any class from based on what I’ve heard from many of the PhD students.

Julia Flanders (who is amazing!) will be teaching Electronic Publishing via LEEP again. While interesting, I had a look at last year’s syllabus and I don’t know. Kind of peripheral to my main interests.

An analysis of contemporary electronic publishing from the perspective of the production process, emphasizing the role of information processing standards and the concept of documents as knowledge representation systems. Specific topics will include the organization of digital document production, tools and techniques, technical strategies, business strategies, and policy issues. Particular attention will be given to the use of key XML-related standards in the production process, and to the general role of data standards in supporting the development of a high-performance electronic publishing industry. As a vehicle for presenting a coordinated selection of fundamental issues, we will focus on the development and use of the Open eBook Publication Structure, a new industry specification for the content, structure, and presentation of “electronic books”. Students may approach the material from a variety of perspectives. Final projects will be individualized to student’s interests and backgrounds and may be either analytical research papers or technical projects designing and implementing portions of publishing systems (From GSLIS Course Catalog).

Dave Dubin will be teaching Foundations of Information Processing in Lib & Info Science, which will include Python programming. Allen Renear highly suggested I take this after hearing of the other classes I have taken and my professional plans. He’s right; I need to do this. But it’s LEEP and I broadcast this class for Dave once and had a hard time keeping up when in the same room with him even. That boy can pack an English sentence like none I’ve ever known!

Covers the common data and document processing constructs and programming concepts used in library and information science. The history, strengths and weaknesses of the techniques are evaluated in the context of our discipline. These constructs and techniques form the basis of applications in areas such as bibliographic records management, full text management and multimedia. No prior programming background is assumed (From GSLIS Course Catalog).

More important to my current goals are the independent studies/practica that I’m trying to put together. I want to do some work with “authority control,” both traditional (AACR, MARC, LC) and newer, non-traditional forms like embedded gazetteers, term lists, etc. They will probably have to be separate, but who knows? I’m drafting a letter to ask for a meeting to discuss possibilities with our head of cataloging but am waiting on a couple feedback responses first. Quite possibly something could come of this that would shape my CAS project. It’d be nice to do some real work and learning, and benefit the library and our patrons at the same time.

I thought I had the authority control thing sewn up when I got a CETRC Mentor, but seeing as I never heard from them I seem to need to find a different route. And speaking of never hearing from….

ALA and its offshoots

Almost 2 months ago, I wrote about ALA membership processing being broken. I called them a couple of days after that and was assured that everything was right with the world. The lady I spoke with really was very pleasant. She assured me that, “No, I did not owe any more $$ for ACRL and that I really was no longer a member of ACRL, and that surely LITA knew I was a member because they have exactly the same info as she does.” She suggested that maybe I hadn’t heard from them yet as their journal is quarterly and, well, Nov. to Feb. When I asked whether I should have at least received a welcome email or such she was a bit perplexed but, nonetheless, “All is right with the world.”

Well, damn it ALA! All is not right with the world. I still get ACRL publications. I have yet to receive any thing—journal, email, “Fuck off but thanks for the $$”—except for a kindly welcome from a member in my post comments. As I said in my previous post:

I voted for the dues increase ALA. I expect you to actually fix some of the broken parts with it. Starting with membership services might be a good place. That seems like such a basic concept for a membership organization, especially one whose purpose really isn’t to serve their members but where their members work. It seems to me that asking people to pony up large sums of money to be a member of something that actually supports their employers—truly one heck of a concept—would particularly make the organization pay attention to the “small” matter of membership.

I said a lot more, too, and I stand by every word of it. There are other games in town and as I figure out exactly where I want to put my limited time and energy professionally ALA is at the bottom of the list. I also doubt that they could do much to improve the situation for me at this point. I’ll probably stay a member of ALCTS next year, but after that when I am no longer a student and depending on where my 1st job takes me … who knows?

ALA, you are improving in a few small ways and I am truly glad for that. But you still truly suck in some very overarching ways that are far more important. So keep putting money into Second Life because that is far more important than even recognizing that someone is a member of part of your organization. Yeah, seems like the right priority to me. In the meantime you can find me at ASIST and NASIG.

That is all I’m willing to say because I don’t want to find myself in a situation like someone else I know who swore “Never again ALA…” and ended up taking a job there a few months later. See, my ethical sensibilities would have a real hard time with that.

That’s all for now as I have another post to finish so I can concentrate on school work.