Organizing Stuff

What's next?

2010-06-18T13:22:00.001-04:00

I am concerned about the future of libraries. I think the current business model of libraries, which has worked well in the past, oh, 150 years or so is under much pressure both from social media initiatives (think LibraryThing) but also from a tremendous shift in who we think about the world and what it looks like today.

The contemporary library movement is based on the ideology of modernity; and has at its heart i) uniform deliverance, ii) standards and standardization, iii) interoperability over locality, iv) exchange of records, v) de-intellecutalization of the work (which is different than "de-professionalization"), vi) industrialization of the movement, etc. This model is under pressure in the late-modern society where the authority of libraries are questioned and where librarians find themselves scrambling to establish themselves as trustworthy, where the diversity of opinions flourish and where scientific facts are interpretable, where the plurality of meaning explodes and where more people engage in meaning-making, forming opinions, and interpreting facts. The current business models of libraries clearly doesn't work in a late-modern, social mediated world…

There are at least two alternative models proposed for the late-modern library:

1. The physical library will dissolve, there is no need for physical libraries in a world that is all-digital. Libraries will only exist virtually -- all material are tagged by the community, in a Web 2.0 type fashion… people who are experts in the material will get to classify/index/tag it. Oh, and stuff that is not available in digital form will be snail mailed to you (when Netflix can do, surely librarians can figure it out as well).
The need for pre-planned large-scale systems dissolves, as the organizing and representation emerge from the use and the users.

2. The physical library becomes rooted in its local community - and as such reflect's the community's needs, philosophies, ideologies, make-up, and view of the world. These libraries are small, focuses on the localities, and are tightly connected to the particulars of the community and the people in that community. The organization and representation of material will be done with the community in mind - and with help from the community.
The need for pre-planned large-scale systems dissolves, as the organizing and representation emerge from the use and the users.

While I am not sure which way the future will go, I am certain that the current model will not stand. I am looking for moves in the library world that indicates a preference… a desire… a vision.

In the meantime: The focus should be on developing the critical skills of the next generation of librarians who will make a different in the late-modern society in libraries of the future….

The category of literacy

2010-05-05T10:01:00.008-04:00

I am very excited about the upcoming CoLIS conference in London next moth -- but speaking of literacy, my paper at the conference, Trusting Tags, Terms and Recommendations, [preprint here], is in an interesting session:
What I find striking is:
1. How international diverse the session is... wow...
2. That the three other papers have "information literacy" in their titles - am I in the right category? Have I been misunderstood? Do I misunderstand my own work?

------

June 21, 2010 update: The program has been re-organized, so I am now in a less diverse group with a couple of other Danes (talking about: "The social psychology of information use: seeking friends, avoiding enemies") and a Finn (talking about: "Diversity in the conceptions of information use"). Arh, that felt good... to be grouped with people with similar paper topics.

Colo(u)rs

2010-05-04T19:01:00.002-04:00

Today my friend Yuri pointed me to a fabulous post about colors (or "colours", I am, after all, in Canada...) -- any student of classification will at some point marvel over some of the many studies on the classification of color... but what is unique, I think, about the post that Yuri pointed me to is the attempt to figure how ordinary people (who are reading the particular blog) name a bunch of ordinary colors. The post is especially interested in the difference in the size of color vocabulary between guys and girls. Girls have a larger color vocabulary than guys. Great. Go figure. This just proves, once for all, that guys are color illiterate. Or, rather, it proves, once for all, that literacy is context-dependent and that any assumption about what it means to be literate needs to start from an understanding of what people want to accomplish... one can be illiterate [at something, by some standard (in this case the ability to name colors)] and still function very well in the world (as most guys do, also in situations where they have to name colors). The ability to name colors (or remember names of colors) is context-dependent; these colors have particular names for particular people, in particular contexts -- colors don't have names, colors are given names and the names are tied to particular activities and contexts... Which is, in fact, true for any category - it is socially constructed.

This is the end of publishing

2010-03-17T10:36:00.004-04:00

This is brillant - and very clever!

The value of LIS education

2009-12-15T11:57:00.002-05:00

I just watched the Friday edition of The Agenda with Steve Paikin, which was about the increase of corporate money in university research in Canada, more specifically in Ontario. The discussion centred on the decade old debate of whether university research (and education) needs to have an immediate economic benefit to business and society. It was a great debate, fair and balanced and with some good insights (though not much new stuff). The debate is interesting to LIS because we seem to have a similar debate going on -- where some people would argue that the research and education that takes place in LIS schools ought to the directly tied to the practice of LIS, others would, of course, have a more loose understanding of what it means to be educated at a research university.

Michael Buckland asked us in '96 to consider which LIS books we would hand a university president who would be interested in understanding what LIS is about… most books in LIS are "how-to" books, and as Buckland says: "books that provide a general introduction to [the] scope and nature of LIS are not common" which is quite unfortunate because "the general emphasis on professionally useful education discourages interest in the field of LIS itself, in the nature of information and information technology, and in the intellectual history of LIS because there are always more apparently useful agenda".

The Agenda has a short discussion towards the end of the program about the value of liberal arts education, and Buckland asks us to consider if we could develop a liberal arts LIS education and he suggests that: "any view of LIS is incomplete and lacking in coherence if it could not include a liberal arts program".

I fear a bit that i) the majority of the LIS community would not even be interested in entertaining the idea of a liberal arts LIS education and ii) it would be tremendously difficult to develop a liberal arts education based on the current research tradition within LIS. The reason for this is clear: LIS education is seen as a place that merely produces workers for the library industry, and it is argued that the focus of research and education in LIS school should merely reflect today's needs and practices.

I think that is sad state of affairs. It is intellectually empty -- and it does a disservice to the library profession in the long run.

Then there is always the option of moving library education out of large research universities, as my colleague Juris Dilevko suggests. This would indeed be an interesting development, and one that would certainly force LIS departments to rethink their mission.

My sense is that we need to ensure that LIS education has relevance and value beyond the needs and practices of today's and tomorrow's libraries - LIS education needs to research based (as long as it take place at research universities) and the research ought to ask larger questions, be less focused on technical minutiae, and more bold as Andrew Dillon argued a couple years ago.

Good to remember...

2009-12-14T13:12:00.002-05:00

Remember, that just because lots of people hate your ideas, doesn't mean that they aren't powerful -- in fact, the most powerful ideas will be hated as well as loved. Excellent post today at Indexed.

The difference between men and women

2009-12-06T19:33:00.001-05:00

Excellent article in the New Yorker [Nov. 30, 2009] about the Caster Semenya situation… a couple quotes:

"Unfortunately for I.A.A.F. officials, they are faced with a question that no one has ever been able to answer: what is the ultimate difference between a man and a woman? “This is not a solvable problem,” Alice Dreger [a professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine] said. “People always press me: ‘Isn’t there one marker we can use?’ No. We couldn’t then and we can’t now, and science is making it more difficult and not less, because it ends up showing us how much blending there is and how many nuances, and it becomes impossible to point to one thing, or even a set of things, and say that’s what it means to be male.""

and later:

"There is much more at stake in organizing sports by gender than just making things fair. If we were to admit that at some level we don’t know the difference between men and women, we might start to wonder about the way we’ve organized our entire world. Who gets to use what bathroom? Who is allowed to get married?"

Right, at the end of the day, reality doesn't come carved up into little chunks -- we have to make those chunks. That requires acts that are drenched in politics, ethics, epistemology, etc.

The recommend objective

2009-12-04T16:05:00.002-05:00

We have in the past, oh, approx. 150 years had four basic objectives that we want to accomplish through the catalog. Often referred to as FISO (Finding, Identifying, Selecting, Obtaining). Svenonius (The Intellectual Foundation of Info Org., 2000, p. 18) rightly added Navigation. So FISON. I am wondering if time has come to add a sixth objective, recommending, so FISONR, or FRISON.

The basic idea in the original four objectives and also in Svenonius' Navigation objective is that people, aka users, come to the system with a desire, a need, a problem, articulate it, and retrieve something relevant (hopefully). That's very good. I think. It has served us well, and I suppose we will continue to develop systems that can accomplish what those objectives set out to do.

But I am starting to wonder if we can't do better and more than that… some would call it being proactive. That's where recommendation comes in; librarians and other information professionals have always done some recommendation, I suppose. Though Patrick Wilson did note, “the librarian not only has no politics, no religion, and no morals; he has no opinion on any open question. Librarians see their role as one of complete hospitality to all opinions” (Second-Hand Knowledge, 1983, p. 190)… despite this official position of the profession, I suppose that some librarians actually do have opinions and have recommend materials to people... anyway, I hope we are ready to take the catalog beyond the sort of liberal librarianship that Wilson talked about… whereas librarians might have made recommendations in the past, based on their knowledge of the material and the topic, I would hope that we in the future could harvest the insight, knowledge and inspiration of the people using and interacting with the material to help recommend and review the material to support other people's information quests.

Almost all information systems use some sort of recommender systems today; Amazon, Netflix, Epinions, CitULike, LibraryThing, Delicious, Last.fm, Connotea, Flickr, InSuggest, etc. etc. But no traditional library catalogs. Why?

As explained in this short piece in Communications of the ACM ("Just for you" no. 8, 2009), "The key thing with recommender systems is they're trying to help with discovery," . . . unlike search engines that "help you find something you already know you want."

Maybe it is time to move beyond just giving people what the already know they want, to helping people discover information, books, material.

Let's build recommendation into the catalog of the future!

Inspiration for the future?

2009-12-03T09:26:00.003-05:00

So, I am prepping my intro to KO class for next semester -- and I just re-read Fran Miksa's review [LQ, 79(1): 131-143] of Lois Mai Chan's [Cataloging and Classification: An Introduction. 3rd ed. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007] and Arlene Taylor's [Introduction to Cataloging and Classification. 10th ed. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2006] textbooks on cataloging and classification... it is a splendid historical critique of textbooks (and education) in the area of cataloging and classification and their relation (or lack thereof) to practice in libraries, esp. in small, medium, public, and special libraries. Miksa finds that much of today's textbooks in the area focuses almost exclusively on the technical procedures of cataloging and classification and doesn't include anything that would inspire the reader to view cataloging and classification as "worthwhile, even inspiring, endeavors". He ends his review by saying:

"Finally, there is the matter of creating a unified rationale for cataloging and classification that would not simply recognize the past and the present but also offer reasonable inspiration for the future. Mention has already been made of the reality that no present text offers such a rationale. In this respect, the Chan and Taylor texts, despite all of their strengths, seem “tired” when it comes to eliciting such a vision. That they are is not so much a fault of the authors, however, as much as it reflects the contemporary climate of thought in library cataloging and classification. At some point between Mann’s text [i.e. Introduction to Cataloging and the Classification of Books. Chicago: ALA, 1930] and the appearance of new texts since the 1960s, cataloging and classification had already started down the road of being thought of only or merely as access mechanisms without the complications and implications that arise from their relationship to the origin, character, and organization of humankind’s knowledge. The latter is, to say the least, a striking social phenomenon in its own right, and given its extraordinary nature I cannot help but think how grand a change would occur in texts on cataloging and classification were they to capture at least some of that extraordinary character in their vision."

Is the tail wagging the dog? It does seem to me that the lack of imagination, the staleness of cataloging and classification, and the downward interest among students in this area in the age of the participatory social web, is our own fault. Many seem more keen on preserving what we have had instead of offering "reasonable inspiration for the future". We need to start by developing syllabi and curriculum that is inspiring and offer paths for the "future of the catalog"...

Speaking of "future of the catalog", I also re-read Nancy Williamson's paper from '81, "Is there a catalog in your future" [reprinted in CCQ 48(1): 10-25) - in '81, she said: "We have perfected the catalog which has existed for more than one hundred years without significantly improving the kinds of bibliographic and subject access that the catalog might provide. Nor have we experimented sufficiently with possible new approaches to subject retrieval of bibliographic items which modern technology could support" - and then she goes on to predict what the catalog would look like 25 years later, in 2006. My sense is that it is quite appropriate to reprint Williamson's paper... and then we can hope that we can accomplish in the next 25 years what wasn't possible to even touch in the past 25 years.

Reliable metadata?

2009-09-03T19:46:00.003-04:00

Yes, as Geoff Nunberg shows, it is difficult to catalog huge masses of stuff, and few people should be surprised that Google ain't perfect... but to call for 'reliable metadata' as the way to solve this problem... Come on... How old fashioned is that? Reliable to whom? where? when?

What's KO core?

2009-08-27T12:04:00.009-04:00

At my school, we require all LIS students in the Master of Information program to take a basic introductory course in knowledge organization (called "Introduction to Bibliographic Control") -- but what we haven't agreed on is the content of such course. We haven't even agreed on the core knowledge that students should have after taking the course. So this winter (2010) we will offer two versions of the same course; this one and this one.

So, of course, students ask: Which version should I take? My stock answer goes like this:

"The two variations of INF 1320 offer different approaches to building the core knowledge that LIS students ought to have re. bibliographic control/knowledge organization. The two variations represent two different educational paradigms within LIS — and as instructors we have chosen to construct our section of the course to support our belief and view of LIS education. So, it is not easy to give you an entirely objective answer to your question...

I think you need to consider what you want to gain from your graduate education -- would you like to gain a solid understanding of the systems and methods for organizing and representing material using tools traditionally used in the broad cross section of libraries or would you like to gain an understanding of theoretical concepts in knowledge organization and approaches to the design of systems for organizing information?

My sense is that both variations of the course will give you a foundation for your career. The foundation will just be quite different depending on which course you take."

But I guess that poses this question: Should we (as instructors of KO) agree on a core KO knowledge that we present to students in a required KO course? If that is not possible, perhaps a solution is to offer many different kinds of foundational courses and let the students themselves decides which kind of foundational knowledge they want/need. That would take the consumer orientated university a step further... but, I guess, it also reflects reality of the vast disagreements within the LIS education community.

A category for everything

2009-08-19T12:57:00.002-04:00

Yeah, finally... a system with a category for everything. Dilbert style. :-)

100 Best Blogs for Library Science Students

2009-08-17T09:18:00.003-04:00

It is always difficult, if not impossible, to name the best of anything -- I suppose what's good and great depends on your perspective... but this [link removed] is a good list of good blogs for 'library's students. Though, IMHO Stephen's Lighthouse and InfoMatters ought to have been included... Of course, I'm happy to see Organizing Stuff on the list - and I feel the slight pressure to post more often...

Update, Aug. 20: Well, apparently, I made a fool of myself by linking to this list of "100 Best Blogs for Library Students" - one does not link to 'spammers' in the blogphere. See an excellent explanation here. I guess I hadn't thought though how one adds to to the credibility of sites by linking to it. It is obvious, once one think about it. I didn't. Ooops.

Order, index cards and taxonomy

2009-06-18T09:55:00.001-04:00

For some people the conclusion that, "The natural world was no longer ordered on a fixed, linear scale, but came to be seen as a map-like natural system of multiple affinities" seem novel and groundbreaking... for others it ought to be foundation for all work in KO. As soon as the mid-1760s, this insight was motivation for Linnaeus' work on information retrieval, and his invention of the index card.

Crazy verdict

2009-04-26T20:46:00.009-04:00

It is concerning, I think, how little main stream media has covered about the craziness of the Pirate Bay verdict. As the Pirate Bay guys have pointed out over and over, you can find the exact same files using Google... try a search for <filetype:torrent "the cure"> on Google and a you'll get a fantastic collection of The Cure's excellent albums... Will Google now also be found guilty in aiding copyright infringement? It is indeed a crazy verdict.

UPDATE, April 27: OK -- it turns out that the judge in the Pirate Bay case was involved with a number of "pro-copyright" groups... a mistrial?

The end of monopoly?

2009-04-24T19:00:00.008-04:00

David Weinberger noted a few days ago (in a note from a conference on User Generated Content): "Then John Palfrey gave a talk about how the world and books look to those born into the digital age. To these digital natives, said John, the world doesn’t divide into online and offline; it’s all converged. They assume digital access. (YouTube is the #2 search engine, JP said.) They expect to be co-creators. They also give away too much information and need to learn to do for themselves the gatekeeping that used to be done for them. The opportunities are huge, JP said, for creativity, reuse, and making knowledge together. JP expects libraries will continue to become social spaces where we learn and explore together, and he expects physical books to persevere because they are so well engineered for knowledge and extended argument. [Personally, I'm not convinced of that. I think books may turn out to be an accident of paper. Check back in 30 years to see who's right.]" -- hrmm... that's interesting. I think. Libraries as social spaces... The end of physical books... OK, that's all well. But users as co-creators of the organization, representation, classification and meaning-making of books? How do we go about that; how do we get librarians to give up on their monopoly of being the profession that have the right to say what books in libraries are about and how we should think about them? When will it be the norm that I can add my categories, my thoughts, my comments to any book in any library catalog?

Rankings

2009-04-23T15:50:00.006-04:00

US News and World Report has published their updated ranking of US LIS programs - not much news to report there... there are no revelations -- and not surprisingly (at least not to me), the iSchools are well represented at the top of the list. That's all very nice...

However, one gotta wonder how much we should read into these rankings... especially given the way the rankings were reached, US News describe their method as: "The rankings are based solely on the results of a fall 2008 survey sent to the dean of each program, the program director, and a senior faculty member in each program. The questionnaires asked individuals to rate the academic quality of programs at each institution as outstanding (5), strong (4), good (3), adequate (2), or marginal (1). Individuals who were unfamiliar with a particular school's programs were asked to select "don't know." Scores for each school were totaled and divided by the number of respondents who rated that school. The response rate was 56 percent" -- so three people from each school is contacted, and a bit more than half the people responded? And, does US News really expect deans, program directors and senior faculty members to have informed opinions about all 45+ programs? I am not even sure how one would rate the academic quality of a program... maybe you just rate your alma mater and the places your friends teaching highly?

This is not cool...

2009-04-16T21:07:00.007-04:00

I am very excited about the upcoming conference on Ethics of Information Organization; the program looks promising -- but it is not cool that you can only register for the conference if you have a US address... Notice that the drop-down list of states only gives US states... no Canadian provinces or territories; not to mention that many countries don't have the equivalence of American/Canadian states/provinces/territories... they also ask for a zip code (not a postal code) which has to consist of five characters... geez...

If it wasn't because this was for a conference about ethics... I assume that some of the speakers will talk about the challenges of creating systems that aren't exclusive... then one could go into a rant about the stupidity and ignorance of systems designers... but in this case, I assume it is a trick to get us thinking and blogging before the start of conference. Mission accomplished.

in the future we will all be...

2009-01-05T11:47:00.004-05:00

A couple of months ago, I went to a conference where someone stated, as a matter of fact, "in the future we will all be librarians"... I was struck by that statement for two reasons: i) I disgreed, but I wasn't sure why I disagreed... and ii) in my application in 1999 to my previous job at U of Washington, I had stated: "I am confident that in the future--in a society where everyone will be able to do what librarians have always done--there will be an accelerated demand for professionals who are able to create efficient systems for the organization of knowledge." -- But is this really so? I don't think I believe this, any longer...

As I noted in my last post, I think KO can be divided in three sets of problem types... and I while I do think that some of the ideas developed in KO practice and theory in the past 50 years or so (mainly those out of the CRG) can be utilized in the medium IOP set -- people practicing medium IOP draw, to some degree, on what librarians know (or should know)... but is it mostly very, very different than librarianship. The big IOPs do, of course, occupy librarians and librarian-type people... but I think the solutions to big IOPs, in the long term, will come from ideas other than those developed in librarinship. Small IOPs doesn't draw on librarianship at all -- and small IOP practitioners don't do librarianship.

So... will everyone in teh future do what librarians have always done; will we all be librarians in the future -- I think not, espeically not the KO area... because, basically, librarians will not do what they have always done...

Small, medium and big IOPs

2008-06-10T11:48:00.007-04:00

Thinking about the current state of KO -- and the future of KO research and practice, I would divide the KO universe of research and practice into three sets of information organization problems (IOPs):

Big IOP. Organization and representation of large quantities of information for unrecognizable many people; people with with varied interests, beliefs, positions, knowledge, expertise, etc. The Web is the prototypical example of such an IOP, large academic and many public libraries are also Big IOPs. Interoperability issues and mantras are certainly Big IOP.
Medium IOP. Information collections for particular, stated, clear, objective, specific purposes - to be used by people with particular, similar interests, beliefs, positions, knowledge, expertise, etc. which can be known, understood and articulated by those in charge of the collection or service. A company's intranet, web portal, store and some special libraries are typical examples. I would also think that some more specific Web services, like Flickr is Medium IOP.
Small IOP. Individuals' information management challenges and collections. These IOPs are particular to an individual's (or a few individuals') personal information collection and will typically be managed by that same individual(s). The information could be email, documents, files, photos, etc., which will be collected, searched and used but individuals for their own usages.

The past 150 years of work in KO has, more or less, been focused on creating systems that could address the Big IOP with the development and research into universal classification and KO systems. There has also been a lot of work done on Medium IOPs - especially with the development of special and domain based systems and the development and research into techniques, methods and approaches to the design and development of specialized controlled vocabularies.

We have seen some interests over the years in Small IOPs, personal information management, and it could seem as if this area is developing into a specialized sub-discipline in information, with its own research agendas, etc.

Today KO is focused on the Big and Medium IOPs. I propose that these two sets of IOPs are quite distinct and we should really split them into two distinct areas of inquiry and foci... with distinct vocabulary, interests, and agendas. If we fail to do so, my sense if that we will not be able to meet the future challenges in KO -- we will not be able to fully address the real issues and prepare the next generation of KO professionals.

I see two main challenges:

The universal systems and standards KO has developed for the Big IOPs will become more and more irrelevant... mainly because they have been developed with the assumptions for Medium IOPs in mind. I think that the sort of IOP that these universal systems and standards was createdy to address was much smaller in scale 150 years ago, even 40 years ago -- the IOP grew, and has grown tremendously lately... but we still tend to attack the Big IOP from the same approach as we did when the IOP was smaller. This is doomed. There may be financial and practical reasons why librarians want to kept these dinosaurs alive, but it is really only a matter of time before social computing applications will make them obsolete. There is also good reasons why librarians never really played a significant role in the organization of the Web... they had hammers but there were no nails. We need to educate students for a future where the dinosaurs of the past are long gone and we all collaborate on solving the Big IOP.
Medium IOPs will grow in complexity, interests, importance, and demand. There are good reasons to develop robust KO systems for information collections and services that are used in particular domains, for particular interests, by specific people -- and there are demands for people who can tackle such challenges and the demand will likely grow. We need to educate students who master the challenges of designing and delivering KO systems and services that address Medium IOPs -- and we need research that increase our understanding of the such Medium IOPs. The answers are not to use the dinosaur systems of the past in new enviroments; the challenge is to take the knowledge and experienced gained in KO and develop that is the 21st century digital contexts.

I suppose this is a call to rethink KO research and education -- to think of KO education as first and foremost concerned with design; and not as users of systems... no reason to educate students to use systems that are only kept alive because that's all we know.... instead of educating students to be active players in today's digital future.

I would like to see more research and education on critical analyses of Big and Medium IOP KO systems, more discussions of methodological issues involved in design and implementation of Medium IOP KO systems, more historical analyses of societal impacts of Big IOP KO systems, more comparative analyses of other classificatory systems, etc., etc. Less focus on the dinosaurs...

Theories and applications

2008-06-06T18:29:00.003-04:00

I just don't get it. Sorry.

Back in 1992 Sydney Pierce asked a question that has been in the back of my mind since I read her piece... she basically asked who are the Dead Germans of LIS -- meaning, in sociology there are a number of such Germans that all students in sociology read and are familiar with, so she asked, rightly, who are the Dead Germans of LIS? Pierce outlined the issue and asked a few scholars to suggest people for a list of Dead Germans of LIS (yes, they could recommend non-Germans as well). And then in the past few days participants on the jESSE listserv have been recommending good information science books...

The sad thing is that there really isn't a canon of Dead LIS Scholars who form the conceptual foundation for our field. The good thing that most of the works suggested are timeless, conceptual pieces that could form the conceptual foundation of LIS - though some of the works are more procedural and technical in nature and doesn't really have the ability to form the basis of a scholary field of inquiry...

But what I don't really get is our field's obsession with techniques, craftmanship, and application. I am currently at CAIS and while I enjoy the people [most Canadians :-)], the conference suffers from the typical informaion science syndrome of focusing on crafting systems... and often systems that aren't really used in the "real world"; it feels a bit like one has fallen into an artifical world of information scientists, who speak a highly technical langauge, with lots of reference to self-created problems and concepts and with very little discussion of real world problems and issues.

But the *really* sad thing, and the thing that makes me worry the most, is that there is virtually no discussion and debates about the ideas and concepts discussed in works mentioned in Pierce' piece and in the "good information science books" exchange... this is not specific to CAIS, most information science conference suffers from this syndrome... Though... a couple weeks ago I went to another conference, and the funny thing is that that conferences made explicit reference to many of the ideas and concepts discussed in the non-information science works mentioned in Pierce' piece and in the "good information science books" exchange... and they explicily debated many of the basic applications and issues which the information field cares about.

I think "we" are at a cross-road... we have two basic options:
1. We can be true to the advances we have made so far in information science and we can continue to work in our own discipline, advance information science vocabulary and understand the (self-created) problems at a even higher level.

2. Focus on the information problem in the today's world. Bring our work, our knowledge, our tradition to these problems and collaborate, interact and think with whoever is concerned about these 21st century information problems...

The first make sense; it's what we have set up academe to do. The latter sound like more fun... and we would be able to meet lots of people who share the foundational concepts and ideas which information science is build on... semiotics, epistemology, technology, networks, society, curation, human activity, language, interactions.... information.

Admissions to iSchools

2008-04-16T11:06:00.003-04:00

One issue that we often discuss in information programs is the level of and kind technology skills students need, before they are admitted and after they graduate. [We don't often discuss what level of and kind of, say, philosophical training they need to be admitted and have after they graduate -- but that's a debate for another day.] At my school we say something vague about the level of "computer literacy" (sic!) for admission -- but I suppose, what we ought to say, is simply, something like "applicants need to be comfortable with the sort of digital tools that we are using in today's society"; I mean, it is tremendously difficulty, if not impossible, to actually describe the level of and type of computer/information literacy needed to be successful in this field and more importantly, things are moving so fast that what is important today is different tomorrow. Think about the young kids... my son, who is seven, will say things like "just google that and we will find it" and "no, don't just one word to google, let's try and use two words" - I mean, what will they teach him in information searching classes 15 years from now; certainly not what they are teaching in those classes today (or yesterday). And it is not just my kid -- it is everyone entering iSchools tomorrow... the teachers get it. Do we?

Shirky meets Colbert

2008-04-11T14:21:00.002-04:00

Not particular informative -- but rather entertaining.

See for yourself.... here.

Oops...

2008-04-04T16:32:00.003-04:00

'Abortion' is back as a search term; the whole thing was a mistake... The dean has restored 'abortion' as a search term and launched a inquiry...

When ‘Abortion’ becomes 'Fertility Control, Postconception'

2008-04-03T19:45:00.002-04:00

Is has often been observed that if one wants to change the world, you change the categories of the world first – the American government has been pretty good at this tactics in recent years. A student in my class brought forward a recent example, which I think is quite telling – there is ravaging discussion [here, here, here, here] about POPLINE’s recent decision to make “Abortion” a stopword. Yes, a stopword, like: a, an, and the. POPLINE, an American service, is on their website described as “(POPulation information onLINE), the world's largest database on reproductive health, containing citations with abstracts to scientific articles, reports, books, and unpublished reports in the field of population, family planning, and related health issues.” -- and they have “recently made all abortion terms stop words.” The reason is that: “As a federally funded project, we decided this was best for now. In addition to the terms you're already using, you could try using 'Fertility Control, Postconception'. This is the broader term to our 'Abortion' terms and most records have both in the keyword fields. Also, adding 'unwanted w2 pregnancy' in place of aborti*. We have a keyword Pregnancy, Unwanted and there are 2517 records with aborti* & unwanted w2 pregnancy.” Now, of course, there is a significant difference between “Abortion” and “Pregnancy, Unwanted” as POPLINE’s scope notes indicates (yes, correct, these are technically not *scope notes*, but *definitions* – but let’s take that fight with them another day…)

So this begs the question… when do we include some concept in a controlled vocabulary; we have usually talked about “warranty” (user, literary, structural, domain, etc.) – however, this example highlight a more important principle – the ethical dimension of KO. Regardless of whether one agrees with the politics behind removing the abortion category and thereby eliminating the concept from the vocabulary; one needs to ask what is wrong and what is right in this regard – and more importantly, one needs to ask, who or what determines what is wrong and right. I’d assume that POPLINE has decided that Bush and the American government is the ethical authority and that their doctrine decides what is wrong and right. Regardless of that fact that I think it is nuts to remove the term; I actually applaud POPLINE for taking a stand and suffer the consequences for this stand. I can think of many, many controlled vocabularies (Dewey, LCSH, for instance…) which are equal offensive, but are less open about their politics. POPLINE will, apparently, make a statement re this in a few days – it is going to be interesting to see if they actually are going to say something of substance and make ethical commitments.

Classifications are political instruments… all classifications make epistemological, ethical, and political statements; there is nothing new to this. The library blogshere seems to argue that POPLINE’s move is unprecedented and unacceptable… get a grip; what is the ethical assumption behind Dewey’s religion section? I don’t see any ethical justification in the introduction to LCSH…

FIS @ You Tube

2008-03-05T14:42:00.003-05:00

Bill Mann--who is a student at FIS--has put together a series of brown bag lunch called In/formation -- the first of the these launched today, and I was invited to respond to some questions posed by students and faculty members; the conversations was recorded and I will post that as soon as Bill has finalized the editing of it. Anyway, one issue that came up was FIS' presence in various social computing sites -- and You Tube was mentioned as one example where FIS could have more presence; so I thought was post some FIS videos that already exist on You Tube at the moment:

One about is about what an archivist does -- it was created by students in one of Wendy Duff's classes:

An interview with Andrew Clement about net neutrality:

And, lastly, FIS' promotion video from last year:

Relevance

2008-02-27T15:39:00.003-05:00

Is she talking about librarians? Are libraries relevant in her world? (Probably not.) Will libraries become more relevant if we ditch all non-LIS educated faculty members from library schools and simply offer more courses on cataloging and reference? (Definitely not.)

Librarians and the fear of other disciplines

2008-02-27T12:54:00.004-05:00

It is fascinating how an op-ed about the facts that more and more libraries are hiring people without an MLIS, how libraries are being run like "dehumanized supermarkets", offers the "chaotic disorganization of the largest Barnes & Noble", and how users and librarians prefer "less precise, more watered-down 'metadata' that has replaced what used to be cataloging", along with a flurry of messages on the jESSE mailing list, quickly identifies *the* two main sources for these phenomena:

1. MLIS programs have been "invaded by faculty from other disciplines". Since people from "other disciplines" care more about getting tenure than the "principled professional practice of librarianship", MLIS programs apparently don't produce people who will standard guard of the forces that changes libraries these days... the reason for this is, according to several messages on jESSE, that students are steered toward more technology and programming courses, and away from traditional reference courses. Geez.

2. MLIS education have been broadened in scope at many schools, and now offers courses that are not restricted the practices of the traditional library institutions, but includes theories, concepts, and practices from a broad range of disciplines and areas. The fact that some schools have exchanged "cataloging" with "knowledge organization" and "reference" with "information resources and services" are, apparently, to blame for this change in library practice and users' expectations of library services. Geez.

I am afraid that the sad reality is that the profession will disappear quicker if LIS education only gave students the practical skills of cataloging and reference of yesteryear and restricts itself to the narrow defined scope of "libraries". The forces that are changing the library profession and libraries are forces in society at large and to pretend that we can save the library
profession and libraries by ignoring these forces in our education and practice is naive and shortsighted. LIS education needs to open up, broaden its scope, and welcome ideas and concepts from other disciplines to save its schools... and our research impact [but that is another discussion for another day].

Pictures

2008-02-11T10:24:00.001-05:00

While it may be fun to look at pictures of cats, bikes, and Taulov (my birth place) on Flickr - I find it much more enjoyable to browse the Corbis site; they have some truly amazing pictures, and their controlled vocabulary makes it possible to search the site -- my daily dose of cool pictures come from this site; I find the pictures just magnificent and the the owner often posts pictures of Toronto... One site that I just recently discovered is 20 Sites n Years, which is an amazing project... the owner has takes pictures of the same buildings and places every year since 1973. I find it pretty interesting to see how (and how little) the places and buildings change over the years -- but I also find it fascinating that the guy actually went back to the same places every year for 35 years... wow...

If only one could vote...

2008-02-07T09:51:00.001-05:00

Cataloging and beyond

2008-01-31T11:24:00.000-05:00

The Library of Congress' Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control recently released their report., "On the Record": http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/news/lcwg-ontherecord-jan08-final.pdf -- while the report is an interesting read in itself, it is noteworthy that the report only has a page and a half on LIS education for "present and future needs"... page 38 + 39. This short section is curiously vague in its language; it starts by starting:

"The educational preparation for catalogers, indexers, and other librarians and information professionals is not standardized across programs or curricula. Many LIS programs have shifted from teaching cataloging to teaching organization of information, although some programs continue to offer both." (p. 38)

I can hear two reactions to this:
a) "There you go, this just proves that LIS educators have no connection to reality; they are just interested in theoretical stuff with no practical bearings. LIS education is removing itself from the field and are ignoring its foundation"
and:
b) "See this just proves that LIS education today values KO issues, but now expands the issues beyond the traditional library setting and equip students with a broad, inclusive education in information, incl. library issues"

Both are probably right. And both can point to this report as evidence for their claims.

However, the second paragraph goes on and claims that there has been a shift in the demand of KO skills from libraries to the "information industry" -- and is does say that LIS programs "tend to focus on the former, rather than the latter". Which correspond will with my experience in this area -- and does speak to the two radical different expected reactions to the first paragraph.

The thing is that we need room for both areas in LIS education. We need to continue to educate library catalogers; but we also need to expand the field and educate information architects, taxonomists, theorists, etc. etc. It isn't and shouldn't be an "either or"! But most importantly, we need to realize that the common foundation for this *isn't* library cataloging (or library bibliographic control) -- the common foundation has to do with categories, intertextuality, epistemology, interpretation, language, etc, etc. Both areas will come out stronger if we recognize this and rebuild and retool the KO field from such a foundation.

OK. Enough. Back to my "Introduction to Bibliographic Control" class...

Indexing vs. Classifciation

2008-01-08T15:16:00.000-05:00

I have often heard people say that indexing is like adding labels to stuff and classification is like adding stuff to bins. I have never understood this. I mean, when you label a document you also place in a bin; if I index a book with "cats", I've also placed it in the "cats bin"; similarly if I place a book in the "cats bin", then I've also labeled the book with the "cats" term. I couldn't see the difference. Until today. Now I think I get it... Weinberger asks what the difference is between tagging things and thinging tags -- he can't see the difference between dragging a photo to a tag and dragging a tag to a photo. When I read this, I thought, well, in one activity you index the photo (dragging the tag to the photo) and in the other activity you classify the photo in a particular bin. Ah, so that must be the difference between adding labels to stuff and adding stuff to bins; between indexing and classification. Now I think I get it. Whew, just in time for semester start...

Off to daycare

2008-01-08T15:00:00.001-05:00

Even wondered how Princes get to daycare? Well, in Denmark their dad, in this case Crown Prince Frederik bikes his son Prince Christian to daycare on a bike made in Christiania. I am not sure why, but I find this image refreshing and intriguing... I mean in a world of terror and color security alert systems, isn't it cool to have a crown prince bike his son to daycare on bike made in the part of town famous for its pusher street?

The Wissen of KO

2008-01-07T16:23:00.000-05:00

I just reread Jesse Shera's wonderful piece on "Librarians Against Machines" from Science, May 12 1967; it is fascinating how relevant that piece is even today, 40 years later... When he says:

"That librarians were thus caught was largely due to the unfortunate fact that they have never given much consideration to the theoretical foundation of their procedures, nor developed a research program that would advance such theory or explain and improve its applications. Librarians know very well how to do what they do, but they never concern themselves to any great extent with why they do it. They understand the Können, but the Wissen has escaped them. Their discipline is a vast accumulation of of technical details rather than a body of organized abstract principles that can be applied in concrete situations, a body of knowledge that is known and understood by all members of the guild and one which the librarians themselves alone have created."

I can't help think that this sounds like something any thoughtful intellectual would say about the situation in KO today; I mean, most textbooks (and courses) in KO focuses almost exclusively on the how-to part, the Können part, as if the goal is to produce worker bees who simply know how to fill in catalog cards. It does seem like too little attention, too little respect is given to transcending the tradition and bringing the field forward, as Shera says: "Lip service is given to creativity and innovation, but excessive departure from traditional course content may well be regarded with considerable suspicion". I suppose we will only generate real change, real innovation if we manage to educate a generation of KO people with a substantial understanding of the "body of organized abstract principles" for KO; that requires, of course, that such a body of principles exist... and that we are able to recognize them, if they existed.

Lastly, given the intertwined nature of today's information world, it is unlikely that "the librarians themselves" can create this body of knowledge -- the body of knowledge needed today (and probably also at the Shera was writing this) reaches way beyond the library and the library profession.

Names of schools

2007-11-22T09:36:00.001-05:00

This is a snip "from the archives" printed in the latest edition of The Bulletin in which the former dean of my school explains that the school had changed name from Library Science to Library and Information Science "to reflect the importance of computers in the field". That was 25 years ago. Today we argue that our focus is on information practices that takes place beyond technology; and that the a better name for the field is, simply, information. And a better name for this sort of school is "Information School". I don't think that information is a particular good, smart, or descriptive word (or concept for that matter), but at least it doesn't have the science (or worse, studies) word attached... or depend on technology or particular institutions in its conceptualization. I believe we are on the way to establish schools that are large enough to focus on the breadth of the field, from various perspectives -- and focus on what is important to know and understand to function successfully in the information field.

A social catalog?

2007-11-21T13:44:00.000-05:00

Katherine Gould has an excellent post in which she discusses the shortcoming of traditional library catalogs, "A fundamental shortcoming of the library catalog is that it doesn't (and as currently designed can't) know the why for any given search." -- we can only search for what people ask for, independently of why they need the particular information; the purpose of the reference interview is to get to people's real information needs... this reminds me of the distinction between exploitative and descriptive power which Patrick Wilson makes in Two Kinds of Power -- either we give access based on neutral, objective representations of the artiofacts (not possible) or we give access based on an in-depth understanding and appreciate for people's information problems (not possible).

I am not sure if there is why to get around Wilson's analysis, if we still aim at providing one system for access to library material -- it seems to a path bound for failure...

Web 2.0, CVs, and language

2007-11-14T13:12:00.000-05:00

Peter Morville has posted an interview in which he discusses what Web 2.0 means -- I usually enjoy Peter's blogs and books; and this is no exception, I find his observation that Web 2.0 is "as much about attitude as technology" right on; and his comment that this change in attitude is about "relaxing control over the data, the interface, and the experience. It’s about taking risks, admitting mistakes, and continuously improving with the help of your users", should have serious consequence for KO research and practice, especially if one, as Peter, is "painfully aware of the challenges of language and representation. Our best attempts to structure knowledge and manage meaning through the creation of controlled vocabularies and thesauri have fallen far short of the ideal". As I have argued a few times, for instance at the NASKO 2007 conference, we have to realize that there is no one system, no one way to organize information (and stuff), no one way that is better or more correct than other ways... (although there are, of course, obviously wrong ways...), which in turns means that we have rethink the purpose of KO systems and our approach to thinking and talking about them. The challenge is: how do we expand the tradition of KO to include the attitude of Web 2.0?

Cool KO stuff

2007-11-14T11:13:00.001-05:00

I just watched Michael Wesch's film again... it is great; I love it. It think it precisely captures the core issues that KO research and practice faces today -- in terms of which questions we ask, what we teach in KO classes, and how we practice KO... I am quite optimistic about the future of KO, if we manage to incorporate this sort of stuff.

The beginning

2007-11-12T14:08:00.000-05:00

So here I am giving birth to yet another blog; just what the world needs -- some random thoughts about this and that... well, I hope you will bear with me...