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Geopolitical Taxonomies on Airline Websites
Full text linkThis study examines how corporate taxonomies on airline websites represent contested geopolitical entities, with a focus on Taiwan and nearby East Asian locations. We collected and analyzed country taxonomy data from 55 airline websites, transforming drop-down menu structures into hierarchical taxonomic models. We identified six distinct taxonomies and validated them through an annotation process with high inter-coder reliability. In this paper, we highlight three out of six representative taxonomies that vary in how they frame contested entities either as a standalone entity, as part of a regional group, or nested under China. These findings reveal how design choices in website interfaces can encode different geopolitical assumptions. In future work, we will study how users interpret these models to explore the possibility of presenting multiple geopolitical perspectives
Typology of Creator Objections to Subject Cataloguing of Their Works
Full text linkThe Library of Congress Subject Headings is a standardized system for indicating the topics of works held in the library. Since LCSH is built using literary warrant, based on the terminology and proportions of published works, it is appropriate to assess it according to how accurately its terms match the works it is applied to. This creator-centric analysis focuses on areas in which LCSH is more likely to fail, given previous critiques of its biases and outdated language. In a pair of interview studies, creators shared their assessments of the subject cataloguing of their works. One study used works about Indigenous Peoples and the other used items from an LGBT2QIA+ community library. I analyzed the interview transcripts to identify different kinds of objections creators made to the subject cataloguing and how they made these objections. Creators objected to terms included in the records when the terms used were the wrong level of specificity, a poor match to the language used in their works and in their scholarly or creative fields, or misled the reader as to the content of their work. Creators objected to omissions from subject indexing when they expected particular terms to be used by their peers and readers, when they expected the genre or approach to be listed in the record, and when the record left out colonial actors or conflict. Applied to a system built on the principle of literary warrant, the objections from creators reveal major flaws in the term list and its application to published works. The types of errors noted suggest a need for better resourced cataloguing work, including professional development, more time to produce a record, support for nominating new terms, and capacity for local subject indexing and vocabulary management. Other types of errors reveal different understandings on the purpose and scope of subject indexing and imply areas for greater library outreach and transparency
Census.gov Data, from Paper Tables to APIs: A Retrieval Augmented Generation Domain Analysis
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A Domain Analytic View of Interdisciplinary Studies
Full text linkWe perform a domain analysis of two recent volumes, The Encyclopedia of Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity, and The Handbook of Interdisciplinary Teaching and Administration. These volumes provide a useful snapshot of a field that is global in scope and draws on scholars with backgrounds in numerous academic fields. We identify most-cited authors, co-citation patterns, and most common publication outlets and dates of citations. One remarkable result is the dominance of publication outlets in the Handbook by one journal. More generally, our results support the idea that there is a shared global conversation but nevertheless a divergence in citation patterns within that global conversation. Our analysis of the most common terms in Abstracts and Keywords supports the general conclusion of one shared conversation, but yet with some notable differences
Diversity and Identity: Categories for OAI data-providers in the Open Language Archives Network
Full text linkThis work analyzes the network typology of data-providers who use the Open Archive Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) to engage in ethnolinguistic information-resource stewardship. The Open Language Archive Community’s (OLAC) network is analyzed addressing: (1) the ontological nature of OAI data-providers, chiefly that not all data-providers are archives; (2) the classificatory nature of the data-providers in contrast to existing OLAC categories of personal and institutional; and (3) the impact of classification/description on the social-understanding about those providers. That is, discrete classificatory terminology does not exist within the target OLAC user community. A broader understanding of the classificatory distinctions among cultural heritage organizations would enable depositors to select the most appropriate institutions for cultural heritage preservation. Two classification taxonomies are presented for the data-providers. The taxonomy terms are applied to the members of the network: (1) as a lens by which one may understand metadata quality discrepancies across data-providers; (2) to identify strong and weak areas within the network; and (3) to identify network growth potential in contrast to the historically involved network participants. The developed taxonomies are applicable to cultural heritage networks outside of the set of OLAC data-providers and contribute to broader metadata quality discussions in the Library-Archive-Museum (LAM) community
More than Physique or Desire: Feeling Constituting Identity in Homosexual Nomenclature
Full text linkThis is a preliminary report of work by a Domain Analysis Clinic formed in 2021 to examine homosexual nomenclatures. Prior studies have suggested that self-naming and self-classification in the domain of male gayness and alternative sexualities emerge as a form of resistance against the hegemonic. So, the postulated research question is: what are the reasons, characteristics, and consequences of this type of knowledge organization using as an example the self-representation of gay men in social interaction applications? Our principal methodology was to seek self-identifying nomenclature from social media websites, from each of which we gathered sets of categories or labels used for identifying content uploaded by members. As a form of preliminary analysis all of the data were sorted as keywords or phrases to generate frequency distributions, which can be compared, to some extent, across the sites. Analysis of the terms suggested three classes which also can be considered as facets: sexual desires, physical characteristics and sexual roles or performances. The terms demonstrate how users understand themselves in their individuality, aligning themselves with the social reproduction that occurs in the analyzed social network. The present study corresponds to a first approximation to the development of a classification of male homosexuality, following a pragmatist or domain analysis approach
Thesaurus construction for community-centered metadata
Full text linkCommunity-engaged approaches to resource access require metadata practices that surface attributes relevant to local information needs and use terminology that reflects local language. This paper details the iterative and ongoing metadata work involved in facilitating access to aggregated items through the Downtown Eastside Research Access Portal. The challenges and strategies we describe here build upon and are relevant to knowledge organization projects seeking to repair issues of inaccurate and stigmatizing descriptive metadata for universal and local collections. After contextualizing the collection and the community, we describe our process in assessing areas of subject terminology in need of major repair, sources consulted for thesaurus terminology, and the approach we have taken to build a stand-alone thesaurus for this project, including our exploration and attempts at meaningful and respectful input into terms and term relationships
Documentation, Mapping, and Indigenous Knowledge of the Stone Monuments and Archaeological Remains in Liyai Khullen Village in Manipur, India
No full textThis paper presents the result of a recent archaeological survey undertaken in Liyai Khullen village and surrounding areas settled by the Poumai Nagas in Manipur. The survey was conducted in an area of about 16 km² in the hill landscape to a) document the unreported archaeological remains and b) understand the indigenous knowledge of the residents. It documented 554 stone monuments and important features on the landscape, such as a renovated ancestral village gate and two sacred stone structures. Mapping these features on the hill landscape has revealed that most stone monuments are located in the habitation area, while a few are located near footpaths between the habitation area and terraced fields. Interviews with the residents who have witnessed and participated in the construction of stone monuments have shed crucial insights into the involved dynamics and knowledge about other archaeological remains, which will be helpful for in-depth future investigations
S.R. Ranganathan's Ontology of the Book: On a Bibliographical Conceptual Model avant la lettre
Full text linkThis paper examines a conceptual model of the book advanced in the mid-20th century by the eminent Indian librarian and classification theorist S.R. Ranganathan (1892-1972), who formulated it with the aid of an ontological model drawn from Hindu philosophical thought. The analysis of this model, which has hitherto received only sporadic discussion in KO literature, unfolds in three parts. First, the paper outlines Ranganathan’s model, explains its Hindu philosophical background, and traces its development, showing that, in fact, it comprised two distinct versions – a triadic (i.e., three-entity) and a dyadic (i.e., two-entity) one – which were fully compatible to one another and which Ranganathan used in different contexts. Next, the structure of Ranganathan’s model, in both its triadic and dyadic forms, is compared with those of the contemporary bibliographic conceptual models most widely used today, IFLA-LRM (and its predecessor, FRBR) and BIBFRAME. It is shown that Ranganathan’s model bears some striking resemblances to these current models: in particular, the triadic version of Ranganathan’s model shares affinities with FRBR and IFLA-LRM, while the dyadic version is closer to BIBFRAME. Then follows a discussion of significant structural divergences between Ranganathan’s model and its latter-day counterparts, and an explanation for these differences is adduced. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of the surprising lack of historical connection between Ranganathan’s conceptual model of the book avant la lettre and current bibliographic conceptual models, as well as a reflection on the enduring relevance of Ranganathan’s model for today
From Atomic Elements to Fantastical Machines: The “Concept” in International Classification
Full text linkThe concept—an idea, a notion—is accepted as the core entity in knowledge organization (KO). The founder of the science of KO, Ingetraut Dahlberg, defined a concept repeatedly over time. Concepts have been well-discussed in the literature of both KO and information and have even been described as elementary particles in a theory of knowledge interaction. But an interesting question is what did the concept mean to these original thinkers in the nascent KO a century or more ago? An earlier series of papers about the evolution of the concept in information science based on the discourse of the concept in American Documentation led irrevocably to the notion of the concept as an element that could be isolated for analysis alongside frequent references to fantastical machines. This short paper describes an ongoing research project to undertake the same level of discourse analysis in the foremost evolutionary journal of KO, International Classification. A simple narrative of the occurrence of the “concept” in IC over the course of its run shows evolving definitions but also reveals usage of the notion of the concept as core (or atomic) element