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A Phylogenetic Approach to Bibliographic Families and Relationships
Get PDFThis presentation applies the principles of phylogenetic classification to the phenomenon of bibliographic relationships in library catalogues. We argue that while the FRBR paradigm supports hierarchical bibliographic relationships between works and their various expressions and manifestations, we need a different paradigm to support associative bibliographic relationships of the kind detected in previous research. Numerous studies have shown the existence and importance of bibliographic relationships that lie outside that hierarchical FRBR model: particularly the importance of bibliographic families. We would like to suggest phylogenetics as a potential means of gaining access to those more elusive and ephemeral relationships. Phylogenetic analysis does not follow the Platonic conception of an abstract work that gives rise to specific instantiations; rather, it tracks relationships of kinship as they evolve over time. We use two examples to suggest ways in which phylogenetic trees could be represented in future library catalogues. The novels of Jane Austen are used to indicate how phylogenetic trees can represent, with greater accuracy, the line of Jane Austen adaptations, ranging from contemporary efforts to complete her unfinished work, through to the more recent efforts to graft horror memes onto the original text. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey provides an example of charting relationships both backwards and forwards in time, across different media and genres. We suggest three possible means of applying phylogenetics in the future: enhancement of the relationship designators in RDA, crowdsourcing user tags, and extracting relationship trees through big data analysis
Using Combined Metadata Sources to Visualize a Small Library (OBL's English Language Books)
Get PDFData from multiple knowledge organization systems are combined to provide a global overview of the content holdings of a small personal library. Subject headings and classification data are used to effectively map the combined book and topic space of the library. While harvested and manipulated by hand, the work reveals issues and potential solutions when using automated techniques to produce topic maps of much larger libraries. The small library visualized consists of the thirty-nine, digital, English language books found in the Osama Bin Laden (OBL) compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan upon his death. As this list of books has garnered considerable media attention, it is worth providing a visual overview of the subject content of these books—some of which is not readily apparent from the titles. Metadata from subject headings and classification numbers was combined to create book-subject maps. Tree maps of the classification data were also produced. The books contain 328 subject headings. In order to enhance the base map with meaningful thematic overlay, library holding count data was also harvested (and aggregated from duplicates). This additional data revealed the relative scarcity or popularity of individual books
Conflicts of Semantic Warrants in Cataloging Practices
Get PDFThis study presents preliminary themes surfaced from an ongoing ethnographic study. The research question is: how and where do cultures influence the cataloging practices of using U.S. standards to catalog Chinese materials? The author applies warrant as a lens for evaluating knowledge representation systems, and extends the application from examining classificatory decisions to cataloging decisions. Semantic warrant as a conceptual tool allows us to recognize and name the various rationales behind cataloging decisions, grants us explanatory power, and the language to "visualize" and reflect on the conflicting priorities in cataloging practices. Through participatory observation, the author recorded the cataloging practices of two Chinese catalogers working on the same cataloging project. One of the catalogers is U.S. trained, and another cataloger is a professor of Library and Information Science from China, who is also a subject expert and a cataloger of Chinese special collections. The study shows how the catalogers describe Chinese special collections using many U.S. cataloging and classification standards but from different approaches. The author presents particular cases derived from the fieldwork, with an emphasis on the many layers presented by cultures, principles, standards, and practices of different scope, each of which may represent conflicting warrants. From this, it is made clear that the conflicts of warrants influence cataloging practice. We may view the conflicting warrants as an interpretation of the tension between different semantic warrants and the globalization and localization of cataloging standards
SHELL PERSONAL ORNAMENTS CRAFT AT THE SITE OF THA KAE, LOPBURI PROVINCE, CENTRAL THAILAND. TRACING THE SOUTHWARD DISPERSAL OF THE DRILLING TECHNIQUE
Get PDFThe collection of mollusk remains excavated at Tha Kae has been recently re-analyzed and identified as to genera or family level. Out of 5 main fresh/salt-water mollusk families, only Conus and Tridacna were used to make personal ornaments and, for Tridacna, small adzes, during the local Bronze Age (BA) (c. 1100-500 BCE).The study of 100 kg of production debris and of whole/fragmentary ornaments demonstrated the manufacturing cycle consisted of two main steps: 1) Procurement of the raw material; 2) Transformation in a sequence of six stages of the raw material into the base material for luxuries that arguably entered inter-regional exchange circuits. The manufacturing cycle, possibly part of a system organized at the community level, implied procurement expeditions and skilled craftspeople able to organize and use the relevant tool kit, whose origin can be traced back to the lower Yangtze valley (late fourth millennium BC). The shell-craft cycle also sheds light on the cognitive processes of the craftsmen, who had to make a choice in order to maximize the output of their work.The study provides newly organized data of direct archaeological interest to the field of Southeast Asian pre-protohistory, as well as to those of social and cultural anthropology, cognitive science, marine palaeobiology and to palaeogeography
THE DISTRIBUTION OF UNWORKED MOLLUSCS, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO UNIONIDAE (FRESHWATER MUSSELS), IN MAINLAND SOUTHEAST ASIAN MORTUARY CONTEXTS
Get PDFAbstractArchaeological evidence demonstrates that molluscs, either as unworked or worked artefacts, have been deposited in burial settings as objects which speak to secular or various philosophical, religious or cosmological concerns. Those molluscs imbued with secular or cosmological significance are identified and selected with reference to the specific behaviour, characteristics or qualities of the mollusc itself within a given society’s socio-cultural belief system. This paper examines data from mainland Southeast Asia to explore the distribution and potential significance of Unionidae bivalves in human burials from a range of large, later prehistoric burial sites. This family of bivalves was important in the mortuary tradition of the region from the Neolithic through to Iron Age, especially during the Bronze Age
