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Advancing Equitable Cataloging
Full text linkFor nearly a century (1933 onwards), catalogers and others have engaged in discussions over the 'ethical' labeling of marginalized subjects in knowledge organization systems (KOS). In order to understand and contextualize contemporary conversations, I undertook a comprehensive review of this literature. The resulting project 1) synthesizes the broader history of these discussions, 2) examines its facets and subdomains, and 3) provides a foundation for the realignment of KO work towards social justice. To achieve these tasks, I replicated and expanded upon a now-unavailable database prepared by Hope A. Olson and Rose Schlegl in 1999. As this database suggests, the literature has expanded fivefold in the last two decades and taken a number of different directions. My analysis of these differences (here called KO 'subdomains') establishes a historiography of critical cataloging movements and a framework from which to understand them. It also demonstrates gaps in the literature, how contemporary authors have abandoned areas of early importance, and how certain subdomains have become nearly independent. Finally, my analysis indicates the insufficiency of a philosophical tradition descended from Ancient Greek Aristotelian “virtue” ethics as a method upon which to base twenty-first century KOS. Instead, I advance the concept of “equitable” knowledge organization and the realignment of KO work towards principals of social justice
What Is Genre? How Do We Talk About Fiction?: Assessing Complementary Schemas and Approaches
Full text linkDescribing fiction is notoriously problematic. One aspect of this is the designation “genre” which can mean different things to different communities involved in the book trade, such as publishers/authors, readers, and information professionals. Using sources created by all three (i.e., ProQuest and New York Times Book Review, Library of Congress bibliographic records, GoodReads categories, New York Public Library catalog user-supplied content, and Amazon categories), aboutness and isness metadata are harvested for two novels. Ultimately, we find that although the vocabularies each have different purposes and intended audiences, the compilation of terms from different sources presents a coherent image of a title. Future work in knowledge organization (KO) should consider how best to harness information from multiple sources in providing library users with a more robust perspective on fiction titles
The Sears List of Subject Headings: Social and Cultural Dimensions in Historical, Theoretical, and Design Contexts
Full text linkThe Sears List of Subject Headings was first published in 1923 to provide guidance to subject catalogers in small libraries in the United States. The Sears List, now in its 22nd edition, is still widely used for subject cataloging in small- and medium-sized libraries and in children’s and school libraries, but the Sears List is not nearly as widely studied as the more comprehensive Library of Congress Subject Headings. This paper aims to expand the critical discussion of the Sears List and to contextualize the List in contemporary cultural and social dimensions by reviewing its history, theory, and design. The paper looks specifically at how Black people and culture, Indigenous peoples and cultures, and LGBTQ+ people and cultures are represented in the Sears List throughout its history and how warrant, design, and theory inform this representation
Latour's Hotel Keys: An Actor-Network Ontology
Full text linkThis project is a reintroduction of an illustration used by Bruno Latour in the essay “Technology is Society Made Durable,” of a hotel manager who creates programs to increase customer compliance in returning their room keys. Verbal reminder, signage, and a weighted key fob are non-human actants that relate to customers such that customers either return keys (i.e., follow the program) or fail to return keys (i.e. follow the anti-program). Latour’s network description is not grounded in an ontology, and we propose to create a small ontology using the open specifications of RDF, OWL, and SKOS in order to model it. The point of this project is to provide a robust, usable, and versatile framework for doing actor-network analysis, and to champion an approach to non-human actants characteristic of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as also helpful for understanding systems. The interaction between knowledge organization and ANT has been limited, but should be explored further. ANT operates under certain implied ontological commitments concerning common properties of human and non-human entities as actants, and of relationships as formative of actant identities. In our project we will explore an ontology model for Latour’s Hotel Keys and briefly discuss the lessons that this simple actor-network model provides for knowledge organization
DARSI: An Ontology for Facilitating the Development of Data Sharing and Use Agreements
Full text linkThe advantages of data sharing across organizations and disciplines are indisputable; although, sensitive and restricted data cannot be easily shared due to policies and legal matters. The research presented in this paper takes a step toward systematizing the sharing of sensitive and restricted research data by developing an ontology to frame and guide DSUA (Data Sharing and Usage Agreement) development. The paper provides background context, describes the ontology creation process, and introduces the Data Sharing Agreements for Restricted and Sensitive Information (DARSI) ontology. DARSI contains four top level classes, 20 sub-classes, 33 sub-categories and 17 simple properties for categories applicable at various levels. The discussion provides further insight into the work accomplished, and the conclusion identifies next steps
Imperialism and Indexing: The Case of Julius O. Kaiser's Systematic Indexing
Full text linkThe late 19th and early 20th centuries were a time when a number of pioneering knowledge organization systems (KOSs) originated. They were also a time when various forms of imperialism influenced social, political, and economic life in the countries where these KOSs were developed. Adopting a case study approach, this paper examines the influence of imperialism on one pioneering KOS of this period – Julius Otto Kaiser’s method of Systematic Indexing (SI). The study describes the institutional milieux in which Kaiser originated SI and gave it its canonical form – the Philadelphia Commercial Museum (PCM) and the Joseph Chamberlain’s Tariff Commission (TC). Evidence is presented to show that both institutions were involved in projects of economic imperialism and that these projects affected their knowledge organization (KO) practices. Then follows an examination of the semantic content and syntactic structure of SI for traces of imperialist influence. Analysis reveals that most traces of imperialist thought in the semantic content of SI occur in its treatment of countries as subjects and that this treatment does not differ significantly from that found in other contemporary KOSs. Evidence is presented that the syntactic structure of complex subject headings in SI was influenced by KO practices at the PCM, which were animated by the economic imperialist assumptions, but that similar structures can be found in another contemporary KOS with no manifest ties to imperialism. It is concluded that the motivations for certain semantic elements of SI reflect by imperialist presuppositions but that its syntactic features are not uniquely or inherently associated with imperialist ideology. Depending upon the analytical perspective that one adopts, then, SI both is and – paradoxically – is not an imperialist KOS
Form as classification: an exploration of musical form as a knowledge organization system
Full text linkKO has a significant and intriguing relationship with domain knowledge. This paper proposes that a structure which is central to the domain of music could be considered to be a type of KOS: musical form. Musical form is the term used to describe the organization and structure of a musical work, and this paper will focus on musical form within Western art music. First, the study will consider how KOSs are defined, and will use definitions of KOSs from sources by Mazzocchi (2018), Zeng (2008) and Hodge (2000), to draw out eight possible criteria by which something can be considered to be a KOS. Then, the paper will determine how musical form relates to these criteria, utilizing the example of sonata form for illustration. The discussion opens up intriguing debates about the nature of music information, including the interrelationships between music practice, music retrieval and musical form. Valuable questions arise about the nature of KOSs more generally, such as whether KOSs can be non-textual. Importantly, the analysis of musical form highlights the vital temporal element of musical-form-as-a-KOS, and asks whether we can perceive a KOS which describes the organization of material within a temporal, as opposed to a primarily spatial, plane. The paper culminates in a model of musical-form-as-a-KOS and commentary on its potential position in KOSs of KOSs. This paper offers a useful addition to music KO discourse and introduces a novel approach to the study of KOSs. Musical form is a relatively undiscussed area of musical classification, especially in comparison to genre. Furthermore, the findings could potentially be applied to form in other domains too, such as literature. Ultimately, this paper serves to expand our understanding of exactly what is a KOS
Comparing the Cataloguing of Indigenous Scholarships: First Steps and Findings
Full text linkThis paper provides an analysis of data collected on the continued prevalence of outdated, marginalizing terms in contemporary cataloguing practices, stemming from the Library of Congress Subject Heading term “Indians” and all its related terms. Using Manitoba Archival Information Network’s (MAIN) list of current LCSH and recommended alternatives as a foundation, we built a dataset from titles published in the last five years. MAIN’s list contains 1,091 LCSH relating to Indigenous Peoples, ranging from demographic descriptors (e.g. Ojibwa Indians.) to broader concepts such as legal matters and literature (e.g. Ojibwa philosophy.). This dataset shows a wide distribution of LCSH used to catalogue fiction and non-fiction, with outdated but recognized terms like “Indians of North America—History.” appearing the most frequently and ambiguous and offensive terms like “Indian gays.” appearing throughout the dataset. This paper discusses two primary problems with the continued use of current LCSH terms: they are ambiguous and limit the effectiveness of an institution’s catalog, and these terms do not reflect the way Indigenous Peoples, Nations, and communities in North America prefer to represent themselves as individuals and collectives. These findings support those of parallel scholarship on the effects of knowledge organization practices on works on Indigenous topics and provide a foundation for further work. The initial findings of our research suggest that these terms have continued to be used heavily across North America in the last five years, regardless of evolving scholarship and increased representation of Indigenous authors in both popular and scholarly publishin
Modeling Ephraim Chambers' Knowledge Structure from a Naïve Standpoint
Full text linkIn the preface to his Cyclopaedia published in 1728 Ephraim Chambers offers readers a systematized structure of his attempt to produce a universal repository of human knowledge. Divided into an interconnected taxonomic tree and domain vocabulary, this structure forms the basis of one effort from the Metadata Research Center to study historical ontologies. The knowledge structure is being encoded into a Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) form as well as a Web Ontology Language (OWL) version. This paper explores the expressive and functional differences between these SKOS and OWL versions of Chambers’ knowledge structure. As part of this goal, the paper research focused on the construction and application of rules in each system to produce a more computationally ready representation of Chambers’ structure in SKOS, which is more thesaurus-like, and OWL, which represents additional ontological nuances. First, studying the various textual aspects at the semantic, syntactic, and typographic levels allowed for the relationships between terms to manifest from which rules governing expression of the connections between elements developed. Second, because each language, SKOS and OWL, functionally expresses different logical relationships, their possibilities and limitations offer a ground for further analyzing the resultant knowledge structures; although, each stemmed from the same basic source of Chambers’ text. Lastly this paper will examine rule making and expression in light of Paul Grice’s theory of conversational implicature to understand how a naïve agent formulates and applies these rules to a knowledge structure
Modeling Past and Present in the Eastern Highlands of Papua New Guinea
Full text linkThe existence of “fringe societies” in Papua New Guinea has long been recognized by anthropologists. In the New Guinea Highlands, the term refers to peoples who occupy the fringes of more populous and better-known valleys. In many instances, these groups also subsist on staples other than Ipomoea batatas, more commonly known as sweet potato, a tuber introduced to the highlands within the last 300 years. The Awa at the far eastern edge of the Eastern Highlands are such a group, and the word fringe has often been used to describe them. Surprisingly, anthropologists and archaeologists have not seized on the possibility that their unusual subsistence represents a survival of a previous adaptation that has not completed its conversion to the new crop. The authors of this paper use the Awa economy to model a pre-ipomoean past for members of the Tairora language subfamily, namely, the South Tairora, Auyana, and Awa languages. Using archaeological, paleoenvironmental, demographic, and ethnohistorical data from our study area; data for Awa from ethnographer David Boyd’s research; and other sources and simulation modeling, we explore long-standing questions about the dispersal of early horticultural peoples, its determinants, the differentiation of languages, possible time frames for their migrations, and impacts on the resulting landscapes