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Local Authorial Voice and Global Authorial Voice in Community-Authored Knowledge Organization Systems
Full text linkFolksonomies are crowdsourced knowledge organization systems that rose to popularity during Web 2.0 and that are still actively used today. This crowdsourced approach to knowledge organization moves authorial voice from an individual expert or small group of experts to the community. What does it mean to have many voices contribute to a knowledge organization system? Do community members create a collective authorial voice? Are minority opinions more readily included? How does access to information, especially “long tail” information, change? This paper explores these questions by examining authorial voice in community-authored knowledge organization systems (CAKOS) and expert-authored knowledge organization systems (EAKOS)
Community-Driven Knowledge Organization for Cultural Heritage Digital Libraries: The Case of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region
Full text linkThe Inuvialuit Digital Library (https://inuvialuitdigitallibrary.ca/) was developed as part of the Digital Library North Project, a four-year collaboration to develop a digital library infrastructure to support preservation of and access to cultural resources in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region in north western Canada. In this paper, we present the methodologies and approaches used in the development of a culturally appropriate metadata and description framework for the digital library. Specifically, we address soliciting community involvement for building knowledge organization systems, culturally appropriate feedback mechanisms for correcting knowledge organization practices, and deciding who will create the structure and format of knowledge organization systems. Specific practical considerations and decisions on culturally appropriate metadata elements are discussed, in particular such description and design elements as subjects, contributors and roles, language and dialects, geographic names and user interface functionalities
Examining Communities in the Transdisciplinary Area of Cognitive Science: Automatic Classification for Examining Communities in the Web of Science Using Unsupervised Clustering Methods
Full text linkWe propose methodology for examining classification to identify and make explicit community perspectives that are neglected by traditional journal-subject classification in order to provide a more flexible and customizable classification system. Our method is based on keyword matches, and is applied to the broad transdisciplinary area of cognitive science. In the Web of Science (WoS), Scopus, and the National Science Foundation (NSF) classification, the classification of journals places each journal into a silo based on pre-determined categories deemed appropriate to demonstrate the relatedness of journals. Classification at the journal level does not necessarily represent the perspectives of a community, as a community in both membership and topical scope may transcend the bounds of a single journal classification. Our approach is novel because we examine topics within the transdisciplinary domain of cognitive science, and within that domain, we identify community perspectives on the conceptual contents as found in the titles of publications in the WoS
Observing trajectories of KOSs Across Space and Time: The DANS KOS Observatory (KOSo)
Full text linkKnowledge Organization Systems (KOSs) include a wide variety of schemas ranging from ontologies, to classifications, thesauri, taxonomies, semantic networks, etc. These schemas can be updated and revised (or conversely become obsolete or lost) and are therefore prone to change over time. A wish expressed frequently by the research front in the KO community was for an “observatory” of KOSs. In 2017, via the KNAW Visiting Professor programme, DANS [1] began to focus more on understanding how KOSs change over time, how they can be archived, how version identification and control can be addressed, and also, how KOSs can be aligned to the ‘FAIR’ Data Principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). This research ambition coupled with community interest lead to the creation of the KOSo (Knowledge Organization Systems Observatory). Concretely, the observatory involves the identification of KOSs within the social sciences and humanities or the life sciences. KOSs have been described and ordered in the observatory through a process of empirical association in order to resist the potential pitfall of already organizing these resources through the lens of other KOSs (e.g. already describing the KOS in terms of existing controlled vocabularies). KOSo employs both metadata terms and formal classifications, using the Information Coding Classification in a synthetic format together with the KO Literature Classification, thus rendering for each KOS a domain-centric term faceted with a KOS-form term. Additionally, we classify domains using the NARCIS Classification, which is a framework to represent the research foci of the Dutch national research infrastructure
Cataloging practices through an ethnographic lens: workarounds, disagreements, and manifestations of culture
Full text linkCataloging models emphasize selective aspects of cataloging and serve the purposes of conceptual debates and theoretical developments. Many complexities, uncertainties, dilemmas, challenges, and “rare” scenarios that catalogers encounter in practice are not presented in the models. To study cataloging practices, the author presents cataloging scenarios observed from an ongoing fieldwork. Through weekly participatory observations and unstructured interviews of catalogers, the work presents cases among the diverse and complex cataloging practices, and surfaces the tensions and time involved in cataloging. This paper will focus on three themes: workarounds, disagreements, and manifestations of culture in cataloging practice. The first scenario describes a non-linear cataloging process and the different workarounds applied. The workarounds highlight the tacit knowledge of experienced catalogers. The second scenario shows catalogers’ different perspectives about the authorship of stone rubbings. Disagreements, negotiation, and compromises in cataloging process are often not documented or explained. This scenario examines cataloging contexts that we cannot observe from analyzing cataloging standards or records. The third scenario describes the proposal of a Library of Congress Demographic Group Term (LCDGT): Zhiqing, and how it was approved as a LCSH: Zhiqing generation instead. The term encompasses a combination of regional, temporal, and cultural aspects of a demographic group. In the proposal process, I identified cultural manifestations in cataloging process through observing “the missing pieces” and local adaptations. This study contributes to the knowledge organization literature by presenting cataloging scenarios that require prolonged engagement to study
Intellection and Intuition: On the Epistemology of S.R. Ranganathan
Full text linkThe Indian librarian and library theorist S.R. Ranganathan (1892-1970) is generally recognized as a seminal figure in the development of facet analysis and its application to classification theory. In recent years, commentators on the epistemology of knowledge organization have claimed that the methods of facet analysis reflect a fundamentally rationalist approach to classification. Yet, for all the interest in the epistemological bases of Ranganathan’s classification theory, little attention has been paid to his theory of how human beings acquire knowledge of the world – i.e., his epistemology proper – or to the question whether this theory reflects a rationalist outlook. This paper examines Ranganathan’s statements on the origins of knowledge to assess if they are congruent with rationalist epistemology. Ranganathan recognized two different modes of knowledge – intellection (i.e., intellectual operations on sense data) and intuition (i.e., direct cognition of things-in-themselves) -- and it is in virtue of the latter that his epistemology can be considered to fall within the ambit of rationalism. Intuition as a source of knowledge plays a role in Ranganathan’s classification theory, most notably in his model of scientific method underlying classification development, his vision of the organization of classification design, and his conceptualization of seminal mnemonics and a reduced number of fundamental categories as important elements in the design of classification notation. Not only does intuition subtend the rationalism of Ranganathan’s epistemology but it also serves as a bridge to another often-neglected aspect of his thought, namely his valorization of mysticism. Indeed, Ranganathan’s theory of knowledge is best characterized as mystical rationalis
Episemantics: Aboutness as Aroundness
Full text linkAboutness ranks amongst our field’s greatest bugbears. What is a work about? How can this be known? This mirrors debates within the philosophy of language, where the concept of representation has similarly evaded satisfactory definition. This paper proposes that we abandon the strong sense of the word aboutness, which seems to promise some inherent relationship between work and subject, or between word and world. Instead, we seek an etymological reset to the sense of aboutness of “in the vicinity, nearby; in some place or various places nearby; all over a surface.” To distinguish this sense, we introduce the term episemantics. The authors have each independently applied this term in slightly different contexts and scales (Hauser 2018a; J. T. Tennis 2016), and this article presents a unified definition of the term and guidelines for applying it at the scale of both words and works. The resulting weak concept of aboutness is pragmatic, in Star’s sense of a focus on consequences over antecedents, while reserving space for the critique and improvement of aboutness determinations within various contexts and research programs. The paper finishes with a discussion of the implication of the concept of episemantics and methodological possibilities it offers for knowledge organization research and practice
Synthetic Classification and Diverse Communities
Full text linkThis brief paper argues that a synthetic approach to classification can alleviate all of the major concerns that are commonly raised about how Knowledge Organization Systems (KOSs) may disserve various communities. It surveys how a synthetic approach can potentially address a variety of concerns regarding KOSs and social diversity
Contextual Classification at Out On The Shelves Library
Full text linkOut On The Shelves is Vancouver’s only Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Two-Spirit, Queer, Intersex, Aromantic/Asexual (LGBT2QIA+) library. Due to recent organizational changes, it has become apparent that its current classification system is no longer working effectively. Not only was the previous system unstructured and confusing, it failed to explicitly represent many aspects of the community it serves. This project was undertaken during the summer of 2018, researching alternative classification and queer issues in knowledge organization to determine how to improve it. This research, combined with careful consideration of the needs of the library itself and its users, suggested that building a local, contextually-situated, classification system would be best. A new classification system has been built for Out On The Shelves Library, and will be implemented in several stages beginning in October 2018, with the end goal to be finished by the end of December 2018. The new system intends to be living and changeable, one that lays bare its structures and decisionmaking processes while centering and celebrating the LGBT2QIA+ community and working within the realities of being a small, unfunded, volunteer-run, public library
Integrating Practical and Epistemic Actors: Co-Constructing a Knowledge Organization System to Address Housing Insecurity in West Philadelphia
Full text linkIn response to colonial legacies of divisiveness and paternalism underpinning the development of knowledge organization systems (KOS) and thus impeding their appeal, accessibility, and usefulness to diverse stakeholders (Castleden, Morgan, and Lamb, 2012), this case study explores the challenges and opportunities inherent to the design of a malleable, sustainable KOS as part of an mHealth tool called Map the Gap. Map the Gap intends to reduce the burden of housing insecurity in West Philadelphia. By examining the active cultivation of communal ties between the “epistemic” and “practical” actors (Callon, 4, 2004) who substantiate Map the Gap, as well as the sociotechnical infrastructure which shapes and is shaped by such ties, the processes of collaboration underpinning functionality decisions are delineated. This paper reflects on the way KOS sociotechnical structures defy and challenge traditional academic and community models of research and development, thus requiring a unique, temporally-conscious embracement of select and dynamic collaborations. By elucidating and evaluating the considerations and practices central to Map the Gap, we seek to yield a template for cultivating healthy KOS sociotechnical structures