sketchy jottings on relationships between pim and concepts/categories.
Classical/rule based model seems to apply least. Kwasnik’s1rules for classification of office documents derived from smaller decisions/considerations more like other approaches.
Exemplar/prototype/similarity based models. Seems to apply a bit. Case’s2importance of form, even outside the computer. The importance of topic as classificatory cue. But a good fit? Prototype theory, especially, seems problematic. Is there a prototype document for my “important papers” file? etc. I don’t think so. The only thing really similar among the items is that they’d all be a pain in the arse to replace, especially without the other things in the file. But this isn’t a necessary or sufficient feature for inclusion in the file. Heh, it’s my own ad-hoc (goal derived) subcategory for the canonical example: things to save from my house in the event of a fire. Subcategory, because the overall category also contains laptop and cats.
The theory theory (probably my favorite name ever). Given the findings in PIM about the importance of beliefs about future use for keeping decisions and classification,3 this seems to make a lot of sense. The theory theory also seems to fit with the Sense-Making approach, with its focus on individual as expert and theorist.
Goal derived categories (ad hoc). Yes. Related to intended use as mentioned above. “Things I need to work on PIM lit review” is one way I have organized my personal information environment.
Maybe go through all the cues for document classification/placement/dispensation noted in PIM research and think of what sort of categorization is going on behind it?
I suspect I may draw very spurious connections between these concept/category theories and the categorization/organization of artifacts, but I wouldn’t be the first…
- Kwasnik, Barbara H. 1989. “The influence of context on classificatory behavior.” PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. [↩]
- Case, Donald Owen. 1986. Collection and organization of written information by social scientists and humanists: A review and exploratory study. Journal of Information Science 12, no. 3: 97-104. [↩]
- Kwasnik, Barbara H. 1989. How a personal document’s intended use or purpose affects its classification in an office. In Proceedings of the ACM-SIGIR 12th Annual International Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, 207-10. New York, NY: ACM Press. ; Kwasnik, Barbara H. 1991. The importance of factors that are not document attributes in the organisation of personal documents. Journal of Documentation 47, no. 4: 389-98. [↩]
another talk.
Today I attended the following:
EXPRESSIVITY VS. UNIFORMITY: Are controlled vocabularies dead, and if not, should they be?
When: 1:00 to 2:00pm April 2nd, 2007
Where: Pleasants Family Room in Wilson LibraryFrom Dr. Haas: ‘Controlled vocabularies, nomenclatures, LC or MeSH subject headings have a long history in LIS. They make classification, categorization, aggregation, sorting, and other operations easier. But with the rise of folksonomy, recommendors, improved natural language processing techniques and other technologies, are they needed any more, or are they just stifling the creativity of our expression?’
Pretty much everyone agrees. We need both. Different needs call for different means. And it’ll be really cool if we can get systems that actually leverage the metadata (in whatever form) in intuitive, useful ways.
And when we get to the lovechild-combinations of controlled vocabularies and all these tags and so forth… that’ll be really nifty.
As an aside… I’m always curious at the reaction to the use of the word “control” in bibliographic control, or controlled vocabularies. As if control were automatically a bad thing, or at the very least somehow un-PC or something. Control can be a very good thing! Air traffic control! Keeping people and things from going every which way can be very important, and good. We want to know what books we have, how they are related, and where they are–this means we want them to be controlled. We don’t want to use 18 words for one concept, so we want vocabulary control. We are not talking about mind control here.1
This reaction is often displayed along with some discomfort with “labeling things” or “putting them in bins” or “categorizing things,” as if to do so is a) avoidable2, and b) by necessity negative, imposing some sort of intellectual hegemony.
Rare is the person these days who would claim that any classification, category scheme, or set of terms actually represents The True Way Things Are. Each is a just tool for a particular application, and there’s no reason why such a scheme cannot be flexible and responsive and include multiple perspectives through reference structures and such. I’m not claiming that they always are flexible and responsive (I know better), but, they *could* be.
- I haven’t read it yet (it’s on the list), but the idea I’ve gotten from reading several reviews of Stumbling on Happiness is that it has some interesting things to say about the human desire to feel in control… [↩]
- Categorizing things is a foundational part of our perception and cognition! [↩]
i predict the bids will be extraordinary.
Daniel Ruzo de los Heros, a Peruvian attorney and businessman with a passion for the esoteric, devoted most of his adult life to researching Nostradamus and his writings, assembling the finest private collection on the subject and laying the groundwork for contemporary Nostradamian scholarship.
His library will be auctioned on 23 April 2007. I wish I could paw around in that collection for a while.
via Luxist