I think Martha Yee is swiftly becoming one of my heroes.
Anyone who writes a new set of cataloging rules as an alternative to AACR2/RDA gets props from me.
I’ve looked at her rules a bit, and I like the way in which they are written, but I haven’t had a chance to dig into them in detail. I’ve been telling myself I’ll do that “this summer.”
It is dawning on me that the number of things I have told myself I will do “this summer” has become a bit unrealistic. A serious plan is in order.
I have a question on which I’d like any opinions… this has been coming up for me lately, as I assess what I can do in the future to develop a more efficient, faster research/writing process.
Here is the type of situation I wonder about. I’ve made up a hypothetical one:
Let us say I want to discuss the concept of “cyberincentableness” in a paper. I learned about cyberincentableness in a paper by Doe, who explained that the concept of cyberincentableness was first developed in Smith, 2001.
So, do I:
1. Say “cyberincentableness is a term coined by Smith, who elaborated the concept in the context of the Theory of Insufferable Neologisms” and cite Doe, which is where I got this information?
OR
2. Dig up Smith, 2001, read it to verify that Doe’s interpretation is correct (or at least agrees with my own), and cite Smith, 2001 for my statement: “cyberincentableness is a term coined by Smith, who elaborated the concept in the context of the Theory of Insufferable Neologisms” ?
To me this is a no-brainer and the correct answer is 2. But as I pay attention to this in the (peer-reviewed) literature, I notice more and more of the first. In fact, the example I made up is adapted directly from something I just read in a well-regarded LIS journal.
Do I have an idealistic, perfectionist, and ridiculous notion of the level of work I am supposed to be doing? Is that (part of) why my literature review has taken 18 million years to write? Because when you go back to Smith you inevitably find that cyberincentableness is based on the ideas of Jones and Patel, who have some other ideas that seem relevant to my work…. etc etc etc.
(all hail the mixed blessing/curse of the highly associative mind!)
At some point you have to stop tracing everything back to its foundations, or you will spend your entire life reading backward in time. I think the process of the lit review has taught me to be much more skillful at knowing when to quit.
Do I also need to be training myself to not go read the original, but instead rely on the interpretations of others?
I’ve also been noticing the disturbing proliferation of a certain typo in the surname of a researcher who wrote a huge, dense, oft-cited work. It is not exactly a time-priority of mine to go back and ascertain that my sense is correct, (maybe I should do a study…) but it seems that authors citing papers that make the typo are likely to make the typo. Is it cynical of me to start to suspect that these people are citing something they haven’t put their hands or eyes on? It is hard to believe that the same careless mistake would be made by so many people so many times.
Early on in my doctoral studies I was disabused of the notion that I should only cite works I had carefully read in full so that I felt confident I understood all of the concepts and arguments, and could remember and talk about them at any time. (But saying so still feels like divulging a dirty secret.)
My current understanding of “the rules” is that you are not supposed to cite things you have not even looked at. Am I wrong about that too? Or do we say it is BAD to cite things you haven’t looked at, but the dirty secret is that it is done all the time…?
I guess the larger question is how many corners can you cut before you start cutting into your academic integrity? And is my notion of academic integrity getting in the way of me producing my academic work in a timely manner?
(C) 150 Aquaman (Fictitious character) [Not Subd Geog] [sp2008001579]
450 UF Arthur Curry (Fictitious character)
450 UF Curry, Arthur (Fictitious character)
450 UF Orin (Fictitious character)
(C) 150 Clichés in literature [Not Subd Geog] [sp2008001588]
150 Dingo [May Subd Geog] [sp 85038069]
* 450 UF Canis dingo
* 450 UF Canis familiaris dingo
* 450 UF Canis lupus dingo
* 550 BT Gray wolf
(Again with the great Washington State geographic names…)
(C) 151 Doubtful Lake (Wash.) [sp2008020201]
550 BT Lakes—Washington (State)
150 Fountain pens in art [Not Subd Geog] [sp2008002318]
(C) 150 Lizards in art [Not Subd Geog] [sp2008020208]
(C) 150 Melodrama, Japanese [May Subd Geog] [sp2008001992]
450 UF Japanese melodrama
550 BT Japanese drama
150 Metallurgy in rabbinical literature [Not Subd Geog] [sp2008002213]
150 Mothra films [May Subd Geog] [sp2008002212]
053 PN1995.9.M64
680 When subdivided by the appropriate geographic, topical, and/or form subdivisions, this
heading is used for works about Mothra films.
550 BT Monster films
(C) 151 Paradise Park (Wash.) [sp2008020180]
451 UF Paradise Meadows (Wash.)
550 BT Mountain meadows—Washington (State)
(C) 150 Rebirth in Western Paradise (Buddhism) in art [Not Subd Geog] [sp2008020192]
(Eep! One of my examples in my cataloging final project has just become obsolete…)
150 Scrapbooking [May Subd Geog] [sp2008002216]
450 UF Scrap booking
450 UF Scrapping (Scrapbooking)
550 BT Hobbies
(C) 150 Silver-haired bat [May Subd Geog] [sp2006003641]
053 QL737.C595 (Zoology)
450 UF Lasionycteris noctivagans
450 UF Lasionycteris pulverlentus
550 BT Lasionycteris
(Cookery! Everyone’s favorite subject heading to hate. This recently got its own classification number, too, as I noted here)
(A) 150 Sous-vide cookery [May Subd Geog] [sp2008002221]
053 TX690.7
450 UF Cryovacking (Cookery)
450 UF Under-vacuum cookery
550 BT Cookery
150 Wolfdogs [May Subd Geog] [sp 85147222]
* 450 UF Wolf-dog hybrids
* 450 UF Wolf hybrids
* 550 BT Gray wolf
* 550 BT Wolves CANCEL
And, Simon found an honorable mention not recently changed:
150 Lord’s Supper–Reservation (May Subd Geog) [R S D]
(Yes, the scope note told me what it actually means…you learn something new every five minutes in subject analysis.)
This is the current introduction to the literature review I have written in preparation for my comprehensive exams and as a step toward the dissertation proposal. It includes the questions my dissertation will address and an overview of the relationships between topics covered in the review and my questions.
(This monster is currently 138 single-spaced, 11pt type pages. That doesn’t include the bibliography, which shows that I have cited 568 separate sources. I feel somewhat proud of that number, even as I find it horrifying. I am about to begin slashing and burning through this paper, cutting out all the far-too-detailed and only-loosely relevant things I included in the sections as I wrote them separately. That should make it much more reasonable.)
In this review, I discuss some of the literature relevant to my proposed study of how amateur art photographers make decisions about managing the information and artifacts gathered and created in their serious leisure pursuit. This includes examination of the information systems and structures amateur art photographers have developed to support the management of said information and artifacts, how they make sense of the task of managing these, how their current strategies have developed, and whether they have strategies for the long term keeping of their photography-related “stuff.”
Continue reading current introduction.
As library and information scientists, we do not have a tradition of focusing on normative problems in which we can approach a line of inquiry with some measure of certainty. We cannot be sure that our areas are well defined and that our problems are important. We have no central theory or body of interrelated theories we can view as “middle range.”
In light of this discussion, it would appear we are currently focused on the application of conceptual frameworks rather than on the generation of specific theories. Drawing on bits and pieces from a variety of sources, we construct propositional statements that appear to have some bearing on problems arising from the occupational work we perform.
Chatman, Elfreda A. 1996. The Impoverished Life-World of Outsiders. Journal of the American Society for Information Science 47, no. 3: 193-206.
Classification by attraction: The classification of a specific aspect of a subject in an inappropriate discipline, usually because the subject is named in the inappropriate discipline but not mentioned explicitly in the appropriate discipline. (source)
Dewey Blog has a Dewey (almost)crossword puzzle.
The lesson from this installment is that Washington State has the best mountain names EVAR.
(C) 150 A.T.O.M. (Fictitious characters) [Not Subd Geog] [sp2007005947]
450 UF Alpha Teens on Machines (Fictitious characters)
(C) 150 Baby carriages [May Subd Geog] [sp2008001936]
450 UF Baby buggies
450 UF Buggies, Baby
450 UF Perambulators
450 UF Prams (Baby carriages)
550 BT Carriages and carts
550 BT Infants’ supplies
550 RT Baby strollers
(mmm, bacon… a whole mountain of bacon…)
(C) 151 Bacon Peak (Wash.) [sp2008020139]
550 BT Mountains-Washington (State)
551 BT North Cascades (B.C. and Wash.)
(C) 150 Colony collapse disorder of honeybees [May Subd Geog] [sp2008000155]
450 UF Autumn collapse of honeybees
450 UF CCD (Colony collapse disorder of honeybees)
450 UF Disappearing disease of honeybees
450 UF Fall dwindle disease of honeybees
450 UF May disease of honeybees
450 UF Spring dwindle of honeybees
550 BT Honeybee-Diseases
(C) 151 Dreamland (New York, N.Y.) [sp2008001680]
667 This heading is not valid for use as a geographic subdivision.
550 BT Amusement parks-New York (State)
([in over-the-top French accent]: Formidable!)
(C) 151 Formidable, Mount (Wash.) [sp2008020150]
451 UF Mount Formidable (Wash.)
550 BT Mountains-Washington (State)
551 BT North Cascades (B.C. and Wash.)
(C) 151 Goat Rocks (Yakima County, Wash.) [sp2008020145]
551 BT Cascade Range
550 BT Mountains-Washington (State)
(C) 151 Icy Peak (Wash.) [sp2008020167]
550 BT Mountains-Washington (State)
551 BT North Cascades (B.C. and Wash.)
150 Immoral contracts [May Subd Geog] [sp 85064528]
* 450 UF Immoral contracts-Law and legislation
150 Impossibility of performance [May Subd Geog] [sp 85064654]
* 450 UF Impossibility of performance-Law and legislation
(C) 151 Magic Mountain (Wash.) [sp2008020123]
550 BT Mountains-Washington (State)
551 BT North Cascades (B.C. and Wash.)
(C) 150 Puppet television programs [May Subd Geog] [sp2001000697]
* 450 UF Marionette television programs
* 450 UF Puppet shows (Television programs)
(why could this not exist when I was a kid?)
151 Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls (Portland, Or.) [sp2008001962]
667 This heading is not valid for use as a geographic subdivision.
451 UF Rock and Roll Camp for Girls (Portland Or.)
550 BT Camps for girls-Oregon
550 BT Music camps-Oregon
(A) 150 Self-confidence in adolescence [May Subd Geog] [sp2008001533]
550 BT Adolescent psychology
(C) 151 Surprise Lake (King County, Wash.) [sp2008020131]
451 UF Lower Glacier Lake (Wash.)
451 UF Lower Scenic Lake (Wash.)
451 UF North Glacier Lake (Wash.)
550 BT Lakes-Washington (State)
551 BT Scenic Lakes (Wash.)
150 Telephone calls [May Subd Geog] [sp 99004511]
* 360 SA subdivision Telephone calls under names of individual persons and families,
classes of persons, and ethnic groups for recordings or transcripts of telephone calls by or
to those persons or groups
(C) 150 Tonto (Fictitious character) [Not Subd Geog] [sp2008001979]
what if this is salient to my lit review??
150 Amateur architecture [May Subd Geog] [sp2008001492]
550 BT Architecture
I wonder if warrant for the creation of this heading came from books in the Who pooped in the park? series…
150 Animal droppings [May Subd Geog] [sp2007010638]
* 450 UF Animal dung
* 450 UF Animal scat
150 Captive white rhinoceroses [May Subd Geog] [sp200802022]
053 SF408.6.R45
550 BT Captive mammals
550 BT White rhinoceros
150 Corporation reports–Religious aspects [sp2008020053]
150 Dance and technology [May Subd Geog] [sp2008001264]
053 GV1588.7
450 UF Technology and dance
550 BT Technology
burn her!
150 Divination in the Bible [sp2008000721]
110 Dr. Francis Townsend Post Office Building (Fairbury, Ill.) [sp2007006425]
* 410 UF Doctor Francis Townsend Post Office Building (Fairbury, Ill.)
155 Exploitation films [Not Subd Geog] [sp2007025324]
680 Here are entered films of a sensational nature, usually offering subject matter taboo in mainstream cinema, usually produced on a low budget and often presented in the guise of preachy exposés or pseudo-documentaries.
I love the French Paradox, though it isn’t very paradoxical, actually…
150 French Paradox [sp2008000934]
550 BT Coronary heart disease–Nutritional aspects
550 BT Wine–Physiological effect
150 Indian goddesses–Arctic regions [sp2008001350]
Gayelles?
150 Lesbians [May Subd Geog] [sp 85076160]
* 450 UF Female gays
* 450 UF Gay females
* 450 UF Gayelles
* 450 UF Lesbian women
* 450 UF Sapphists
150 Mother goddesses–Arctic regions [sp2008001351]
150 Patient dumping [May Subd Geog] [sp2007010687]
* 550 BT Refusal to treat
Never heard of this genre before…
155 Rubble films [Not Subd Geog] [sp2008025550]
680 Here are entered films produced in the years after World War II, often featuring exteriors in bombed-out cities.
155 Zombie films [Not Subd Geog] [sp2007025377]
680 Here are entered fictional films that feature the reanimation of corpses that prey on human beings.
555 BT Monster films
In a statement published yesterday, Michael J. Klag, the Dean of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health writes that has “directed that the POPLINE administrators restore “abortion” as a search term immediately.” He is also launching an inquiry to determine why the change occurred. And also:
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge and not its restriction.
As reported here, it seems that someone in the USAID’s Office of Population and Reproductive Health made a complaint about two abortion-related articles in the database that they felt were too close to “advocacy.” Those articles were removed from the database, but someone decided to go the extra step and make abortion a stop-word. The logic behind that decision has not, to my knowledge, been explained.
One good thing out of this little imbroglio is that I have discovered that Jens-Erik Mai is blogging. Promptly added to RSS Reader. However, I take issue with this bit of his post on the matter:
Classifications are political instruments… all classifications make epistemological, ethical, and political statements; there is nothing new to this. The library blogshere seems to argue that POPLINE’s move is unprecedented and unacceptable… get a grip; what is the ethical assumption behind Dewey’s religion section? I don’t see any ethical justification in the introduction to LCSH…
The first statement is absolutely accurate. For more on that, I refer you to Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences. Hope Olson’s work also springs to mind. The bias present in tools like the Dewey Decimal Classification and the Library of Congress Subject Headings is glaring. We were just discussing this in my cataloging and classification course on Wednesday when we dove into DDC for the first time. If you are not familiar with the Religion schedule in DDC, it goes pretty much as follows:
Just a little biased. Just a tad. Not ok. They are working on it. The foreword to DDC22 does address what the Editorial Policy Committee is doing about the bias of the classification since they recognize they have responsibilities to diverse users. Due to the basic structure of the classification, however, they can’t alter it much without causing the classification numbers of huge numbers of already classified items to suddenly become out of date and wrong in the current system.
But anyway… comparing this to the POPLINE issue is apples and oranges. In DDC, “other religions” are still there. They still have numbers, even if those numbers are all crammed into the 290s. It is not as though someone decided to remove 297 Islam, Babism, Bahai Faith from the schedule altogether, as though it does not exist. From reading the subject heading change list every week, it seems any concept with literary warrant, no matter how bizarre, will be added to LCSH. We may not like the preferred term chosen, or the references made, but the concept will be represented there somehow.
But the outrage wasn’t about the formal terminological structure behind POPLINE. They did not alter their indexing controlled-vocabulary to reflect a change in politics or society, etc. If they had changed the preferred term in their thesaurus from abortion to murder of the unborn (or whatever they call it) with a see reference from abortion, many people would be offended but it would not be censorship.
They made the term abortion a stopword in the indexing, effectively removing the term from the index altogether, including the indexing language, as though the it carried the same semantic weight as the or and. A plain keyword search for abortion returned nothing, despite the presence of thousands of titles and abstracts in the database containing the term.
This was not a matter of bias or politically incorrect/offensive terminology in a knowledge representation. Instead they were just waving their hands saying that topic doesn’t exist in this database at all, nothing to see here. It mainly looks like someone freaked out that the database’s USAID funding might get yanked because people could find any information about abortion in the database, so they decided not to let anyone find any information on “that word.”
Sadly this is very precedented, but absolutely not acceptable. If we catch any reputable information providers doing this sort of thing, it is well worth an outrage.