D. Grant Campbell

Patterns and Inconsistencies in Collaborative Tagging Systems: An Examination of Tagging Practices

This paper analyzes the tagging patterns exhibited by users of del.icio.us, to assess how collaborative tagging supports and enhances traditional ways of classifying and indexing documents. Using frequency data and co-word analysis matrices analyzed by multi-dimensional scaling, the authors discovered that tagging practices to some extent work in ways that are continuous with conventional indexing. Small numbers of tags tend to emerge by unspoken consensus, and inconsistencies follow several predictable patterns that can easily be anticipated. However, the tags also indicated intriguing practices relating to time and task which suggest the presence of an extra dimension in classification and organization, a dimension which conventional systems are unable to facilitate. (The paper is available from http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00008315/)

“I still like Google”: University student perceptions of searching OPACs and the web

This paper reports on an exploratory study of how university students perceive and interact with Web search engines compared to Web-based OPACs. A qualitative study was conducted involving sixteen students, eight of whom were first-year undergraduates and eight of whom were graduate students in Library and Information Science. The participants performed searches on Google and on a university OPAC. The interviews and think-afters revealed that while students were aware of the problems inherent in Web searching and of the many ways in which OPACS are more organized, they generally preferred Web searching. The coding of the data suggests that the reason for this preference lies in psychological factors associated with the comparative ease with which search engines can be used, and system and interface factors which made searching the Web much easier and less confusing. As a result of these factors, students were able to approach even the drawbacks of the Web—its clutter of irrelevant pages and the dubious authority of the results—in an enthusiastic and proactive manner, very different from the passive and ineffectual admiration they expressed for the OPAC. The findings suggest that requirements of good OPAC interface design must be aggressively redefined in the face of new, Web-based standards of usability.

Metadata, Metaphor, and Metonymy

SUMMARY Principles drawn not just from library and information science, but also from structuralist literary theory, provide the beginnings of a flexible theoretical framework that will incorporate not just current metadata activities but those in the future that cannot yet be envisioned. A distinction common in literary studies is used here to distinguish between metadata applications for discovery and metadata applications for use. Metadata systems for resource discovery, such as the Dublin Core, are continuous with the traditions of bibliographic description, and rely on a principle of metonymy: the use of a surrogate or adjunct object to represent another. Metadata systems for resource use, such as semantic markup languages, are continuous with the traditions of database design, and rely on a principle of metaphor: the use of a paradigmatic image or design that conditions how the user will respond to and interact with the data.

The Birth of the New Web: A Foucauldian Reading of the Semantic Web

SUMMARY Foucaults The Birth of the Clinic serves as a pattern for understanding the paradigm shifts represented by the Semantic Web. Foucault presents the history of medical practice as a 3-stage sequence of transitions: from classificatory techniques to clinical strategies, and then to anatomico-pathological strategies. In this paper, the author removes these three stages both from their medical context and from Foucaults historical sequence, to produce a model for understanding information organization in the context of the Semantic Web. We can extract from Foucaults theory a triadic relationship between three interpretive strategies, all of them defined by their different relationships to a textual body: classification, description, and analysis.

Global Abstractions: The Classification of International Economic Data for Bibliographic and Statistical Purposes

SUMMARY This paper compares the representation of national and international agricultural economic information in the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) and the Library of Congress Classification (LCC). While LCC presents geographically-specific information within a larger context of agriculture as a field of study, NAICS presents agriculture as part of the overall depiction of economic activity in and between countries. To facilitate statistical aggregation and cross-comparison, NAICS has normalized economic activity by presenting it as a series of abstract activities that can be uniformly measured across different countries and regions. This rigorous standardization of economic data, while effective for statistical analysis, threatens to diminish the specific national, cultural and social contexts in which such data must be interpreted.

Straining the Standards: How Cataloging Websites for Curriculum Support Poses Fresh Problems for the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules

SUMMARY This paper discusses two primary issues thai arose from cataloging educational sites as part of the Cataloguing Internet Resources Project in Canada. First, the complex hierarchies in which many education-related resources are found is discussed-along with the need for new policies to determine “extent” for documents embedded in the interlinked bibliographic universe. Second, the concept of and the need to re-evaluate the definition of the “edition statement” in the Web environment arc discussed. Overall, further communication is needed between the educational and cataloguing community to provide access to educational resources in the electronic environment.

Resistance and possibility: Rethinking the concept of subject access from queer theoretical perspectives

This session will use queer theory to raise important questions about the role of information science in relation to queer communities. Using examples taken from both literary and popular culture, the session will look at the practices of classification in information systems, and how those practices, even when they attempt to facilitate access to resources for LGBTQ communities, ignore disjunctions and distortions that, far from being a barrier to access, form a fundamental aspect of queer expression.

Big data and the study of dementia: Epistemological promises and pitfalls

This paper examines the potential contribution of big data analytical methods to our understanding of dementia and the best means of caring for those afflicted with dementia. Using Ian Hackings history of statistics as a basis, the paper examines the three fundamental premises of big data: large datasets, a high tolerance of error and a focus on correlation rather than causation. Big data both evokes and departs from the epistemological assumptions that gave rise to statistical analysis, and its innovations merit both optimism and caution. While big data offers important means of reframing questions of dementia and dementia care along lines more conducive to the needs of patients and caregivers, the enthusiastic adoption of big data in business circles threatens to distort the practices into cost-saving measures that reflect false efficiencies rather than genuine improvements.

Semantic Markup for Literary Scholars: How Descriptive Markup Affects the Study and Teaching of Literature.

This paper describes a qualitative study, which investigated the attitudes of literary scholars towards the features of semantic markup for primary texts. The scholars were shown seven variations of the same text in XML format, each varying according to the two main features of semantic markup: the separation of structure from layout, and the ability to add interpretive markup to enhance searchability. The responses suggest that, contrary to many popular assumptions, layout is a vital part of the reading process, which implies that the standardization of DTDs begun with the Text Encoding Initiative should extend to styling as well. Second, interpretive markup achieves problematic results: while searchability is improved, the markup threatens to inhibit the readers experience of the text.

An XML Definition for an ISBD-Based Encoding Scheme

Abstract While cataloguing principles have shown remarkable persistence in the Web environment, cataloguing practices are becoming increasingly isolated due to their dependence on MARC coding. This paper explores an alternative: an experimental Document Type Definition (DTD), which enables bibliographic records to be created, encoded and styled using XML, which will be the predominant Web environment of the future. This DTD is based not on MARC but on the structure of the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD(G)), as manifested in Part I of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules. The results provide a useful indication of ways in which XML capabilities-particularly the distinction between visual format and semantic structure-can be used to enhance the intellectual activity of cataloguing in an environment that permits far more interoperability with other Web resources and tools.