Repositioning the Base Level of Bibliographic Relationships: or, A Cataloguer, a Post-Modernist and a Chatbot Walk Into a Bar

Designers and maintainers of library catalogues are facing fresh challenges representing bibliographic relationships, due both to changes in cataloguing standards and to a broader information environment that has grown increasingly diverse, sophisticated and complex. This paper presents three different paradigms, drawn from three different fields of study, for representing relationships between bibliographic entities beyond the FRBR/LRM models: superworks, as developed in information studies; adaptation, as developed in literary studies; and artificial intelligence, as developed in computer science. Theories of literary adaptation remain focused on “the work,” as traditionally conceived. The concept of the superwork reminds us that there are some works which serve as ancestors for entire families of works, and that those familial relationships are still useful. Crowd-sourcing projects often make more granular connections, a trend which has escalated significantly with current and emerging artificial intelligence systems. While the artificial intelligence paradigm is proving more pervasive outside conventional library systems, it could lead to a seismic shift in knowledge organization, a shift in which the power both to arrange information and to use it are moving beyond the control of users and intermediaries alike

LGBTQ+ Catalog Users: A Brief Survey

To promote social justice, recent work in knowledge organization (KO) has focused on providing access for members of marginalized groups including LGBTQ+ persons. Expanding on this work, the current project explores demographics and library usage as well as the participant-provided identity terms of LGBTQ+ library catalog users. Using a survey methodology that collected 141 respondents’ information, researchers found that LGBTQ+ catalog users who responded were primarily young, educated, and identified as either Black or White. The majority of respondents reported regular use of the library catalog, though also found materials in a variety of other ways, including social media. When analyzed using facet analysis, terms used by respondents to express their identities were communicated in a range of ways with facets representing gender identity, gender alignment, gender expression, gender modality, physical attraction, emotional attraction, pronouns, and sociocultural identity all represented. Implications for the creation and application of specialized controlled vocabularies are discussed, with concerns about presumed simplicity of these approaches being questioned

INITIAL INVENTORY AND DOCUMENTATION OF STONE/BRICK-AND-LIME VATS (BALDI) IN SOME NORTHERN TOWNS OF THE PROVINCE OF ILOCOS SUR, PHILIPPINES

This is an initial inventory and documentation of remaining, abandoned and non-functioning vats, locally referred to as baldi, in some northern towns of Ilocos Sur, many of which are in various states of human-mediated damage and natural deterioration. It was undertaken by faculty proponents and students of the College of Architecture of the University of Northern Philippines, Vigan City with a local anthropologist for the period 2017 to 2018. The research sought to establish the significance of the vats in the cultural life of the province. As a descriptive method of research of the qualitative type, the project basically aimed to identify the location of the vats, determine their construction methodology and materials of construction, inscribe their architectural character and features, evaluate their current physical condition and contexts, and ascertain their ownership. The information gathered is structured and presented in a summary of 1) Inventory, in tables, 2) Graphical presentation, 3) Photographs and 4) Description of vat attributes. There are 63 (7 of which could not be measured and could only be photographed) inventoried vats, excluding wells and other features in a few vat assemblages in 17 vat sites (12 of which with visible vat assemblages [sites that include two or more vats]), in 10 barangays of 8 towns (Sinait, Cabugao, San Juan, Magsingal, Santo Domingo, San Ildefonso, San Vicente, and Bantay)

Voice and Context: Building a Corpus of Events to Assess Potential Bias in Digital News Headlines

Racism, sexism, or other forms of bias may be reinforced by the delivery of a news story. This delivery refers to the grammatical structure of the story including the order in which details of a story are delivered. One tool for organizing grammatical structure – voice, which describes whether an action is active (performed by a subject on an object) or passive (performed on a subject by an object) – is especially useful for embedding impressions of a story in news headlines due to headlines’ brevity. Take for example the headline “Coroner: Man shot by police had BAC of 0.469”. In this headline, active voice is used to describe the victim’s blood alcohol content, emphasizing the victim’s active choices which may incriminate them in this situation. The use of passive voice to describe the shooting de-emphasizes the police’s active choice to shoot the victim. This demonstrates how voice may be used to influence a reader’s perception of responsibility in an event by emphasizing the active choices of one involved party but not the other. Implication of responsibility can create a positive or negative image of an involved party depending on the sentiment of the action carried out by the involved party, so the distribution and context of these instances of voice may prove to be significant in understanding how they are used to create an impression of a news story for the reader – especially when analyzed in a specific social context where voice may be used to support existing bias

S.R. Ranganathan's Ontology of the Book: On a Bibliographical Conceptual Model avant la lettre

This paper examines a conceptual model of the book advanced in the mid-20th century by the eminent Indian librarian and classification theorist S.R. Ranganathan (1892-1972), who formulated it with the aid of an ontological model drawn from Hindu philosophical thought. The analysis of this model, which has hitherto received only sporadic discussion in KO literature, unfolds in three parts. First, the paper outlines Ranganathan’s model, explains its Hindu philosophical background, and traces its development, showing that, in fact, it comprised two distinct versions – a triadic (i.e., three-entity) and a dyadic (i.e., two-entity) one – which were fully compatible to one another and which Ranganathan used in different contexts. Next, the structure of Ranganathan’s model, in both its triadic and dyadic forms, is compared with those of the contemporary bibliographic conceptual models most widely used today, IFLA-LRM (and its predecessor, FRBR) and BIBFRAME. It is shown that Ranganathan’s model bears some striking resemblances to these current models: in particular, the triadic version of Ranganathan’s model shares affinities with FRBR and IFLA-LRM, while the dyadic version is closer to BIBFRAME. Then follows a discussion of significant structural divergences between Ranganathan’s model and its latter-day counterparts, and an explanation for these differences is adduced. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of the surprising lack of historical connection between Ranganathan’s conceptual model of the book avant la lettre and current bibliographic conceptual models, as well as a reflection on the enduring relevance of Ranganathan’s model for today

The Beaked Adze in the Western Pacific: Implications for Social Identification and Late Prehistoric Interaction

Recent investigations of interactions in the western Pacific have focused on post-settlement contact between Micronesia and Melanesia. In the process they have largely overlooked the importance of the beaked adze, an unique adze form with a pointed cutting edge. The few dated contexts suggest that the presence of beaked adzes in the western Pacific did not occur until the last 500-700 years, spreading rapidly across Micronesia and islands along the northern fringe of Melanesia. Using ethnographic and archaeological sources, a distinct, albeit limited, pattern of occurrence, provenance and chronology of beaked adzes is emerging in the western Pacific. Their rarity, workmanship and specific provenances suggest that at least among many of the Caroline and Marshall Islands they have served as symbols of prestige and social identity. Less is known about their function amongst the Polynesian Outliers although an ethnographic account indicate beaked adzes functioned as both tools and ceremonial objects. Using oral histories to provide a cultural context, it is argued here this artifact requires more detailed attention and analysis

Diversity and Identity: Categories for OAI data-providers in the Open Language Archives Network

This work analyzes the network typology of data-providers who use the Open Archive Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) to engage in ethnolinguistic information-resource stewardship. The Open Language Archive Community’s (OLAC) network is analyzed addressing: (1) the ontological nature of OAI data-providers, chiefly that not all data-providers are archives; (2) the classificatory nature of the data-providers in contrast to existing OLAC categories of personal and institutional; and (3) the impact of classification/description on the social-understanding about those providers. That is, discrete classificatory terminology does not exist within the target OLAC user community. A broader understanding of the classificatory distinctions among cultural heritage organizations would enable depositors to select the most appropriate institutions for cultural heritage preservation. Two classification taxonomies are presented for the data-providers. The taxonomy terms are applied to the members of the network: (1) as a lens by which one may understand metadata quality discrepancies across data-providers; (2) to identify strong and weak areas within the network; and (3) to identify network growth potential in contrast to the historically involved network participants. The developed taxonomies are applicable to cultural heritage networks outside of the set of OLAC data-providers and contribute to broader metadata quality discussions in the Library-Archive-Museum (LAM) community

More than Physique or Desire: Feeling Constituting Identity in Homosexual Nomenclature

This is a preliminary report of work by a Domain Analysis Clinic formed in 2021 to examine homosexual nomenclatures. Prior studies have suggested that self-naming and self-classification in the domain of male gayness and alternative sexualities emerge as a form of resistance against the hegemonic. So, the postulated research question is: what are the reasons, characteristics, and consequences of this type of knowledge organization using as an example the self-representation of gay men in social interaction applications? Our principal methodology was to seek self-identifying nomenclature from social media websites, from each of which we gathered sets of categories or labels used for identifying content uploaded by members. As a form of preliminary analysis all of the data were sorted as keywords or phrases to generate frequency distributions, which can be compared, to some extent, across the sites. Analysis of the terms suggested three classes which also can be considered as facets: sexual desires, physical characteristics and sexual roles or performances. The terms demonstrate how users understand themselves in their individuality, aligning themselves with the social reproduction that occurs in the analyzed social network. The present study corresponds to a first approximation to the development of a classification of male homosexuality, following a pragmatist or domain analysis approach

Thesaurus construction for community-centered metadata

Community-engaged approaches to resource access require metadata practices that surface attributes relevant to local information needs and use terminology that reflects local language. This paper details the iterative and ongoing metadata work involved in facilitating access to aggregated items through the Downtown Eastside Research Access Portal. The challenges and strategies we describe here build upon and are relevant to knowledge organization projects seeking to repair issues of inaccurate and stigmatizing descriptive metadata for universal and local collections. After contextualizing the collection and the community, we describe our process in assessing areas of subject terminology in need of major repair, sources consulted for thesaurus terminology, and the approach we have taken to build a stand-alone thesaurus for this project, including our exploration and attempts at meaningful and respectful input into terms and term relationships

From Atomic Elements to Fantastical Machines: The “Concept” in International Classification

The concept—an idea, a notion—is accepted as the core entity in knowledge organization (KO). The founder of the science of KO, Ingetraut Dahlberg, defined a concept repeatedly over time. Concepts have been well-discussed in the literature of both KO and information and have even been described as elementary particles in a theory of knowledge interaction. But an interesting question is what did the concept mean to these original thinkers in the nascent KO a century or more ago? An earlier series of papers about the evolution of the concept in information science based on the discourse of the concept in American Documentation led irrevocably to the notion of the concept as an element that could be isolated for analysis alongside frequent references to fantastical machines. This short paper describes an ongoing research project to undertake the same level of discourse analysis in the foremost evolutionary journal of KO, International Classification. A simple narrative of the occurrence of the “concept” in IC over the course of its run shows evolving definitions but also reveals usage of the notion of the concept as core (or atomic) element