5 research outputs found
AN EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH TO BIBLIOGRAPHIC CLASSIFICATION
This dissertation is research in the domain of information science and specifically, the organization and representation of information. The research has implications for classification of scientific books, especially as dissemination of information becomes more rapid and science becomes more diverse due to increases in multi-, inter-, trans-disciplinary research, which focus on phenomena, in contrast to traditional library classification schemes based on disciplines.The literature review indicates 1) human socio-cultural groups have many of the same properties as biological species, 2) output from human socio-cultural groups can be and has been the subject of evolutionary relationship analyses (i.e., phylogenetics), 3) library and information science theorists believe the most favorable and scientific classification for information packages is one based on common origin, but 4) library and information science classification researchers have not demonstrated a book classification based on evolutionary relationships of common origin.The research project supports the assertion that a sensible book classification method can be developed using a contemporary biological classification approach based on common origin, which has not been applied to a collection of books until now. Using a sample from a collection of earth-science digitized books, the method developed includes a text-mining step to extract important terms, which were converted into a dataset for input into the second step—the phylogenetic analysis. Three classification trees were produced and are discussed. Parsimony analysis, in contrast to distance and likelihood analyses, produced a sensible book classification tree. Also included is a comparison with a classification tree based on a well-known contemporary library classification scheme (the Library of Congress Classification).Final discussions connect this research with knowledge organization and information retrieval, information needs beyond science, and this type of research in context of a unified science of cultural evolution
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Textual criticism in Indology and in European philology during the 19th and 20th centuries
This paper discusses the post-enlightenment development of philology in Europe during the 19th-20th centuries, particularly in the German speaking areas. After several centuries of sustained interest in the Graeco-Roman Classics, all types of medieval, older European and Asian literatures became the focus of new textual approaches. Prominent was an historical and critical approach bolstered by the newly developed MSS stemmatics and the new evidence from comparative historical linguistics. After a brief retrospective, the paper follows some of the salient features of these developments from c. 1800 CE onward: including the development of the text-critical and stemmatic method by Lachmann; early Indo-European and Neogrammarian approaches to linguistics; also, briefly, the religious and mythological approaches to the texts such as those of Max Müller; the intrusion of ‘race science’, and the increasing, if rather temporary influence of ethnology. A detailed discussion of the stemmatic approach and its later critics follows. Special attention is given to the situation in South Asian, notably in Sanskrit Studies. Finally, the paper discusses at some length the recent development of computer-based stemmatics that use biology-inspired computer programs. The paper concludeswith a discussion of the prospects of stemmatic approaches in Indology.Sanskrit and Indian Studie