We are archivists, but are we OK?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show that the digital environment of the early twenty-first century is forcing the information sciences to revisit practices and precepts built around paper and physical objects over centuries. The training of archivists, records managers, librarians and museum curators has had to accommodate this new reality. Often the response has been to superimpose a digital overlay on existing curricula. A few have taken a radical approach by scrutinising the fundamentals of the professions and the ontologies of the materials they handle. Design/methodology/approach – The article explores a wide range of the issues exposed by this critique through critical analysis of ideas and published literature. Findings – The authors challenge archive and records management educators to align their curricula with contemporary need and to recognise that partnership with other professionals, particularly in the area of technology, is essential. Practical implications – The present generation owe it to future generations of archivists and records managers to ensure that the education that they get to prepare them for professional life is forward-looking in the same way. Originality/value – This paper aims to raise awareness of the educational needs of twenty-first century archives and records professionals

Melvil Dewey’s Ingenious Notational System

Historically, the notational system of the Dewey Decimal Classification provided for non-institution-specific, relative location shelf arrangements, thus substantially reducing bibliographic classification effort. Today its decimal notation continues to provide the classification scheme with flexible granularity, is hospitable to expansion, expresses relationships, interfaces well with modern retrieval systems, and is internationally understood

Episemantics: Aboutness as Aroundness

Aboutness ranks amongst our field’s greatest bugbears. What is a work about? How can this be known? This mirrors debates within the philosophy of language, where the concept of representation has similarly evaded satisfactory definition. This paper proposes that we abandon the strong sense of the word aboutness, which seems to promise some inherent relationship between work and subject, or between word and world. Instead, we seek an etymological reset to the sense of aboutness of “in the vicinity, nearby; in some place or various places nearby; all over a surface.” To distinguish this sense, we introduce the term episemantics. The authors have each independently applied this term in slightly different contexts and scales (Hauser 2018a; J. T. Tennis 2016), and this article presents a unified definition of the term and guidelines for applying it at the scale of both words and works. The resulting weak concept of aboutness is pragmatic, in Star’s sense of a focus on consequences over antecedents, while reserving space for the critique and improvement of aboutness determinations within various contexts and research programs. The paper finishes with a discussion of the implication of the concept of episemantics and methodological possibilities it offers for knowledge organization research and practice

Intellection and Intuition: On the Epistemology of S.R. Ranganathan

The Indian librarian and library theorist S.R. Ranganathan (1892-1970) is generally recognized as a seminal figure in the development of facet analysis and its application to classification theory. In recent years, commentators on the epistemology of knowledge organization have claimed that the methods of facet analysis reflect a fundamentally rationalist approach to classification. Yet, for all the interest in the epistemological bases of Ranganathan’s classification theory, little attention has been paid to his theory of how human beings acquire knowledge of the world – i.e., his epistemology proper – or to the question whether this theory reflects a rationalist outlook. This paper examines Ranganathan’s statements on the origins of knowledge to assess if they are congruent with rationalist epistemology. Ranganathan recognized two different modes of knowledge – intellection (i.e., intellectual operations on sense data) and intuition (i.e., direct cognition of things-in-themselves) -- and it is in virtue of the latter that his epistemology can be considered to fall within the ambit of rationalism. Intuition as a source of knowledge plays a role in Ranganathan’s classification theory, most notably in his model of scientific method underlying classification development, his vision of the organization of classification design, and his conceptualization of seminal mnemonics and a reduced number of fundamental categories as important elements in the design of classification notation. Not only does intuition subtend the rationalism of Ranganathan’s epistemology but it also serves as a bridge to another often-neglected aspect of his thought, namely his valorization of mysticism. Indeed, Ranganathan’s theory of knowledge is best characterized as mystical rationalis

Some issues in the classification of zoology

Submitted versio

La biblioteca postmoderna.

This study examines the shift from a "modern" to a "postmodern" approach in the field of library and information science. As a result of a thorough review of the literature about the topic, the author argues that the postmodern library is characterized by a new way of understanding the reality, which is no longer based on the objective and rational way typical of the modern age, but on a more fragmented and composite point of view, as highlighted by the theorists of postmodernism. This increases the focus on cultural diversity, and calls into question the role of the library as a tool for organizing a unique and dominant knowledge. Given these assumptions, the postmodern library is closely connected to some relevant factors of the current debate, such as the centrality of the user and the ability to facilitate the access to a wide range of documents

Nonknowledge: The Bibliographical Organization of Ignorance, Stupidity, Error, and Unreason: Part Two

Starting with the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom paradigm in information science it is possible to derive a model of the opposite of knowledge having hierarchical qualities. A range of counterpoints to concepts in the knowledge hierarchy can be identified and ascribed the overall term “nonknowledge.” This model creates a conceptual framework for understanding the connections between topics such as error, ignorance, stupidity, folly, popular misconceptions, and unreason by locating them as levels or phases of nonknowledge. The concept of nonknowledge links heretofore disconnected discourses on these individual topics by philosophers, psychologists, historians, sociologists, satirists, and others. Subject headings provide access to the categories of nonknowledge, but confusion remains due to the general failure of cataloging and classification to differentiate between works about nonknowledge and examples of nonknowledge

Deriving and applying facet views of the Dewey Decimal Classification Scheme to enhance subject searching in library OPACs

Classification is a fundamental tool in the organisation of any library collection for effective information retrieval. Several classifications exist, yet the pioneering Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) still constitutes the most widely used scheme and international de facto standard. Although once used for the dual purpose of physical organisation and subject retrieval in the printed library catalogue, library classification is now relegated to a singular role of shelf location. Numerous studies have highlighted the problem of subject access in library online public access catalogues (OPACs). The library OPAC has changed relatively little since its inception, designed to find what is already known, not discover and explore. This research aims to enhance OPAC subject searching by deriving facets of the DDC and populating these with a library collection for display at a View-based searching OPAC interface. A novel method is devised that enables the automatic deconstruction of complex DDC notations into their component facets. Identifying facets based upon embedded notational components reveals alternative, multidimensional subject arrangements of a library collection and resolves the problem of disciplinary scatter. The extent to which the derived facets enhance users' subject searching perceptions and activities at the OPAC interface is evaluated in a small-scale usability study. The results demonstrate the successful derivation of four fundamental facets (Reference Type, Person Type, Time and Geographic Place). Such facet derivation and deconstruction of Dewey notations is recognised as a complex process, owing to the lack of a uniform notation, notational re-use and the need for distinct facet indicators to delineate facet boundaries. The results of the preliminary usability study indicate that users are receptive to facet-based searching and that the View-based searching system performs equally as well as a current form fill-in interface and, in some cases, provides enhanced benefits. It is concluded that further exploration of facet-based searching is clearly warranted and suggestions for future research are made.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo