Education for Librarianship in the Next Century

published or submitted for publicatio

Interrogating spatial analogies relating to knowledge organization: Paul Otlet and others

The author provides an examination of how ideas about place and space have been used in thinking about the organization of knowledge. The spatial analogies of Paul Otlet (1868–1944) in relation to his overall vision are traditional and conventional. Notions of space, place, position, location, and movement are frequent in the work of other leading innovators (Martin Schrettinger, Melvil Dewey, Wilhelm Ostwald, Emanuel Goldberg, and Suzanne Briet) concerning specific practical aspects of knowledge organization. Otlet’s spatial imagery is more original and more ingenious when applied to technical problems compared to his overall vision.published or submitted for publicationOpe

Wildfire, Climate and Species Distribution: Possible Futures of the Rocky Mountain White Fir (A. concolor var. concolor) in Colorado and New Mexico

Humans have altered their natural surroundings since their appearance on Earth. More recently, humans have increased their impact on natural systems causing changes in wildfire behavior, climate and species distribution to occur at a higher rate post Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, research into wildfire, climate and species distribution tends to be narrowly focused. When investigating the effects that wildfire, climate and species distribution have on each other, it becomes clear that each variable affects the other, but the outcomes of those interactions remain unknown. In order to begin to understand these interactions, this study focuses on a single, tree species, the rocky mountain white fir (A. concolor var. concolor), in Colorado and New Mexico. This study sets the foundation for future work on forecasting the future distribution of rocky mountain white fir due to these interactions through the creation of a binary model to produce an updated species distribution map of rocky mountain white fir in the study area. The results of the binary model, specifically in Colorado, exposed weaknesses in current research regarding environmental factors that affect the growth and regeneration of rocky mountain white fir. Further research into controlling environmental variables for the rocky mountain white fir are imperative to forecasting the future distribution of the species. After analysis of current research as well as the results of the binary model, it becomes evident that with the different ways rocky mountain white fir could respond to changes in wildfire regimes, climate and the distribution of other species in Colorado and New Mexico, future research must focus on the creation of a model to forecast possible changes. A comprehensive, multi-system forecast model would give new insights into how humans have affected the state of different ecosystem goods and services, and what can be done to adapt to changes that have already been set into motion that cannot be undone

Before the Antelope: Robert Pagès on Documents

In 1951 Suzanne Briet wrote, with minimal explanation, that an antelope could become a document. In 1948 Robert Pagès (1919-2007) published an explanation of the same and related ideas. Textual and other graphic documents are about something, hence descriptive and derived. Animals and other objects are informative because they are illustrative of themselves either as specimens of a class (tokens of a type) or simply as particular individuals (“autodocuments”). Pagès’ career and ideas are briefly discussed

Introduction to Robert Pagès’ “Documentary Transformations and Cultural Context”

Robert Pagès (1919-2007) was an anarchist activist who later became director of a major social psychology research laboratory. Between these roles he was a student in documentation established in Paris by Suzanne Briet and others at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers. In 1947 while he was a student of documentation Pagès submitted a thesis entitled “Transformations documentaires et milieu culturel” (Documentary transformations and cultural context) which was published as an article in the Review of Documentation in 1948. A key theme was that documentation is to culture what machinery is to industry. This introduction situates and explains some key ideas from Pagès\u27 article

From Bibliography to Documentography

There is ambiguity in the use of the term bibliography for both the study of printed books and also for the listing of accessible intellectual resources. We address this ambiguity by examining two well-known anomalies: Donald F. Mckenzie’s assertion that bibliography should extend to all media, including culturally significant objects in the landscape and Suzanne Briet’s declaration that an antelope in a zoo is a document. This paper summarizes and extends an earlier, more detailed discussion (Buckland, 2018)

Can the mid-Holocene provide suitable models for rewilding the landscape in Britain?

Palaeoecologists have been encouraging us to think about the relevance of the Holocene fossil record for nature conservation for many years (e.g. Buckland 1993) but this information seems slow to filter through to the conservation community. Indeed, Willis et al. (2005) report that recently published biodiversity reports and policy documents rarely look back more than 50 years and may ignore the historical context entirely. This has been a lost opportunity for understanding ecological systems. Many natural processes occur over timescales that confound our attempts to understand them, so the vast temporal perspective provided by palaeoecological studies can provide important guidance for nature conservation (Willis & Birks 2006). However, accurate vegetation mapping is difficult enough in modern landscapes (Cherrill & McLean 1999), so the challenge of describing prehistoric environments is immeasurably greater. Nevertheless, pioneering work in the mid 20th century showed that pollen and spores extracted from peat bogs were so perfectly preserved thatthey could be used to demonstrate sequences of vegetation change since the last glaciation (Godwin 1956). Since then, the science has burgeoned: ancient deposits of beetles, snails, fungal spores and plant macrofossils add to the picture, as does the chemistry of ancient lake sediments (Bell & Walker 2004). Many questions still remain to be answered by this fascinating research and one aspect has received considerable attention in the last decade. This concerns the nature of the ‘primeval’ landscapes, in other words our understanding of natural systems prior to significant human impact. The debate was kindled by a thesis by the Dutch forest ecologist Frans Vera in 2000 (see also Vera & Buissink 2007). Vera effectively challenged established views about the primeval landscapes and argued that the refutation, and the resulting alternative landscape models, had critical importance for modern conservation practice. Vera’s thesis is focused on the pre-Neolithic (ca 8000-5000bp) landscape in the lowlands of central and western Europe, with the assumption that this period represents an almost pristine or ‘natural’ state which should provide a suitable conservation benchmark. Vera contends (i) that this landscape was not closed woodland but a relatively open park-like mosaic of wood and grassland,and (ii) that large wild herbivores were an essential driving force behind woodland-grassland vegetation cycles. The advocacy in his argument and the timing of the publication, when grazingwas seen as increasingly important in conservation in Europe, have combined to raise the profile of this issue. If Vera is correct, the open park-like landscapes were inherited rather than created by people; this may have implications for conservation practice in Europe. The adoption of Vera’s ideas into conservation management plans in the UK (see Box 1) gives an indication of the influence that this work has had. Indeed, Vera’s ideas have been described as a ‘challenge to orthodox thinking’ (Miller 2002) and considerable debate has been stimulated centering on the ecological validity of Vera’s hypothesis and its relevance for modern conservation. In this article, we attempt to address these issues on the basis of results from a literature review, web-debate and discussions with Dutch and British ecologists, prepared for English Nature with a view to informing conservation strategies (Hodder & Bullock 2005a)

Context, Relevance, and Labor

Since information science concerns the transmission of records, it concerns context. The transmission of documents ensures their arrival in new contexts. Documents and their copies are spread across times and places. The amount of labor required to discover and retrieve relevant documents is also formulated by context. Thus, any serious consideration of communication and of information technologies quickly leads to a concern with context, relevance, and labor. Information scientists have developed many theories of context, relevance, and labor but not a framework for organizing them and describing their relationship with one another. We propose the words context and relevance can be used to articulate a useful framework for considering the diversity of approaches to context and relevance in information science, as well as their relations with each other and with labor

Glittering in the dark: Memory, culture, and critique in light of the history of information

An ethical and human-centered approach to Information Science requires rigorous, historically-informed analysis of both the resources that inform this discipline and the cultural role it inhabits. This session will present and discuss significant recent developments in the history and foundations of the field. ASIST has formally established a new volunteer administrative position of ASIST Curator. Kathryn La Barre, the newly-appointed Curator, will describe the role and responsibilities of this position and assess the state of Information Science history in relation to the conference themes. In two complementary reports: Michael Buckland will examine theoretical accounts of the materials made use of in Information Science; and Sachi Arafat will explain why Information Retrieval and Information Science should be integrated and rethought as a science of technology-mediated experience, and how this new kind of science relates to the pre-modern memory arts tradition

Mixture models for distance sampling detection functions

Funding: EPSRC DTGWe present a new class of models for the detection function in distance sampling surveys of wildlife populations, based on finite mixtures of simple parametric key functions such as the half-normal. The models share many of the features of the widely-used “key function plus series adjustment” (K+A) formulation: they are flexible, produce plausible shapes with a small number of parameters, allow incorporation of covariates in addition to distance and can be fitted using maximum likelihood. One important advantage over the K+A approach is that the mixtures are automatically monotonic non-increasing and non-negative, so constrained optimization is not required to ensure distance sampling assumptions are honoured. We compare the mixture formulation to the K+A approach using simulations to evaluate its applicability in a wide set of challenging situations. We also re-analyze four previously problematic real-world case studies. We find mixtures outperform K+A methods in many cases, particularly spiked line transect data (i.e., where detectability drops rapidly at small distances) and larger sample sizes. We recommend that current standard model selection methods for distance sampling detection functions are extended to include mixture models in the candidate set.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe