As Foolproof as the Telephone: Automation and Gendered Labor

This essay examines the development of Machine-­Readable Cataloging in the late 1950s and early 1960s, relating it to a popular filmic speculation about feminized labor and the automation of information retrieval, in order to ultimately discuss the paradoxical ways in which MARC transformed the feminized labor of information. It will show that cataloging, like other forms of women’s labor transformed by technology in the latter part of the twentieth century, has a complicated relationship to market labor and industrialization that is the result of social processes over which librarians can be said to have no control at all, or certainly very little control, particularly industrialization, the Cold War, and the shift in the national economy’s focus from production to service, from manufacturing to communication

Super Tagging in the Development of Sexual Nomenclature and Social Organization Online

In this paper, I describe the ways in which interventionist forms of tagging, such as super tagging, gorilla tagging, and tag bombing within Xtube, a database of sexual representation, reveal complex social and cultural structures among members of sexual subcultures and point to the particularlity of various modes of sexual being and the relationship between those modes and particular configurations of sexual identity. Individuals who participate in super tagging do not necessarily exert significant influence over information retrieval results within a database. Instead, in Xtube, members create alternative, activist, and interventionist forms of tags for personal and social purposes. Particularly for individuals who experience non-normative desire, such tagging practices provide a means for describing and structuring feelings of difference into coherent identities and particular social forms for socio-sexual engagement and self-exploration and understanding

Introduction

This article introduces a Library Trends special issue about gender, race, and sexuality in information studies. The papers are drawn from the 2014 Gender & Sexuality in Information Studies colloquium held at the University of Toronto, and represents the first special issue of a scholarly LIS journal dedicated to this theme

Level-Wise Exploration of Linked and Big Data Guided by Controlled Vocabularies and Folksonomies

This paper proposes a level-wise exploration of linked and big data guided by controlled vocabularies and folksonomies. We leverage techniques from both Reconstructability Analysis and cataloging and classification research to provide solutions that will structure and store large amounts of metadata, identify links between data, and explore data structures to produce models that will facilitate effective information retrieval

Collectively canalizing Boolean functions

This paper studies the mathematical properties of collectively canalizing Boolean functions, a class of functions that has arisen from applications in systems biology. Boolean networks are an increasingly popular modeling framework for regulatory networks, and the class of functions studied here captures a key feature of biological network dynamics, namely that a subset of one or more variables, under certain conditions, can dominate the value of a Boolean function, to the exclusion of all others. These functions have rich mathematical properties to be explored. The paper shows how the number and type of such sets influence a function's behavior and define a new measure for the canalizing strength of any Boolean function. We further connect the concept of collective canalization with the well-studied concept of the average sensitivity of a Boolean function. The relationship between Boolean functions and the dynamics of the networks they form is important in a wide range of applications beyond biology, such as computer science, and has been studied with statistical and simulation-based methods. But the rich relationship between structure and dynamics remains largely unexplored, and this paper is intended as a contribution to its mathematical foundation.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figure

Re-Conceptualizing Developmental Areas of Assessment for Screening, Eligibility Determination and Program Planning in Early Intervention

Contemporary recommended practices in early childhood assessment strive to gain a holistic picture of child learning and development to inform screening, eligibility, and program planning decisions. These practices have traditionally focused on competencies reflected in developmental domains with limited attention to the approaches-tolearning used to acquire those competencies. In this article, we call for the examination of early childhood constructs that impact a child’s ability to learn and develop, such as executive function (EF), mastery motivation, self-regulation and selfdetermination, specifically in the infant-toddler period. With EF defined as a wide range of central control processes in the brain that link and categorize information that is discernible in cognitive, motor, and behavioral responses [1], we propose a model of EF as the core construct that drives and unites these learning processes and describe how the model can be applied to Part C early intervention screening, assessment, eligibility determination, and program planning, as well as identify future directions in research and personnel preparation