Re-examining Aristotle's Categories as a Knowledge Organization System

In his Categories, Aristotle details the kinds of being that exist, along with what can be understood and predicated of existing things. Most notably within this work, Aristotle advances a set of ten, top-level categories that can be used to classify all kinds of being. Even today, the influence of the Categories is felt in many domains, particularly in knowledge organization (KO). Here, Aristotle’s Categories bear deep, long-standing connections with works examining categorization, subject analysis, and theory of classification. Though its relation to ontology might seem obvious, connections to KO perspectives on knowledge organization systems (KOSs) and ontological modeling are curiously lacking. The aim of this work is to offer a re-examination of the Categories as a KOS, particularly through the lens of the KO field’s understandings of ontology. Utilizing Zeng’s classification of KOSs as a theoretical framework, this study draws parallels between the first two sections of the Categories and the defining features of ontologies and offers an initial ontological model of this work. The results of this re-examination stand to offer a new view of a fundamental work in the KO canon, draw further connections between past and present perspectives in KO, and further contribute to the theoretical grounding of contemporary KOS research and practice

Authority and Universalism: Conventional Values in Descriptive Catalog Code

Every standard embodies a particular set of values. Some aspects are privileged while others are masked. Values embedded within knowledge organization standards have special import in that they are further perpetuated by the data they are used to generate. Within libraries, descriptive catalog codes serve as prominent knowledge organization standards, guiding the creation of resource representations. Though the historical and functional aspects of these standards have received significant attention, less focus has been placed on the values associated with such codes. In this study, a critical, historical analysis of ten Anglo- American descriptive catalog codes and surrounding discourse was conducted as an initial step towards uncovering key values associated with this lineage of standards. Two values in particular were found to be highly significant: authority and universalism. Authority is closely tied to notions of power and control, particularly over practice or belief. Increasing control over resources, identities, and viewpoints are all manifestations of the value of authority within descriptive codes. Universalism has guided the widening coverage of descriptive codes in regards to settings and materials, such as the extension of bibliographic standards to non-book resources. Together, authority and universalism represent conventional values focused on facilitating orderly social exchanges. A comparative lack of emphasis on values concerning human welfare and empowerment may be unsurprising, but raises questions concerning the role of human values in knowledge organization standards. Further attention to the values associated with descriptive codes and other knowledge organization standards is important as libraries and other institutions seek to share their resource representation data more widely

Unique Features of the Person Class in Cultural Heritage Models

Knowledge organizations systems (KOSs) model important entities of interest within a domain. In the cultural heritage domain, KOSs are often designed around cultural information resources, though many other kinds of entities must be modeled and described in the process. Of these, the “person” entity may appear straightforward, but is surprisingly challenging with complex implications. Within cultural heritage, personhood is closely associated with certain kinds of creative responsibilities and rights, though modern technological advances are challenging these traditional notions. In an era marked by AI creators, digital recreations of the dead, and deepfakes, it is worth asking, in cultural heritage, what is and is not a person

Toward a Value-Analytic Approach to Information Standards

While developments in information technology enable exciting new potentials, they may, in the process, inadvertently violate important values such as autonomy or privacy. Responsible, ethical approaches to technology warrant the use of critical perspectives in evaluating our technological practices and artifacts. Key among such artifacts are information standards, influential documents that represent and perpetuate community agreements on ideal practice. In critically examining standards, values represent a promising conceptual lens. This paper advances the use of value analysis on information standards, particularly those devoted to knowledge organization. Value analysis is a methodological approach that guides the elicitation of values from artifacts. Two case studies demonstrate the application of value analysis to knowledge organization standards and their resulting data, and show how values and their implications can be discerned from these information artifacts. Value analysis must next be extended beyond standards as documents to examine the fuller ecosystem within which information standards are situated and enacted in order to fully understand their implications, uphold important community values, and maintain ethical information practices

Values in knowledge organization standards: A value analysis of Resource Description and Access (RDA)

Knowledge organization standards are important community artifacts that set forth agreed upon specifications and protocols, and though they may appear neutral they have been shown to harbor specific perspectives. These perspectives are often covert but hold implications for the ways in which knowledge is conceptualized, organized, and represented. Values are deeply held preferences for ways of acting and ways of being, and represent an effective lens for examining the perspectives embedded in societal practices and artifacts. To date, however, knowledge organization standards have not been approached through value analysis. This study addresses this gap through an examination of the influential library standard Resource Description and Access (RDA), specifically focusing on what values are present within this standard, how these values are communicated, and how they are recognized and responded to by practitioners. To address these questions, a qualitative, exploratory, multiphase study was conducted, utilizing value and rhetorical analyses of the text of RDA as well as open-ended interviews with RDA practitioners. Findings show that RDA upholds its design principles through the expression of principles-based values and values associated with user needs. In their usage of RDA, catalogers place greater emphasis on access and values associated with users and their perspectives. At the same time, the relative absence of asserted community values such as privacy illustrates the challenged nature of human values in knowledge organization standards. Findings from this study demonstrate the integral nature of values in standards, and position value analysis as a useful methodology in the critical study of standards in all domains. In raising questions about the role of human values in knowledge organization standards, this study contributes to ongoing discussions of information ethics and professional values

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

Side by Side: The Use of Multiple Subject Languages in Capturing Shifting Contexts around Historical Collections

Archival representations strive to convey the original context around historical collections, but perspectives on certain topics and materials may change over time. Such shifting perspectives pose problems for providing appropriate subject access without obscuring contexts or misrepresenting resources in their broader cultural settings. This study seeks to examine these problems through an investigation of historical materials associated with American sideshows, public opinions on which changed drastically from the 19th to the 20th centuries. Using as a case the Ronald G. Becker Collection of Charles Eisenmann Photographs, an archival collection of digitized images of sideshow performers, we explored a variety of systems of subject representation for major concepts and terms relevant to sideshow performers and activities. Combining keyword extraction and descriptive analysis of current collection metadata (e.g., LCSH) with comparisons to other popular systems of subject representation, we found complex and conflicting perspectives on concepts such as dwarfism, hypertrichosis, and obesity. Results revealed that current LCSH-based subject metadata for these materials tends to reduce historical and demographic context around performers and highlight contemporary medical perspectives. At the same time, original language used in these images is now often seen as demeaning, exploitative, and offensive. Furthermore, neither of these perspectives may match with self-identifying language used in contemporary society. Taken together, however, these sets of terminologies and their relationships may provide a more robust representation of changing perceptions and terminologies over time. Findings from this study reveal the potentials of utilizing a faceted approach and multiple subject languages together to further clarify and contextualize archival collections

Automated Parsing of Personal Identity Facets for a Collection of Visual Images

Collections of digitized, historical images serve as rich primary sources for digital humanities research, though access to these resources has been hindered by inadequate subject metadata. In this study, researchers explored the feasibility of performing subject analysis for a collection of historical images of persons through an automated procedure. Building on previous work that developed a faceted system for representing the identities of persons depicted in 19th century visual images, the present work attempted to automate the process of person and facet parsing for images from the A.S. Williams III Collection at the University of Alabama. A case-based model was built and used to analyze image titles. Compared to a manual control process, the automated model achieved a 95% success rate in parsing persons and an 85% success rate in parsing facets. Errors in parsing were more likely to occur for images of multiple persons, as well as those labeled with incomplete or uncertain names. Findings offer further support for faceted analysis of personal identity in historical materials, and reveal the potentials of automated, text-based methods of enhancing subject access for large visual image collections

How FAIR is MARC?: FAIR Data Principles applied to a bibliographic data standard

FAIR Data Principles provide a framework for considering how best to make data available in a way that is 1) findable, 2) accessible, 3) interoperable, and 4) reusable. Designed to be simple to understand and machine-actionable, FAIR principles support data use and reuse. This conceptual paper investigates the application of FAIR principles to bibliographic data through an examination of the current standard for encoding library records, MARC. To this end, this paper begins by describing the FAIR principles. It then looks to understand the MARC standard and applies the FAIR principles to the data affordances provided by the MARC encoding itself. In doing so, it probes the question of the extent to which MARC, as a standard, is FAIR. Ultimately, MARC is historically designed for machine-readability, not machine-actionability; although it is well suited to the description of bibliographic materials and is widely used, it does not adhere fully to any of the four FAIR principles. Even so, this examination suggests that FAIR principles could be useful in assessing specific MARC record datasets, particularly as bibliographic data is more widely shared and reused