LIS510 lecture 9

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LIS510 lecture 9

• Thomas Krichel
• 2005-03-23

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Organization of information

• Libraries organize information. Otherwise nothing
  that is an library could ever be found.
• Traditional method of doing this have been labor
  intensive. They can not cope with the exploding
  amount of information.
• But the theoretical approaches and the tools
  developed by librarians remain very important for
  any attempt at organizing information by computer.

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approaching knowledge

• There are things we want to know about. These are
  called subject.
• And there are ways of looking at things. Rubin
  calls them disciplines
• Example subject sex, way of looking at it
  through biology, gender studies, pornography.

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classification

• It is the act of organizing the universe of
  knowledge into some systematic order.
• Classification provides a descriptive and
  explanatory framework for ideas and a structure
  of the relationship among the ideas.
• Example Science gt Chemistry gt Organic Chemistry

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Classification schemes

• Generally schemes to classify subjects are
  discipline oriented, rather than subject
  oriented.
• Example
• Sports gt Racing gt Horse Racing
• Science gt Biology gt Zoology gt Horses gt Horse
  Racing
• The same thing can be viewed form different
  disciplines.

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use of classification schemes

• As a way to arrange items in a library. Things
  with same classification are next to each other.
  This encourages the patron to discover similar
  items.
• But sometimes, serials are kept apart. Individual
  articles in serials are not classified.
• Once a system is chosen, a library sticks with
  it.
• There are two common ones
• Dewey Decimal Classification
• Library of Congress

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Dewey Decimal Classification

• Introduced by Melvil Dewey in 1876.
• Ten top classes
• 000 Generalites 200 Religion
• 100 Philosophy, parapsychology occultism,
  psychology
• 300 Social Sciences 400 Language
• 500 Natural Sciences Mathematics
• 600 Technology (Applied Sciences)
• 700 Arts 800 Literature Rhetoric
• 900 Geography, history and auxiliary disciplines

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Subclasses

• Rubin has a good examples
• 640 is home economics
• 641 food and drink
• another
• 795 games of chance
• 795.4 card games
• 795.41 card games where skill is involved
• 975.412 poker

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comments on DDC

• Mainly used in public libraries.
• Like any scheme, it needs updating. Such updates
  a cumbersome.
• Like any scheme there is a significant cultural
  bias in it.
• Owned by OCLC and sold very dearly. OCLC sued the
  library hotel for using the scheme. This limits
  the uptake of the scheme and therefore it
  usefulness.

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Library of Congress Classification

• Has twenty top letter as classes.
• Many looks at the world from an academic
  perspective.
• Therefore used in universities.
• Owned and maintained by the library of congress,
  problems with restricted access are similar to
  DDC.

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controlled vocabulary

• Many words can be used to describe the same thing
• US, U.S., United States of America, ???
• One approach to deal with this problem is to use
  only one term, consistently.
• Example the yellow pages provide a consistent
  vocabulary for all professions.

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NISO definition of authority control

• Vocabulary control is the process of organizing
  a list of terms
• to indicate which two or more synonymous terms is
  authorized for use
• to distinguish between homographs
• to indicate hierarchical and associate
  relationships between term

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LoC authority control

• LoC maintain authority files. They are not free
  but you can consult them on the web.
• Let us try this out now, see http//authorities.lo
  c.gov/
• Look at the personal authority file and search
  for someone reasonable famous that you like.

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Thesauri

• A thesaurus is list of words. For each word,
  there is a list of related words and the type of
  relationship that the word has with each related
  work. Examples
• LIBRARIES
• Narrower Terms
• Academic Libraries
• Branch Libraries
• Related Terms
• Information Centers
• Thesauri are search tools.

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subject headings

• These are controlled vocabularies of subjects
  that can be added to a record.
• They may also contain similar relationships
  between terms.
• But unlike thesauri, they are used when creating
  the bibliographic records. Thus they are indexing
  tools.

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type of subject headings

• LoC subject headings are very complete, but are
  not easy to use.
• Smaller libraries use Sears subject headings
• less compete
• easier to use
• very expensive to buy on paper.

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Catalogs

• Catalogs are collection of records about a
  librarys holdings.
• In olden days, they were organized by author
  only.
• In more modern days you can approach by various
  access points such as title, author, subject.

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aims of catalog

• Cutters 1904 work still pertinent here
• Catalogs
• enable person to find a book of which either
  author, title, subject is known
• to show what the library has for a given author,
  on a given subject, in a given type
• to assist with the choice of the book by edition
  or by its character (literary or topical)

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catalog

• Cutters vision is more from the users point of
  view, but from the librarys point of view it is
  also important to know
• location
• physical characteristics (e.g. oversize)
• circulation properties

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bibliographic record

• This is a record that describes an item in the
  library.
• Anglo-American Cataloguing rules are a set of
  standardized rules for creating such record.
• These rules go back to the 19th century, but are
  being revised.
• Currently AARC2 is in use, last revised 2002.

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fields

• Parts of a record are called fields. A record can
  contain many fields. A field has a name, and a
  value. Example
• Title Homepage of Thomas Krichel
• Author Thomas Krichel
• URL http//wotan.liu.edu/home/krichel
• is a record with three fields. The first field is
  named Title, and its value is Homepage of
  Thomas Krichel

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MARC

• MARC is a record with field name that are numbers
  and some sub field. The same example as
  previously (basically)
• 100 Thomas Krichel
• 245 Homepage of Thomas Krichel / Thomas Krichel
• 865 http//wotan.liu.edu/home/krichel
• There are gazillions of rules to learn before you
  can write a correct MARC record.

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other tools index

• forget about NISOs definition as quoted by
  Rubin.
• An index is a list of terms and for each term a
  list of locations where it can be found. Example,
  for these slides
• catalog 17,18,19,20
• subject 3,5,15,16,17,18
• They have a crucial role in information retrieval.

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types of indexing

• precoordinate indexing an indexer (usually a
  person) selects all the indexing terms and
  decided how they are combined.
• postcoordinate searchers can use indexing terms
  they like. for example they can ask if there are
  slides that have subject and catalog.

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other tools abstract

• an abstract is pretty much a description of
  something else without a rigid structure.
• Homepage of Thomas Krichel
• written by Thomas Krichel,
• last updated March 2005
• at http//openlib.org/home/krichel
• would be an example of an abstract.
• There are many abstracting and indexing databases
  that hold a lot of abstracts and have indexed
  them.

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other tool bibliography

• This is basically a collection of abstracts on a
  certain topic.
• It can be a large like DBLP, see
  http//dblp.uni-tier.de or a small one like the
  one you may want to create for your essay.

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http//openlib.org/home/krichel

• Thank you for your attention!
• Please switch off the computers.