LS 500 Three Decades Sine P & A

Knowlton, S.A. (2005). Three Decades Since Prejudices and Antipathies: A Study of Changes in the Library of Congress Subject Headings. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 40(2):123-45.

In 1971 Sanford Berman wrote Prejudices and Antipathies: A Tract on the LC Subject Heads Concerning People (P & A) which listed numerous objectionable headings and proposed changes. The article compiles all of Berman’s suggestions and looks at the changes that have happened over the last thirty years and the biases that still remain.

The Problem of Biased Headings In LCSH

Since LCSH was first published it has come under microscopic review by librarians. Critics have examined the choice of terms, the syndetic structure and the inconsistency with which subject headings are formulated. Even with these objections the LCSH is the primary thesaurus for controlled vocabulary searching in libraries in the United States and around the world. With the increase use of LCSH and especially the world wide use Librarians continue to object about the bias in subject headings, especially those used to identify groups of people that perpetuate “the exclusionary cultural supremacy of the main-stream patriarchal, Euro-settler culture.” This means that a Subject Heading has a BIAS when it only uses language that shows a prejudice in favoring particular view points and against others.

The core of the bias problem is illustrated in the LCSH Operating Principles. David J. Haykin, chief of the Library of Congress stated, “The heading…should be that which the reader will seek in the catalog, if we know or can presume what the reader will look under.” This rule also ignores the notion of universal bibliographic control to which the LC also has a commitment to do. The article states the largest problem is the identity of the “average”reader: an American/Western European, Christian, White, Heterosexual and Male. LCSH with biases also makes materials harder to find for certain users, it stigmatizes certain groups of people with inaccurate and demeaning labels and creates the impression that certain points of view are normal while others are unusual. With the increased use of the LCSH into the four corners of the world, more and more librarians are objecting to the biases from as far away as Great Britain and Australia.

Sanford Berman’s Prejudices & Antipathies

The pioneer in calling attention to the biases has of course been Sanford Berman who wrote the paper that this article is examining. Berman’s goal was to, “question certain subject headings in LCSH and propose alterations, additions and deletions of headings in LCSH and propose alterations, additions and deletions of headings and cross references to more accurately reflect the language used in addressing these topics, to rectify errors of bias and to better guide librarians and readers to material of interest.” Berman’s paper was met with mixed reviews in the library press.

Changes to LCSH SINCE the Publication of P & A

Berman himself estimates that no more than half of his suggestions have been adopted.

Discussion

In reality P & A proved to be the cornerstone for changes in LCSH. “In the 225 headings that Berman suggested be changed 88 or 39% were changed almost exactly as he suggested and an additional 54 headings or 24% were changed in a way that partially reflects Berman’s suggestions. 80 items remain unchanged or 36% show patterns of thought that persist in the Library of Congress, one such example are the many subject headings that pertain to the Christian Religion remain unchanged.”

The article states that while the biases are a continuing source of concern they have been seriously addressed by the compilers of the LCSH. The main biases that still persist deal with unglossed religious headings that refer to Christian topics and terms relating to the United States history and geography, which would be confusing to users outside of the U.S.

Reflection

I am very glad to see that LCSH has taken the biases seriously and dealt with them accordingly since Berman wrote his paper. I think we need to be ever vigilant for the users of the future and make sure that things continue to change and that search terms are as inclusive as possible so that users world wide have an equal shot at finding the same information. Equal and easy access for all — isn’t that what we strive for as a profession? Making sure the information gets to those that need it most.

LS 500 Thesauri, Taxonomies & Ontologies Oh My!

Gilchrist, A. (2003). Thesauri, Taxonomies and Ontologies - An Etymological Note. Journal of Documentation 59:7-18.

This article attempts to clarify the differences and similarities between the three terms: Thesauri, Taxonomies and Ontologies as they are presently being used by Information Scientists, AI Practitioners, those working on the foundations of the Semantic Web as well as others.

The beginning of the article lists the definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED):

Thesaurus

A "treasury" or "storehouse" of knowledge, as a dictionary, encyclopedia or the like.
A collection of concepts or words arranged according to sense; also a dictionary of synonyms and antonyms.

Taxonomy

Classification, esp. in relation to its general laws or principles; that department of science, or of a particular science or subject, which consists in or relates to classification; especially the systemic classification of living organisms.

Ontology

The science or study of being; that department of metaphysics which relates to the being or essence of things, or to being in the abstract.

Thesauri

The article mentions that the word thesaurus makes most lay people think of Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (first published in 1852). I would be one of those people who thought of Roget; it also make me think of some kind of dinosaur that likes words, but that could just be my imagination taking over.

The next reference of the word comes from Wilkins' 1668 Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language which included a decimal classification that ranged from God to "public relationships (civil, judiciary, naval, military, ecclesiastical)."

The third reference of the word thesaurus comes from a paper by Helen Brownson from the American National Science Foundation. Vickery quoted Brownson as saying "The application of a mechanized thesaurus based on networks of related meanings."

The article also points out some scholars are of the opinion that, "The thesaurus may become almost invisible to most users." The author suggests that the conventional thesaurus should be extended and elaborated to include: term definitions, notes on term usage and more explicitly defined relationships. One of the great benefits of these elaborations would allow the semantic network to be more easily manipulated by an interference engine, most likely an IF...Then operator.

Taxonomies

Inevitably individuals will introduce old words with new meanings into the conscious of the mainstream. This occurrence has renewed an interest in taxonomies; the triggers that generally cause this to happen are the following four things:

Information Overload - Conventional search engines are inadequate in dealing effectively with very large databases and users are in desperate need of search aids and filters.

Information Literacy - End users have severe problems in properly knowing how to search for information causing much time to be wasted and critical information to be missed.

Organizational Terminology - Published classifications and thesauri do not reflect the languages of particular organizations, in which most often 80% of the information is created internally.

"Destructuring" of Organizations - Mergers and acquisitions create cultural problems at the implementation stage. Similar issues have been encountered when extranets have been combined and when virtual communities are established.

Most frequently the word Taxonomy was being used with at least five separate meanings:

1. Web Directories - on the Internet and more and more in Intranets
2. Taxonomies to Support Automatic Indexing - commercial Web sites
3. Taxonomies Created by Automatic Categorization - software packages capable of automatic analysis
4. Front End Filters - a taxonomy created or imported and used in query formulation
5. Corporate Taxonomies - A number of thesauri get merged into a "megathesaurus"

Ontologies

In Vickery's 1997 paper he quotes Gruber (a leader in the Ontology Field) as saying, "An ontology can be defined as a formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualization."

WordNet and CYC are two of the oldest and most widely known ontologies. WordNet contains 100,000 word meanings grouped by five categories: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and function words. Two areas where the use of ontologies is being touted prominently is in the area of Knowledge Management and in the idea of the Semantic Web.

The article mentions three kids of ontologies as being useful or organizational memory systems:

• An Organizational Ontology - which describes the information meta-model
• A Domain Ontology - which describes the content of the information source
• An Enterprise Ontology - which is used for modeling business processes

Conclusion

The article quotes Wittgenstein as saying, "If you want to know the meaning of a word, you should look to see how it is used." Looking at the applications of thesauri, taxonomies and ontologies it is easy to see a progression of ideas that has resulted in some overlapping of detail. This progression has been driven mainly be three factors:

1. The growing trend in organizations to collate external and internal information
2. The vast quantities of information now available (Microsoft has 3 million documents on its Intranet)
3. Available and Inexpensive Computing Power

The article states all three words (Thesauri, Taxonomies and Ontologies) all deal with natural language and notes that taxonomies use both classification and thesaurus techniques. In his final statement Gilchrist states it is very obvious that multidisciplinary teams will be needed if such dreams as the Semantic Web are to become a reality.

~ My Perspective ~

Well first and foremost I have to say that I understood the article much more after attending class. I don't think you should have to read the article two or three times to fully understand the concepts. At points I felt that the author was just blathering on to hear himself blather.

The one point that seems to come up time and time again is that users do not know how to search properly, get frustrated wasting time and miss the most valuable and useful information that they are searching for. My other main complaint with the article is that Mr. Gilchrist uses the term AI at least three times in the article. At no point does he clarify what it means or uses it in a context that I was able to gleam the meaning from. I am therefore left to assume (and I hate to assume) that it means Artificial Intelligence. What exactly that has to do with the three terms the article discusses I am not quite clear. At this point I'm quasi-clear on the three terms since class but I still don't like the article as a whole. I think it could have been done in a much clearer manner that the lay people category (which apparently I fit into from his Roget's Thesaurus comparison) could understand.

FRBR Blog

I made it onto the FRBR Blog!

Here's an email my professor sent:

Congrats, Kelly ... you make us proud!

http://www.frbr.org/2007/02/20/kelly-clinker

Dr. M

LS 500 Authority Control...

Gorman, M. (2003). Authority Control in the Context of Bibliographic Control in the Electronic Environment. Paper presented at the International Conference on Authority Control, Florence, Italy. February 10-12, 2003.

Michael Gorman begins the article by stating that bibliographic control is impossible without authority control. “Cataloging cannot exist with standardized access points and authority control is the mechanism by which we achieve the necessary degree of standardization.”

Gorman examines the fundamentals of cataloging and the three parts that make up a catalog record:

1. Access Point
2. Bibliographic Description
3. Location or the Document Itself

Authority Records

Gorman then examines the five components of an authority record and even adds a sixth component that he feels it is lacking:

1. To record the standardized form of each access point
2. To ensure the gathering together of all records with the same access point
3. To enable standardized catalogue records
4. To document the decisions taken, and sources of, the access point
5. To record all forms of the access point other than the one chosen as the normative form
6. To record precedents and other uses of the standardized access point for the guidance of catalogers *This was Gorman’s addition*

From whence does the content of authority records come?

Gorman lists *some* of the sources that have to be taken into consideration when constructing a catalog record:

• Existing national and local authority files
• Applicable cataloging code, subject heading list, etc…
• Document being cataloged
• Reference sources

Metadata and authority control

Gorman discusses his dislike for OCLC’s Dublin Core at length and gives his definition of metadata, which is as follows:

Metadata – literally “data about data” which arose from the wishes of non-librarians to improve the retrievability of web pages and other internet documents. Metadata’s basic concept is the sufficient recall and precision in searching databases without the time consuming and expensive processes of standardized cataloging.

Authority control and the content of bibliographic records

Gorman states the Dublin Core cannot succeed in databases of any size as their random subject, name, title and series denotations are not held up to any kind of standardization or vocabulary control. Gorman states this will lead to *inchoate* results as the databases grow and that eventually the results will be no better than using a free text search on the internet.

*Inchoate* from www.Merriamwebster.com

:being only partly in existence or operation : incipient; especially : imperfectly formed or formulated : formless, incoherent inchoate suspicions that all is not well with the nation — J. M. Perry>

Precision and recall

Gorman explains all retrieval systems depend on two things – Precision and Recall. In the perfect system all records retrieved would relate 100% to the search terms and all relevant records would be retrieved 100%.

Solutions

Gorman proposes two options to fix the problems that currently exist and will only get worse as the information increases in the future.

One – Abandon the whole idea of metadata as something that will be useful to librarians and library patrons.

Or

Two – Invest metadata schemes with the attributes of traditional bibliographic records.

Gorman fires bullet after bullet as to what is wrong and what will happen if we don’t fix it:

• The use of people without the skill and experience of catalogers to complete metadata templates will lead to incoherent, unusable databases.
• REAL cataloging is inevitably time consuming and complicated.
• The world of recorded knowledge and information is complicated and the number of complications tends to be indefinite.
• It is impossible to conceive of a system that allows for consistent retrieval of relevant information while lacking any guidelines whatsoever.

Conclusion

In his conclusion Gorman holds nothing back and states that Authority Control and Cataloging are what enable the library to pursue its central missions of service and free and open access to all recorded knowledge and information. Gorman states, “We cannot have real library service without a bibliographic architecture and we cannot have that bibliographic architecture without authority control. It is as simple and as profound as that.”

Critical Reflection

I do believe with what Gorman states through out his article. I am a firm believer in the motto – “If you are going to do something, Do It Right.” As my grandfather would most likely say don’t do it half hearted (o.k. grandpa would have used more colorful language, but you get the gist).

The more that I learn about metadata the more I learn that it can be a fabulous thing if done properly. I also believe that I was using metadata or trying to create it before I knew what it was. In a former position I was in charge of the creation of a database. I found it very difficult to explain at least to some of my coworker’s satisfaction why it was so imperative that the data be entered so carefully. There was more than one that just wanted the information loaded willy~nilly so that the database would be up and running as soon as possible. This previous example was more than 10 years ago – ah the 90’s (cue your own flashback here).

Most recently I found a website that deals with the music tracks and metadata that they contain www.musicbrainz.org So it seems to me that metadata is here to stay, as Gorman said we may or may not choose to use it – so I guess part of the future is unwritten, only time will tell the true tale of whether metadata is to be or not to be.

LS 521 Journal Entry for 02/27/07

So Lucky is still in the news and the irony is that the more the book gets talked about the more it is going to sell and well isn't that exactly what every author wants -- For Their Book To Fly Off The Shelves!!

Apparently the Ladies of ABC's The View have taken notice and dared to say the naughty 'scrotum' word live on the air. However Barbara Walters did refer to the Newbery Award using the wrong name and also seemed to be confused regarding banning a book and challenging a book according to the reports I read.

I also read an account of a Librarian from New Mexico's account of when she read the book to some children and think it is worth noting. So here it is:

I read the opening 2 or 3 pages of Lucky to a third grade class this afternoon. I prefaced the reading by saying this was this year's Newbery award winner, and that it also was the subject of a front page article in the New York Times over the weekend because some people had objected to something in the first couple of pages. I told them I would read the beginning of the book to them, and for them to listen very carefully to see if they could figure out what was objected to. I did give them a little background on Lucky and AA, and Hard Pan so they'd have a little context.

I read from the beginning through the snakebite sentence, and although I shot a glance out over the room, no one giggled or reacted in any way. I read a a couple of paragraphs more, then asked if anyone had any idea yet. Like Monica's students, a couple of children suggested the
drinking and smoking as objectionable.

So, I told them that it was the part about the dog being bitten on the scrotum, which was a part of male mammal anatomy. They looked at me rather incredulously, like why would anyone object to that?

Then I read a bit more, and at the second mention of the incident, where it talks about the dog being bitten in a most sensitive place, some of them giggled.

I finished Sammy's story about Roy, and the kids didn't want to hear any more, even though I gave them a bit of a synopsis of the basic situation of the story. Actually, as I read about Sammy being dead drunk, I began to feel uncomfortable reading this to third-graders -- more
uncomfortable than reading the word "scrotum." I've been thinking all the rest of the afternoon about why this book is over the heads of third graders. Although I hesitate to generalize about
age groups (I had some excellent readers in this group, and some very sharp students), I think that developmentally the book is more suited to slightly older students -- 4th and maybe even better 5th or 6th graders. Part of it is the structure of the book -- the movement back and forth between Sammy's story and Lucky's listening, and her thoughts as she listens, which makes the story much more reflective than plot-driven. Awareness of the complexities of the adult world at the level presented here is, I think, beyond the developmental level of most third graders. Perhaps they are not yet able to move that far beyond themselves. I think interest in issues of the adult world increases as they become 4th and 5th and 6th graders. Indeed, Patron has said that she wrote the book for the 10-year-old inside of her.

Next step is to try this out on some older kids, or give it to their teachers to read.

The kids didn't even notice the naughty bits. When are adults going to learn that kids get their ideas from adults. Hopefully they get their morals and ideals from their parents as well. In my opinion there are a lot worse words out there that I have heard young kids use in normal conversation that I don't think I learned until I was high school. Gah! People are goofy sometimes especially the adults that are supposed to be in charge. Do we lose brain function as we get older or something? Thankfully as pop music has told us, "The Children are Our Future," I just hope we don't ruin it for them.

LS 521 Journal Entry for 02/20/07

There has been a great to-do over recent Newbery Winner Susan Patron's The Higher Power of Lucky because it uses the word scrotum. There I said it and see the world didn't implode.

For more information here is the wiki about the book.

What concerns me the most about all this hub-bub is not the fact that people are up in arms over the use of the word. But that LIBRARIANS are part of the people that speaking the loudest about boycotting, banning and or censoring this book from their libraries.

It is also interesting to note that the author Susan Patron herself is a librarian. What also concerns me is that those that have not even read the book speak out against it the loudest sometimes.

I am on a number of librarian listservs and this subject has been broached on all of them in some way, shape or form. It scares me a little that individuals that are this highly educated can be so narrow-minded in forming an opinion about a book before actually reading it. I am currently in the process of obtaining my graduate degree for Library Science -- is this what I will become? I certainly hope not.

Librarians are normally the ones fighting against censorship not the ones advocating for it.

For other examples in youth literature where the word scrotum has been used take a gander at this page.

For an Ohio Journalist's take on the whole issue here is an article from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Finally here is the author, Susan Patron's response to the whole controversy.