	Related Pages
	Dublin Core Discussed	PICS Discussed

"Classifications are really very much like theories. Like theories, classification schemes can provide an explanatory shell for looking at the world from a contextually determined perspective. Classification schemes not only reflect knowledge by being based on theory and displaying it in a useful way...but also classifications in themselves function as theories do and serve a similar role in inquiry." Barbara Kwasnik (1992: 63)

Required readings for this section:

Bella Hass Weinberg, Complexity In Indexing Systems -- Abandonment And Failure: Implications For Organizing The Internet. 1996. ASIS Conference Proceedings, Available: http://www.asis.org/annual-96/ElectronicProceedings/weinberg.html

Robert E. Kent and Christian Neuss, Web Conceptual Space, Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education WebNet Available: http://aace.virginia.edu/aace/conf/webnet/html/346.htm

R.W. Kopak, The Effect of System Representation of the Information Object on Information Exploration. 1998. CHI98 Information Exploration Workshop Available: http://www.fxpal.xerox.com/ConferencesWorkshops/CHI98IE/submissions/long/kopak/Default.htm

Applications Used in Internet Cataloging/Indexing

Cataloging the Web is a sometimes controversial subject. Can it be done, once done will it stay done? Librarians (and others) have taken a variety of approaches to bring organization to the WWW. The list provided here cannot be and is not exhaustive. These are examples of some of the leading projects and programs. Assigned readings provide scope and depth. Approaches to managing the Web through cataloging include:

Classification Systems

Subject Trees
DDC
UDC
LC
EI

PICS
RDF

Mark-Up

Definitions and Relationships

As this sections seeks to demonstrate, Web documents can be classified in several distinct ways. There are at least three major divisions and multiple sub classes below them. The following links point to the discussion.

Concepts
    Universal
    Faceted
    Chain Index
    Key Word
Relationship
    Structure
    Separation
    Clusters
Characterisitc
    URL
    Popularity
    Quality Indexing
    Temporal

Innovative Cataloging

What do computers allow us to do in indexing and cataloging that we were either unable to do or could not do for practical reasons in the pre-C [before computing] era? We are now able to more efficiently use more access points for information definition, storage, and retrieval. We can also utilize either simultaneously or separately different search mechanisms and strategies. And we can display and manipulate search sets in imaginative ways through graphical user interfaces of various kinds.

Everyone who creates a Web site becomes a cataloger. The very act of providing hypertext links among the pages or the naming the files on that site is a form of indexing. Most Web site design is even more sophisticated. It can range from offering links to "interesting stuff" to sophisticated and abstracted catalog entries. Most Web sites now lie somewhere in between.

This Web site carries with it a great deal of navigation. It is organized into a number of files or folders. Why? There are two reasons. The first is to ease creation of the site by organizing the material in some kind of logical (for me at least) order. Each folder and each page is named. They are named in such a fashion as to again offer easy identification of content. I could just as easily named them each after nematodes or stars or with numbers. The second reason is to ease retrieval.

Related pages are organized together in folders, less related pages are located in other folders. These files are interconnected with hypertext links. Links provide a more specific indexing function than file/folder structure. Folders organize information generally while links bring specific interrelated information into cyber-proximity. To mark all this, I use a variety of techniques - icons, standard links within the page, links within the site, and links to other sites.

What, we must ask, is the purpose of cataloging, information mapping, indexing, classification? The simple answer in the library and information sciences is to reduce complexity in understanding concepts by placing them into taxonomies of some kind. We all engage in taxonomic behavior. We use language and symbols to represent these concepts. The symbols we use and the semiotic interpretation we give those symbols represent information. Yet when we impose language or symbols we also impose a certain rigidity in thinking and interpretation. We also tend to reduce the range and sensitivity of meaning. S.R. Ranganathan (1965: 33) argues, for example:

"The multi-dimensional universe of knowledge has to be transformed into a one-dimensional universe. Here arises an insoluble problem. It is well known that in the transformation of an n - dimensional space into a space of smaller number of dimensions and into a one-dimensional space or line in particular -- or its equivalence, in the mapping of an n - dimensional space on a space of small number of dimensions and on a line in particular -- many of the Immediate-Neighborhood-Relations among the classes are necessarily lost."

What Ranganathan is saying is that the "universe of knowledge" consists of many things (n-dimensional space). Not only is information widely diverse, it comes in many kinds of containers (books, articles, CD, video, audio, digital, analog, Internet, etc.); in any number of languages; written by people, corporations, governments, etc., at various times, and so on. All of these dimensions are reduced to a single (one-dimensional space) standardized representation or record of that information. We necessarily lose granularity, linkages, meanings, relationships among these knowledge products.

Michael Buckland, others before him, and others who will come after him point out that not only are there many languages spoken by different peoples, but even within similar language communities professional, geographic, temporal, and other vocabulary differences exist. There are metadata domains where the same "character strings" may be used in similar but different ways or in very different ways. It may well be that subtle differences may create greater dissonance than marked differences, if only because they are more difficult to recognize at first blush.

Susan Leigh Star (1996) argues for greater theoretical advances because we must respond to the greater pressures digitization and automation bring us. Digitization and automation, I would argue, also bring us opportunities to take theory to practice that was simply not possible to do before.

Therefore, I believe we will see more innovation and theoretical development of classification systems in the library and information sciences. In some cases, as we now see in the proliferation of the commercialized Web, we will also see the application of classification theory heretofore only proposed. Sometimes we will see it done well and sometimes not so well.

learning objective classification metadata Explore the Web. How have some sites cataloged or indexed themselves or others.
Check out some of the short story sites on the WWW. What do they do to manage their collections?
How about Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders. What organizing principles are at work there? Compare and contrast how their classification systems work. Don't overlook reader/author/publisher reviews.
Is Weinberg still right? How do her views contrast with those of Kent and Neuss?

Classification as Politics

Consider the following:

"During the last decade, bibliographic classification systems in public libraries have developed from standard orders to guard collections and catalogues, towards social instruments supporting dialogue and cooperation among libraries and their user communities. Recently, it appears that both the theory and practice of classification is taking a more sociological and historical orientation. That is, classifications are viewed as social tools, ideally as democratic tools for communication and interaction in distributed communities." Hanne Albrechtsen, 1997.

Again, we all classify. Consider the "standard" world map on walls in classrooms or atlases. In North America, most maps are "americo-centric." That is, the Americas are shown in the middle or to the left of the map, North America on top, South America on the bottom. Travel to Europe, and one finds "euro-centric" maps. Travel to other regions and those regions are placed in the middle. Why, because we all want to be at the center of the universe. Yet, there is nothing inherent in the placement of the earth vis-a-vis the sun, the planets, or the universe that dictates any particular presentation of one land mass over another.

Are there political, sociological, and economic implications to this. If our maps teach us that we are at the center of the universe and "on top" do we come to see ourselves in that light? Classification and cataloging may well have multiple social functions and roles. These range from pragmatic classification to private languages. How we catalog something may be just as important as what we catalog. Consider the evolution of LCSH. How has "see Women - as lawyers" or "Men - as nurses" changed. Or consider the transition in the classification schemes from "the gay disease" to AIDS.

In general, classification necessarily follows social practice. As our perceptions change so do the ways we classify those perceptions. While there may be some lag time built into classification, it is a dynamic medium. Thus not only must we be concerned with n-dimensional knowledge universes, we must also recognize that these n-dimensional universes are located as well in the space-time continuum. We are therefore faced with a "quantum metadata theory." Quantum theory "made easy" states that nothing is static or fixed, everything is dynamic and probabilistic.

Various Internet

D-Lib Magazine. Available: http://www.dlib.org/

R. M. Colomb, "A Digital Library Needs Many Indexes" Available: http://archive.csee.uq.edu.au/~colomb/Phronesis.html

Internet Scout Report, Available: http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/index.html

Gerry McKiernan, "As the World (Wide Web) Turns: Resources at Iowa State," D-Lib Magazine, July 1998. Available: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july98/07clips.html#GERRY

Mundie, David A. "Organizing Computer Resources. Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the DDC" Available: http://ivory.lm.com/~mundie/DDHC/Organizing_computers.html

Nancy B. Olson, Editor, 1997. Cataloging Internet Resources, A Manual and Practical Guide. 2 ed. Available: http://www.oclc.org/oclc/man/9256cat/toc.htm

Candy Schwartz, Metadata Generally, Available: http://www.simmons.edu/~schwartz/mymeta.html

Journal of Internet Cataloging - available in paper only

Dennis Nicholson, Mary Steele, Gordon Dunsire and Fred Guy, Cataloguing the Internet: CATRIONA Feasibility Study: Report To The British Library Research & Development Department 1995 Available: http://bubl.ac.uk/org/catriona/cat1rep.htm

Catalogs/Web Libraries

BUBL Information Service. Available: http://www.bubl.ac.uk/
BUBL maintains a catalog of academic subjects. It provides a "menu of main subject terms", and subsets of terms by subject area (library science) arranged by DDC number. The search interface can be found: http://www.bubl.ac.uk/link/

Mundie, David A. CyberDewey, Available: http://ivory.lm.com/~mundie/DDHC/CyberDewey.html

CyberStacks(sm), Available: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/ Gerry McKiernan's (Iowa State University Curator) Library of Congress Classification catalog of "significant" Web material.

Engineering Electronic Library, Sweden (EELS). Available: http://eels.lub.lu.se/. Classified according tothe Engineering Information classification system, see http://www.ei.org/

Scottish Libraries Across the Internet (SLAINTE), Public Access to Information, Research and Teaching in Scotland (PAIRTS): http://www.slainte.org.uk/Pairts/pairts.htm

Social Science Information Gateway (SOSIG). http://sosig.esrc.bristol.ac.uk/

References

Albrechtsen, H. 1997. The Order of Catalogues - Towards Democratic Classification and Indexing in Public Libraries.63rd IFLA General Conference - Conference Programme and Proceedings - August 31- September 5, 1997

Buckland, M. 1992. Agenda for online catalog designers. Information Technology and Libraries 11, 2: 157-163.

Buckland, M. with A. Chen, H-M Chen, Y. Kim, B. Lam, R.Larson, B. Norgard, & J. Purat. 1999 "Mapping Entry Vocabulary to Unfamiliar Metadata Vocabularies" D-Lib Magazine, 5, 1. Available: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january99/buckland/01buckland.html

Cleveland, D. B. and A.D.Cleveland. Introduction to Indexing and Abstracting. Englewood, Colorado : Libraries, Unlimited, 1990.

Day, R. 1999. Critical Theory and Bibliography in Cross-disciplinary Environments. Available: http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/D/Ronald.E.Day-1/mlacorrect.htm

Robert E. Kent and Christian Neuss, Web Conceptual Space, Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education WebNet Available: http://aace.virginia.edu/aace/conf/webnet/html/346.htm

Robert E. Kent and Christian Neuss. Creating a Web Analysis and Visualization Environment. Available: http://www.pi.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/~neuss/www2/wwwf94.html

Kwasnik, B. "The Role of Classification Structures in Reflecting and Building Theory," Advances in Classification
Research, Vol. 3 (Pittsburgh, PA, October 1992). R. Fidel, B.Kwasnik, and P. Smith, eds. Medford, NJ:
Learned Information/ASIS, pp. 63-81.

Norgard, B. Entry Vocabulary Modules and Agents. June 28, 1998, Revised July 14, 1998. Available: http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/metadata/agents.html

Ranganathan, S. R. 1965. The Colon Classification. vol. IV of the Rutgers Series on Systems for the Intellectual Organization
of Information, ed. Susan Artandi. New Brunswick, NJ: Graduate School of Library Service, Rutgers University.

Ranganathan, S. R. 1951. Classification and Communication. Delhi University Publications, Library Science Series, 3.Delhi:
University of Delhi.

Star, Susan Leigh. 1996. Grounded Classification: Grounded Theory and Faceted Classification. Available: http://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/~star/gt.html

Vickery, Brian C., ed. 1966. Faceted Classification Schemes, Vol. 5. Rutgers Series on Systems for the Intellectual
Organization of Information. Susan Artandi, ed. New Brunswick, NJ: Graduate School of Library Service, Rutgers University.

Vickery, Brian C., ed. 1960. Faceted Classification: A Guide to Construction and Use of Special Schemes. London: Aslib.