Volume 48, no. 5, 2010

2010, Year of Cataloging Research

The "2010, Year of Cataloging Research" has already spurred interest and venues for the discussion and dissemination of research-related topics. The announcement was made in this journal in an invited editorial by Allyson Carlyle, which appeared in 2009's vol. 47, no. 8 issue. Carlyle's Web page for the Year of Cataloging Research is collecting announcements, events, and organizations that support cataloging research, http://faculty.washington.edu/acarlyle/yocr/. A related guest editorial by Randy Roeder announcing the Year was published in Library Resources & Technical Services' first issue of 2010 (vol. 54).

In an effort to support the movement to re-invigorate the profession with research, the ALCTS Metadata Interest Group announced it is opening its Metadata Blog, http://blogs.ala.org/nrmig.php, to include participant contributions on research and events, including "summaries of articles or research, links to educational opportunities, calls for papers, descriptions of interesting projects, conference reports, requests for assistance, or anything else of potential interest to the community."

Readers, researchers, and authors looking for journals in which to publish their research will interested in the Library & Information Science Editors Web page, http://www.lis-editors.org/resources/authors/index.shtml, which includes a listing of resources for authors of LIS research.

Writers of research articles will also be interested in a series of editorials written in Library & Information Science Research addressing some of the common issues writers have with beginning the research process and writing the research article.

Peter Hernon, Candy Schwartz. 2007. What is a problem statement? Library & Information Science Research, 29(3): 307-9. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2007.06.001

Juris Dilevko. 2007. Guest Editorial: Reading literature and literature reviews. Library & Information Science Research, 29(4): 451-4. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2007.06.003

Peter Hernon, Candy Schwartz. 2008. A research study's reflective inquiry. Library & Information Science Research, 30(3): 163-4. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2008.06.003

Peter Hernon, Candy Schwartz. 2009. Procedures: Research design. Library & Information Science Research, 31(1): 1-2. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2008.10.005

Peter Hernon, Candy Schwartz. 2009. Reliability and validity. Library & Information Science Research, 31(2): 73-4. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2009.03.001

Danuta A. Nitecki. 2010. Guest Editorial: Finalizing a research paper--findings through conclusion. Library & Information Science Research, 32(1): 1-3. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2009.10.001

International Universal Decimal Classification Seminar 2009

A two-day international seminar entitled, Classification at a Crossroads: Multiple Directions to Usability, was presented at the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, in The Hague, Netherlands, on October 29-30, 2009. The conference itself was preceded by a one-day UDC Round Table and policy session of some twenty editors and contributors to the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) system. Approximately 133 persons attended the Seminar at which two keynote addresses were made and twenty-two papers on various aspects of classification research were presented in six sessions.

The Seminar opened with a keynote address by Dagobert Soergel (United States) entitled "Illuminating Chaos: Using Classification to Harness the Web." He described the Web as a chaotic place increasingly complicated by wikis, blogs and social tagging. His purpose was to present some of the ways in which classification might help the situation. In the first part of his talk he concentrated on the need for structure and provided examples of ways in which classification might provide that structure and aid the users in developing queries. In the second part, he discussed the partial overlapping of ontologies and other knowledge organization systems (KOS) and introduced a conceptual hub approach to KOS mapping to provide the basis for universal facet-based search of the Web. His paper set the stage for the presentations of the first day of the seminar.

In Session 1, three papers addressed the topic Classifying Web Resources. Anders Ardö (Sweden) spoke on "Automated Classification: Insights into Benefits, Costs and Lessons Learned." Ardö recognized that automated methods of classification have been around for some time but that exponential growth of the World Wide Web has brought these methods to the forefront of a number of different research areas, including "machine learning (Artificial Intelligence), document clustering (Information Retrieval) and weighted string-matching against controlled vocabulary (Library and Information Science)." In this context he described research carried out in the NetLab at the Lund University Library beginning with the use of "UDC in Nordic WAIS/WWW as early as 1992 and continued research in the 1990s testing automatic classification on Engineering Index classification and DDC." Similarities and differences of three approaches were discussed and the problems of automatic classification were recognized. A major issue is the evaluation and comparison related to "the challenge of identifying the aboutness" of the documents and the quality of the indexing. An effort was made to "discuss general benefits and costs, resulting quality and lessons learned." Linda Kerr (United Kingdom) described "Intute: From a Distributed Network to a Unified Database, Lessons Learned and Future Developments." Intute (http://www.intute.ac.uk/) is a UK service funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) which catalogs the best Internet resources for education and research. The system is a unification of seven subject catalogs previously funded separately by the JISC. The paper describes the processes and challenges of integrating the systems into one catalog using one standard metadata scheme, as well as describing a 'course and theme' view of the resources. It also outlines two projects for evaluating the cost effectiveness of manual and automatic metadata creation. The projects are designed to assess the requirements for the most effective retrieval of resources aimed to improve the efficiency of metadata generation processes and user satisfaction in retrieval. In the third paper in this session, Jakob Voss (Germany) addressed the topic "Wikipedia as a Knowledge Organization System." This paper began with a general introduction citing Wikipedia as a system designed for the distribution of knowledge and went on to show how the system could also be used in knowledge organization and how it is connected with other knowledge organization systems. He described how it could be viewed as a controlled vocabulary "built of articles, languages, categories and links." In doing so, he refers to the possibilities of semantic linking and dynamic concept hierarchies. Since it is not limited to a subject domain he sees Wikipedia as a top level ontology like UDC, DDC, CyC and WordNet. Also he outlines how Wikipedia could be used in subject indexing and how it can be "linked and mapped" to other controlled vocabularies using Open Linked Data and Resource Description Framework (RDF) technology.

Session 2 focused on Classification and Thesaurus and contained four papers. Emphasis was on the integrated use of classification and a thesaurus. In a paper on thesaurus construction and use, Marlene van Doorn and Katrien Polman (Netherlands) addressed the question "From Classification to Thesaurus … and Back? Subject Indexing Tools at the Library of the Afrika-Studiecentrum, Leiden." This is an African Studies thesaurus constructed, from 2001 to 2006, for use in subject indexing and retrieval at the University of Leiden. Word-based, it was developed as a more user-friendly alternative to the UDC codes in use at the time. In its construction, the UDC codes were used as a starting point and they were 'translated' into thesaurus descriptors using the basic thesaurus relationships. "In a parallel but separate operation … each UDC code … assigned to an item in the library's catalogue was subsequently converted into one or more thesaurus descriptors." Also, the UDC codes, updated, were included in the thesaurus, leaving "open the possibility of linking the thesaurus to different language versions of the UDC MRF in the future." Victoria Francu and Cosmin-Nicolae Sabo (Romania), in a paper entitled "Implementation of a UDC-Based Multilingual Thesaurus in a Library Catalogue: The Case of BiblioPhil" described an approach to improving classification based subject access in a library catalog. The authors represented UDC classification numbers with thesaurus descriptors and used them in an "automated way." The system is called BiblioPhil and standard formats used are UNIMARC for bibliographic and subject authority records with MARCXML support for data transfer. "The verbal equivalents, descriptors and non-descriptors, are used to expand the number of concepts and are given in Romanian, English and French." This approach is seen as a time-saver for the indexer and easier access for the user. Similarly, in her paper "Integration of Thesaurus and UDC to Improve Subject Access: the Hungarian Experience" Agnes Hajdu-Barat (Hungary) explores two possible solutions for integration of a thesaurus and a classification scheme. She reports on two projects, one in which UDC and thesauri are combined under a homogenous framework called MÁÁTrIkSz (Hungarian Comprehensive Information Retrieval Language Dictionary) and the other a project of thesaurus construction in the Hungarian National Library (Széchényi). The role of UDC is analyzed, and structured and well documented examples are given supported by literature research into UDC theory and use. The importance of cognition as a basis for concept-building is emphasized and some possibilities for integration of thesauri and UDC are identified. The final paper in Session 2, "Providing for Interoperability Between Thesauri and Classification Schemes in ISO 25964" presented by Stella Dextre Clarke (United Kingdom) discussed the importance of interoperability across systems in general. The ISO 25964 Standard being developed to replace existing thesaurus standards ISO 2788 and ISO 5964 will cover not only construction of thesauri but also interoperability with classification schemes and other types of controlled vocabulary. Clarke explained how this will be handled. Issues that need to be resolved include: the handling of pre-coordinated classes, the provision for classes not enumerated in the scheme but synthesised on demand, and the question of whether (and if so how) to include a data model for each type of KOS. ISO 25964 is still in the " initial drafting stage" and Clarke was hoping for useful ideas from this Seminar to aid in solving some of these problems.

Session 3, the final session of the first day, contained three papers focusing on Classification Frameworks, Concepts, Structure and Relationships. The first paper "Concepts and Terms in Faceted Classification" presented by Vanda Broughton (United Kingdom) addressed the importance of faceted classification and its role in the development of modern classification systems. Specifically she noted the impact of faceted classification on recent revisions of UDC. In particular, she identified the removal of compound classes from the main UDC tables and the more radical revisions of classes (especially Medicine and Religion). Among the effects are rigorous analysis, a clear sense of citation order, and the building of compound classes according to a more logical system of syntax. The result is the formalization of relationships in the classifications making them explicit and enabling machine recognition. However, she notes vocabulary control is not without difficulties, notably in the differences in the way terminologies in the humanities and the sciences should be handled. Yet to be resolved is a balance between the rigour in the structure of the classification and the complexities of natural language - "a fertile field for further research." In his paper entitled "Classification Transcends Library Business" Claudio Gnoli (Italy) addressed the needs for the classification of objects as opposed to bibliographic classification and called for "a broader conception of classification … that can be applied to any knowledge item." The subject of his research was bagpipes in Northern Italian folklore, using a variety of types of sources, including published documents, police archives, painting details, museum specimens, and ethnographic organizations. For this kind of search he found the use of traditional classification inadequate. Needed were tools from which knowledge items could be "retrieved independently from other topics with which they are combined or the context where they occur." He determines that the concept 'bagpipes' should be retrievable and browsable in combination with other phenomena, discipline, or media. Examples were provided using notation from a draft of the Integrative Level Classification. In the third paper "Specifying Intersystem Mapping Relations: Requirements, Strategies and Issues" by Felix Boteram and Jessica Hubrich (Germany) focus was on the improvement and development of intersystem relations at the level of comprehensive international knowledge organization systems and between typologically different indexing languages. Intersystem relations may differ considerably from interconcept relations. From the authors' experience the characteristics of specific mapping depend largely on the characteristics of the systems they are to be connected with. They examine the differences and peculiarities of mapping systems and first approaches to such a system are made in linkages between the Universal Decimal Classification and thesauri.

The second day of the Seminar began with a keynote address on "Open Web Standards and Classification: Foundations for a Hybrid Approach" by Dan Brickley (Netherlands). Brickley began with a discussion of the current state of knowledge and its increasing accessibility through machine-processable formats, the creation of communally maintained data sets in the Web, and the use of open Web standards "to ensure these works are all cross-referenced and richly linked. New Web standards are bridging the gaps between thesauri, ontologies and databases." This approach is opening up vast opportunities for collaboration, information sharing, and user interface design. The author used examples from television, subject based information gateways, and Web 2.0 trends to propose some foundation steps to ensure that "professional subject classification remains central to resource discovery, annotation and linking".

Session 4 included four papers on Classification and the Semantic Web. Ceri Binding and Douglas Tudhope (United Kingdom) gave a paper on "Terminology Services" which addressed the problem that traditional classification and vocabulary control have not solved all the problems of subject access to online resources. The authors note that examination of social book marking sites suggests a need for structuring of Web resources. Moreover, social tagging has terminological problems and the use of controlled vocabularies other than by libraries is sparse. The authors suggest that terminology services should provide solutions to some of these problems. In this paper they related their experiences in "creating terminology Web services and associated client interface components for the archaeology domain in the STAR project (Semantic Technologies for Archaeological Resources, http://hypermedia.research.glam.ac.uk/kos/STAR/) and demonstrate how the same principles can be readily adapted to other subject areas (http://hypermedia.research.glam.ac.uk/kos/terminology_services/)." The second paper "Signposting the Crossroads: Terminology Web Services and Classification-Based Interoperability" by Gordon Dunsire and Dennis Nicholson (United Kingdom) focused on the JISC-funded HILT project. The paper dealt specifically with HILT Phase IV which developed pilot Web services for purposes of delivering "machine-readable terminology and cross-terminology mappings data likely to be useful to information services" in enhancing their subject searches or browsing services. The authors described some of the user interface enhancements created by UK information services. HILT currently has eleven subject schemes mounted including DDC, MeSH, and AAT. It also has high level mappings between DDC and some of the other schemes. The last two papers were experimental in nature. A.R.D. Prasad and Devika Madalli (India) presented a paper entitled "Classificatory Ontologies". Their presentation described an application of Colon Classification, as enunciated by Ranganathan, in developing ontologies. They explored issues in modeling the Colon Classification using the Web standard Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS). In another application of the SKOS standard, Antoine Isaac (Netherlands) discussed "Using SKOS in Practice, with Examples from the Classification Domain." He began with a "brief presentation of the features of the SKOS model and its role with respect to knowledge organization systems and the Semantic Web and identified some practical problems that need to be overcome in using SKOS. Examples were taken from typical classification schemes such as UDC and the author demonstrates what the SKOS model can accomplish, identifying some key features, such as concept coordination, "which are still lacking proper means of representation." Hints are given as to how SKOS might be extended to overcome these problems, and the author endeavours to answer the question: "To what extent can consensual extensions be devised to use SKOS successfully with classification systems?"

In Session 5, three papers addressed the topic New Approaches to Classification. Veslava Osinska discussed "Visual Analysis of a Classification Scheme" in which she proposed "a novel methodology" to visualize such a scheme. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Computing Classification System (CCS) was used in the demonstration. "The attributes, classes, subject descriptors and keywords were processed in a dataset to make a graphic representation of the documents." A similarity matrix of co-classes was made and "a spherical surface was chosen as the target information space. Classes and document node locations on the sphere were obtained by means of Multidimensional Scaling coordinates. By representing the surface on a plane like a map projection, it is possible to analyze the visualization layout." The author sees this methodology being used in interdisciplinary research fields. Alenka Šauperl (Slovenia) discussed "UDC and Folksonomies." Folksonomies are social tagging systems which have come to represent an important part of Web resource discovery. Their main advantage is that they "enable free and unrestricted browsing through information space." The tags are assigned by users, consequently there is a drawback in that there is no expression of semantic relationships as there is in a thesaurus-supported system. Searching is based on coincidence rather than on logical and meaningful connections between related resources. This paper proposes the use of UDC semantic structure to support and complement tag-based browsing of the system. "Two specific questions were investigated: (1) Are terms used as tags in folksonomies included in the UDC? and (2) Which facets of UDC match the characteristics of documents or information objects that are tagged in taxonomies? The universality of UDC was addressed. The results suggested that UDC-supported folksonomies could be used in resource recovery "in particular library portals and catalogues." The final paper in this session, by Phillippe Cousson (France) focused on "UDC as a Non-disciplinary Classification System for a High-School Library." In this project, the problem addressed was the requirement of students who often need access to interdisciplinary subjects the parts of which may be scattered in UDC. It dealt with establishing "a user-friendly systematic collection arrangement" resulting from the merging of two collections - a high school library and a college library collection classified by UDC. Interpreting UDC topics as phenomena and doing some local indexing, topics diversified by UDC were brought together. In practice it may be necessary to overcome the constraints of a disciplinary classification system.

In the final session, session 6, the seminar addressed Classification in Library Networks. Three papers were presented. Marie Balikova (Czech Republic) spoke on "The role of UDC Classification in the Czech Subject Authority File." She outlined the standardization function of the authority file and explored the role of the UDC as a switching language between various indexing systems. In doing so she addressed compatibility problems such as level of specificity, syntax, and usage of terminology, and suggested ways in which the difficulties may be overcome using UDC. The subject systems used included those in libraries, museums, galleries, and archives. Darija Rozman (Slovenia) considered "The Practical Value of Classification Summaries in Information Management and Integration." The paper explored the use of short extracts from UDC classification tables to provide a method of broader classes for use in bibliographic listings, organization of physical documents, presentation of web resources and information integration in network resources. Illustrations were drawn from the Slovenian union catalog COBISS/OPAC. In the final paper, Rosa San Segundo Manuel (Spain) discussed "Using MARC Classification Format for UDC and Mappings to Other KO Systems for an Enriched Authority File."

The Seminar closed with a brief panel discussion and question and answer session.

This report has been prepared from the abstracts. All papers will be published. The full text of several papers will appear in Knowledge Organization. Shorter versions of some of the papers will appear in the UDC Consortium's annual publication, Extensions and Corrections to the UDC, no. 31. This was the second of these biennial UDC Seminars, the first having been held in 2007. The next will be held in 2011.

Nancy J. Williamson
Professor Emerita
Faculty of Information
University of Toronto, Canada

Teleconference

The College of DuPage broadcast a teleconference entitled "Cataloging: Where are we now? Where are we going?" on Friday Feb. 19, 2010. The speakers, Karen Coyle and Renee Register, reviewed the state of cataloging now. Coyle suggested that the profession is in the middle of a "pivotal change" because of RDA's use in employing the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Data (FRBR). Register said that in order for libraries and librarians to remain relevant, they must learn how to share and repurpose the metadata they create and control. The streaming video link is http://www.dupagepress.com/index.php?id=4250 and the description and various resources from the speakers may be found at http://www.dupagepress.com/library-learning-network/cataloging/.

Discussion Lists

MARC Edit: A new discussion list for the popular software MarcEdit has been created by George Mason University. Details about the discussion list and subscription instructions may be found at http://www.lsoft.com/SCRIPTS/WL.EXE?SL1=MARCEDIT-L&H=MAIL04.GMU.EDU.

Publication Announcements

Several new books and new editions of classic books in cataloging and classification have been published in the past year.

Bilal, Dania. 2010. Automating Media Centers and Small Libraries. Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited. ISBN: 9781591589228 (pbk.)

Genereux, Cecilia, Paul D. Moeller, and Beverley Geer, eds. 2009. Notes for serials cataloging. 3rd ed., revised. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Libraries Unlimited. ISBN: 9781591586531 (pbk.)

Kaplan, Allison G. 2009. Crash course in cataloging for non-catalogers: a casual conversation on organizing information. Westport, Conn: Libraries Unlimited. ?ISBN: 9781591584018 (pbk.)

Several others are forthcoming in 2010:

Intner, Sheila S., Joanna F. Fountain, and Jean Weihs, eds. 2010. Cataloging Correctly for Kids: An Introduction to the Tools. 5th ed. Chicago: American Library Association. ISBN: 9780838935897

Oliver, Chris. 2010. Introducing RDA: A guide to the basics. Chicago: American Library Association. ISBN: 9780838935941

Revels, Ira. 2010. Managing Digital Projects. Chicago: American Library Association. ISBN: 9780838910559 (pbk.)

Weihs, Jean Riddle, and Sheila S. Intner. 2009. Beginning cataloging. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Libraries Unlimited. ISBN: 9781591586876 (hardcover); ISBN: 9781591588399 (pbk.)

Weitz, Jay. 2010. Music: Cataloging and Instructional Text and Workbook. Greenwood Press. ISBN-13: 9781591580539

Saye, Jerry D. 2010. Manheimer's Cataloging and Classification. 5th ed. Books in Library and Information Science. CRC Press. ISBN: 9780824726812

People

Awards

Kelley McGrath, Cataloging & Metadata Services librarian, Ball State University, Muncie, Ind. is the 2010 recipient of the Esther J. Piercy Award, presented by ALCTS.

Olivia Marie A. Madison, Dean of the Library, Iowa State University, is the 2010 recipient of the Margaret Mann Citation, presented by the Cataloging and Classification Section of ALCTS.

Julie Renee Moore, Catalog Librarian at Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno, is the 2010 recipient of the Nancy B. Olson Award presented by the OnLine Audiovisual Catalogers, Inc.

Changes in Personnel

The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. announced at the beginning of Dec. 2009 that professor Ingrid Hsieh-Yee has been appointed as the acting dean of the School of Library and Information Science, replacing Dean KTimberly Kelley, who stepped down at the end of the fall 2009 term.

Dr. Deborah Grealy began her tenure as the new associate dean for the MLIS Program at St. Catherine University, St. Paul, Minnesota in Feb. 2010.

Deaths

A. Ralph Papakhian, long-time member of the Music Library Association, cataloger, and music librarian at Indiana University, died at the age of 61 on Jan. 14, 2010 at his home in Bloomington, Ind. The Midwest Chapter of the Music Library Association has created a tribute page in his honor, http://www.mlamidwest.org/Ralph.html.

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