INLS 520:  Information Organization

Thursday 2pm-4:45pm, Rm 014, SILS

Overview| UNC Policy| Schedule | Assignments

Overview

Information Organization (IO), conceptualized by Aristotle and Plato and refined from the 17th century onward by scholars from many different fields, undergirds Information and Library Science (ILS).  As we move away from traditional, static methods of search, organization and retrieval and into dynamic realms of knowledge representation on the Web, we need to consider and appreciate new technologies as well as this foundation we inherited over 2000 years ago. In this course, you will be introduced to prevailing thoughts relating to Information Organization, including those from cognitive science and linguistics, computer science and philosophy, and ILS. Lectures from professionals “in the field” of organization will counterbalance the practice and theory of the classroom experience. This approach to learning will enable you to become an authentic member of the IO culture, and you will hopefully feel prepared when it comes time to take the next steps in your professional life and ILS education.

Information Organization makes manifest how we, as users and creators of data, view and organize our world. And, being at the heart of the Philosophy of Information (PI), it brings up many philosophical questions, like: Does classification reveal objective truths about the world? How accurately can our structures map onto the “real” structures that exist out there? How can we determine the real structure and, more importantly, is there one? How does access to certain modes of thinking or information limit or help us in our categorization/organization practice? How much of classification is limited by our wiring? What’s the point of classification? Is classification different from what we call “categorization”? It is different questions like these that will serve as food for thought as we explore IO.        

Instructional Objectives

Advanced BSIS undergraduates and MSIS/MLS students will be able to, upon completion of milestones:

• Perform these three interrelated things:

• synthesize, and critically explore, the contributions of the early thinkers and modern-day scientists to classification theory, and then
• apply those foundational concepts in information modelling exercises (e.g. FRBR discussion, diagramming, logic)
• extrapolate/elaborate that logic and classification knowledge to modern-day information organization applications

• appreciate (and question) the prevailing philosophies on “categorization” and “classification” , “instances” “concepts”  and “types/kinds”, and “representation”

• interpret others’ organizational spaces and create documents exemplifying an organizational area/information problem of their own in a variety of formats

• describe traditional and new standards and practices for organizing resources, with the ability to critically assess their relative importance (or diminished importance) in a changing “metadata world”

• understand the concept of, and prominent examples of, “pre-coordination” and controlled vocabularies (subject headings, thesauri, facets etc), and conversely understand retrieval on unstructured data (post-coordination) and “structuring the unstructured” via information retrieval mechanisms and more specifically machine learning and natural language processing. The student should be able to critique the value of these technologies while taking into account complementary techniques (like Linked Data)

Grading Criteria

Assessment of students  involves a combination of metrics: freewriting, take home assignments, class participation, and completion of a group capstone.

Conduct of the Course

• Collaboration with classmates, in discussions, exercises and on assignments (with the exception of one or two which will be specified as being “loner” ones), is encouraged.

• Students will remain respectful of each other in class discourse. It’s ok to disagree, but personal jabs and the like will not be tolerated.

• I encourage you to bring your laptops to class, as we’ll have considerable lab/activity time and it might suit you to look at examples and slides during lectures.  I also understand the occasional checking of email for important messages (three hours is rather long). However, use of Facebook and other social media, as well as the browsing of sites like Amazon for electronics, new shoes, and so on, is strongly discouraged. You will fare better by being engaged and active during our time together.

• It is expected that you keep up to date with each week’s content and readings so that discussions and learning outcomes will be fruitful. In that vein your personal elaboration on “core words” and concepts, as well your discussion questions/questions for clarification in freewriting exercises, will be due prior to several class sessions, spurring our class discussion. They will also give me an idea of what you have mastered, what intrigues you, or where there are still problems in understanding.

Materials

Primary text:

The Discipline of Organizing [electronic resource] | Robert Glushko. (3rd edition). Available for purchase at: http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920045021.do

Supporting Texts:

Class materials, other than the required Glushko text, will be provided on Sakai or on eReserves.  All assigned readings will be listed under their respective week in the schedule.

Other materials may include: articles, blogs, forum posts, videos, coding specifications, and portions excerpted from other relevant books.

Evaluation Overview.  

• participation: some class days will be 50% lecture/ 50% active learning exercise, the latter of which invokes a focused reading and understanding of that week’s articles, “life” examples and/or book chapters. Reading the material closely beforehand will also influence how advantageous the class activities and discussions will be for you. Some days will be 50% lecture and 50% lab/problem solving time in which students can learn software and workshop assignments (e.g. personal schema or classification designs)  in class for peer and instructor feedback. Because of the emphasis on personal contributions to the classroom, attendance and participation for all students is required.  (25% of final grade)

• assignments will largely be take home, class-workshopped and “open book” (e.g. logic exercises, the XML assignment, classifications of an information problem area). Some, like the logic set, are encouraged to be collaborative, though you may opt to work alone (50% of final grade)

• freewriting (a critical reflection on the week’s material in short essay form) will be administered and turned in through Sakai the night before class, the days of which are indicated on the schedule portion of the syllabus (Wednesday 11:59pm). This will feed into discussions you will have in class the following day (10% of grade)

• the capstone (final) will be a group assignment in which students are presented with an IO-related workplace problem. Here, they need to use their IO toolkit of knowledge gained throughout the course to make implementation decisions for said problem.  (15% of final grade)

Assignments

This is a brief overview. For more detailed description please click on the above hyperlink.

Sakai

All assignments (aside from the logic one) are to be turned in via UNC’s course management system, Sakai (sakai.unc.edu).  Here, each student will have a dropbox for assignments, as well as forum spaces for collaborative portions of assignments. Select readings aside from Glushko will also be available under Sakai resources.

UNC Policy

All information in the UNC Policy section (below) was taken directly from the SILS Teaching Handbook

Honor Code

The UNC Honor Code prohibits giving or receiving unauthorized aid in the completion of assignments. Students are strongly encouraged to cooperate and assist one another and share insights and respective expertise in this course. I expect that you will acknowledge the support you receive from your colleagues (this may be done in acknowledgements at the end of assignments or projects). It is crucial, however, that in every case where you use the actual written words of others, that these be properly quoted and cited. When you build arguments upon the ideas of others, the originators of those ideas should also be cited. (from INLS 490: Issues in Digital Video, Spring 2010. Instructor: Gary Marchionini)

Grading Policy

Graduate students may receive the following grades: H, P, L, and F. Temporary grades of AB (absent from the final examination) and IN (work incomplete) may also be given; these grades revert to an administrative F (F*) unless replaced by a permanent grade by the last day of classes for the same term a year later. Undergraduate students may receive the following grades: A, B, C, D, F. Grades of A-, B+, B-, C+, C- and D+ are also possible and will be recorded on the student’s transcript with quality point value assigned. Temporary grades of AB and IN (described above) may also be given under the same conditions as for Graduate Grades described above.  

Students with Disabilities

A student requiring academic accommodation must be registered with Disability Services (http://disabilityservices.unc.edu/). This office will send a letter to me identifying what accommodation(s) are needed and what services may be available to the student.  

Adverse Weather

 To determine the current adverse weather status of the University, call the Adverse Weather and Emergency Phone Line at 919-843-1234 for a recorded message. During adverse weather incidents, status updates will also be communicated on the University’s homepage at http://www.unc.edu.

Schedule

August 20: Introduction 

Welcome to 520! We will get to know each other through class activity, and I will give you a rundown about myself, the field of information organization as a whole, and why it is important to all ILS individuals to have a grounding in IO.

To read/do before this class: please have filled out and submitted the distributed Qualtrics questionnaire

August 27: Mental Categories, Early Classification and Ontology- our first maps to the world; The 5 “questions” of organizing

A rundown of the history and science behind how we categorize, as defined by philosophers, cognitive scientists, linguists and mathematicians! Accompanied by a fun class activity.

To read/do before this class: The Organized Mind, chapters 1 & 2;  The Discipline of Organizing, chapter 1 with a focus on “the 5 questions” of organizing

NEW Homework: Freewriting on the upcoming week’s readings. (Remember, all freewritings are due the Wednesday night before the class you are writing about. You are also expected to bring your freewriting to the class on which it is due, for discussion).

September 3: What is a Resource in ILS? ( pt. 1) ; Formalizations and models: FRBR, Schemas, Entity-Relationship Diagramming

To read/do before this class: The Discipline of Organizing, chapter 2, and SKIM  3; OPTIONAL BUT HIGHLY ENCOURAGED: chapter one of two kinds of bibliographic power 

Due: Freewriting based on this week’s readings for class discussion (remember to bring it to class- either digital or physical copy is fine)

NEW Homework: We will introduce Scoping & Identifying Resources so that you can begin this (Extra Credit: attempt a simple ER diagram of your information problem!)

September 10:  Resource Description (pt. 2); An introduction to mark-up: HTML and the eXtensible Markup Language (XML)

To read/do before this class:

Read: Birnbaum, David J. “What is XML and why should humanists care? An even gentler introduction to XML”, January 5, 2012. http://dh.obdurodon.org/what-is-xml.xhtml.

Read: Glushko, Robert J. “XML Foundations.” In Document Engineering, 42-72. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2005. http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~glushko/DocumentEngineeringBookDraft/DEBook/ch2_FINAL.pdf.

In class activity: Everyone is to bring a laptop for lab time (if you own one). We will utilize a text editor- you can use Brackets, Notepad++, TextWrangler, Sublime, or oXygen (the latter is available through UNC) or other text editors to create XML records exemplifying a solution for your organizing problem

NEW Homework: We will discuss Creating a Vocabulary & Descriptions, having provided the XML foundations, so that you can begin this assignment. Keep in mind however that the content of next week, controlled vocabularies and authority control, will influence your decisions for creating a vocabulary and descriptions. In addition, be prepared to do a freewriting for the following class.

Due: Scoping & Identifying Resources

 September 17: Controlled vocabularies and authority control (with examples)

To read/do before this class:

Morville, Peter, and Louis Rosenfeld. “Thesauri, Controlled Vocabularies, and Metadata.” In Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. 3rd ed. Sebastopol, California: O’Reilly, 2006. In Sakai resources, the week 5 folder.

What is a Controlled Vocabulary? http://boxesandarrows.com/what-is-a-controlled-vocabulary/

Synonym rings and authority files. http://boxesandarrows.com/synonym-rings-and-authority-files/

Due: Freewriting

September 24:  Classification vs. Categorization in ILS : What’s the difference?

To read/do before this class:

READ Jacob, Elin. Classification and Categorization : A Difference that makes a Difference (pdf available in Sakai)

SKIM the following sections from The Discipline of Organizing:

chapter 6- SKIM sections 6.1 through 6.2

chapter  7- SKIM sections 7.1 - 7.1.5., 7.2., and 7.3

Due: Creating a Vocabulary & Descriptions (due the following day, September 25th, 3pm)

Oct 1: Traditional Cataloguing, Subject Indexing and Organizational Curation in Libraries and Archives

Guest Lecturers: Wanda Gunther: UNC libraries (Davis); Sami Kaplan: UNC SILS; Eric Meyer

To read/do before this class: nothing! Just bring yourselves.

NEW Homework:

1. will review Taxonomy Building assignment;
2. Freewriting for next week, Oct 8, as a short one-page reflection comparing the basic Dublin Core v.1.1. elements to “dcterms” (documentation websites for each of these metadata schemes are specified in Oct 8 section of this schedule). Basic Dublin Core elements and the dcterms are both creations of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (http://dublincore.org/about/history/). In your paper, focus on the following question: What do you think the differences are, the drawbacks are, and the affordances are of using the basic 1.1 element set vs something like dcterms?

Oct 8: “New” Metadata: Schemes, Protocols and Approaches to interoperability with a focus on the Dublin Core

During this class, you will be introduced to descriptive metadata in general, challenges and opportunities, and learn about the Dublin Core. Then we will work independently on beginning your “prong 3” of the Dublin Core crosswalking assignment in class.

To read/do before this class: review specifications on the basic Dublin Core elements set at: http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/ and “dcterms” at http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/ .

Due: Freewriting (due Wed, 11:59pm before class) on dcterms vs basic Dublin Core

Oct 15: NO CLASS- fall break

Due: Taxonomy Building

Oct 22: Facets

To read/do before class: The Discipline of Organizing, chapter 7 (read only 7.4-7.7)

Marcum, D. B. (2009). The Library of Congress and Cataloging ’ s Future. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 45(3), 3–15. http://doi.org/10.1300/J104v45n03 (in Sakai resources)

Chan, L. M., Childress, E., Dean, R., O’Neill, E. T., & Vizine-Goetz, D. (2001). A Faceted Approach to Subject Data in the Dublin Core Metadata Record. Journal of Internet Cataloging, 4, 35–47. http://doi.org/10.1300/J141v04n01_05 (in Sakai resources)

Due: Mapping to the Dublin Core (prong 3)

Oct 29: Instances, Types, Hierarchy: Logic and the Underpinnings of Information Organization

Guest lecturer: Tyler Easterbrook, department of English, UNC Chapel Hill

Logic, mathematics and philosophy undergirds the theory of classification. Tyler will provide  an introduction to the logics which will help you more easily interpret concepts in library and information science to be introduced in the following class, and clarify some principles introduced in the beginning of this course.

To read/do before class: Frege “On Function and Concept” PDF (in Sakai resources) Note: Do not worry about Frege’s outdated notations here; just focus on his notion of the function and its significance

SKIM The Discipline of Organizing, chapter 5

NEW Homework: English-to-logic exercise (8 problems). Counts as part of your participation grade. Group work for this is highly encouraged! And Freewriting

Nov 5:  The Semantic Web : Introduction to Programming Theory, Linked Data, and Libraries

Guest Lecturer: Jacob Hill, SILS, UNC Chapel Hill

Jacob will in this session introduce you to what is known as the Semantic Web.  Your knowledge of logic from the former class will aid you in understanding this module. Jacob will walk you through the anatomy of the “Resource Description Framework” (RDF) and also explore applications using this nascent technology.

To read/do before this class: The first 3 chapters of Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist (PDFs in Sakai)

Due: Freewriting

Nov 12: Tentative: Maliheh as a guest lecturer on the CIDOC-CRM- Debbie in Minneapolis

TBD: A short reflection, the details of which are TBD

Nov 19: Metamodels and Data Structures in IO; Intro to Information Retrieval and Making Sense of Unstructured Data: Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing- Computational Approaches

We will spend the latter half of class talking about the final group capstone. No class the following week because of Thanksgiving, so this will be the final “actual” class.  I will be available for appointments in between now and the final project presentations.

To read/do before this class: The Discipline of Organizing, chapters 8 and 9

Nov 26: Thanksgiving (no class)

Dec 4: Group Presentations. 4pm