025.431: The Dewey blog

Hurricanes

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicted an above normal Atlantic hurricane season for 2006, but the 2006 hurricane season was near normal.  NOAA says there is a 75% chance that the 2007 season will be above normal.  Time will tell.  Meanwhile, since Hurricane Preparedness Week in May, and since the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season began June 1, there have been news stories with advice on how to prepare yourself and your family for survival in the event of a hurricane.

Comprehensive works on predicting hurricanes (e.g., Hurricane Watch: Forecasting the Deadliest Storms on Earth) are classed in 551.6452 Forecasting hurricanes (built with 551.64 Forecasting and forecasts of specific phenomena plus 52 from 551.552 Hurricanes, according to instructions under 551.641–551.647 Specific meteorological phenomena). 

Works on personal and family actions to prepare for and survive hurricanes and other disasters are classed in 613.69 Survival (e.g., Natural Disasters and Other Emergencies, What You Should Know: a Family Planning & Survival Guide and The Ultimate Storm Survival Handbook).

Mappings in WebDewey for the LCSH Hurricane Katrina, 2005, illustrate how works on a specific hurricane are classed.  The general rules for selecting the discipline for works on a specific hurricane are similar to those for other natural disasters, such as earthquakes.  We discussed these rules in the context of an earlier blog about the San Francisco earthquake.

Comprehensive works on Hurricane Katrina as a historical event are classed in 976.044 History of the south central United States, 2000–.  Works on Hurricane Katrina as a historical event that focus on New Orleans (e.g., Hurricane Katrina and the Devastation of New Orleans, 2005) are classed in 976.335064 History of New Orleans, 2000– (built with 9 [the base number for history] plus T2—76335 Orleans Parish [New Orleans], according to the instructions under 930–990 History of ancient world; of specific continents, countries, localities; of extraterrestrial worlds plus 064 from 976.3064 2000–, according to the instructions under 930–990).

Comprehensive works on social services needed because of Hurricane Katrina (e.g., Learning from Catastrophe: Quick Response Research in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina) are classed in 363.349220976090511 Social services for hurricanes in U.S. South Central States, 2000–2009 (built with 363.3492 Social services for disasters caused by weather conditions plus 2 from 551.552 Hurricanes, according to the instructions under 363.34922–363.34926 Specific kinds of storms, plus T1—09 Geographic treatment plus T2—76 South central United States    Gulf Coast states plus 09 Historical treatment from the add table under T1—093–T1—099 Treatment by specific continents, countries, localities; extraterrestrial worlds plus 0511 from T1—090511 2000–2009, according to the instructions under T1—093–T1—099). 

Comprehensive works on meteorological aspects of Hurricane Katrina are classed in 551.5520916364090511 Hurricanes, Gulf of Mexico, 2000–2009 (551.552 Hurricanes plus T1—09 Geographic treatment plus T2—16364 Gulf of Mexico plus 09 Historical treatment from the add table under T1—093–T1—099 Treatment by specific continents, countries, localities; extraterrestrial worlds plus 0511 from T1—090511 2000–2009, according to the instructions under T1—093–T1—099).

International Workshop: MARC 21 - Experiences, Challenges and Visions

If you are interested in the discussions of Dewey in MARC 21 at MARBI this Saturday, you may find the presentations from the International Workshop: MARC 21 - Experiences, Challenges and Visions held at the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek in Frankfurt, May 14-15, 2007, of interest as background.  The presentations are all available on the workshop web site.  Only one presentation focuses on the DDC.  The other presentations cover various aspects of MARC 21 and its future, and give international experiences with and views of MARC 21.

The treatment of classification data in MARC 21: a case study using the DDC Julianne Beall

Paintin' the fence. The long way from MAB to MARC 21. Experiences from Germany and Austria Reinhold Heuvelmann

MARC 21 support system Sally McCallum

Changing the record: the transition from UKMARC to MARC 21 Alan Danskin

Migration to MARC 21: Swedish experiences Anders Cato

Croatian experience Mirna Willer

MARC 21 and FRBR Trond Aalberg

Authority data Glenn Patton

MARC futures Sally McCallum

International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO)--North American symposium

The inaugural meeting of a North American subgroup of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) took place on June 14-15 at the University of Toronto.  The theme of the symposium was “Knowledge organization research in North America:  What have we done, what are we doing, and where do we go from here?”

Brian Cantwell Smith, dean of the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto, noted that the current transformation from the print world to the digital world is on the same scale as the transformation from the aural world to the print world.  It was fitting that Richard Smiraglia, editor of ISKO’s quarterly journal, Knowledge Organization, announced that the journal would soon be published online; indeed there are plans to put up all issues of Knowledge Organization and its predecessor, International Classification, on JSTOR.

During the business meeting the assembly voted to form a North American chapter of ISKO.  A three-person steering committee (Kathryn LaBarre, Richard Smiraglia, Joe Tennis) will draft a set of by-laws for submission to the general assembly at next year’s ISKO conference and will begin planning for a 2009 conference of the North American chapter.

In addition to the business of voting to form a North American chapter, the symposium included the presentation of 13 papers and a panel discussion (James Turner, Clare Beghtol, Jens Erik Mai).   Many of the themes that were touched on have relevance for the Dewey Decimal Classification.

A recurring thread centered in the tension between traditional knowledge organization (KO) systems, such as Dewey, and the phenomenon of social tagging.   One manifestation of this thread is the question whether there is a single “right” way or multiple “right” ways to organize information resources.  Sometimes divergent classifications are compatible:  They may differ simply in the level of specificity they provide for a given domain, or they may recognize similar facets, but prefer different citation orders.  Mappings between such systems would be relatively easy to construct.  Sometimes a classification system has developed in a hodge-podge fashion and needs a thoroughgoing analysis and overhaul before its potential for compatibility with another KO system can be assessed.  But sometimes, classifications just are incompatible.  Social tagging usually doesn’t have an explicit classificatory basis, but some degree of classificatory structure may be discerned in the set of tags that a given person or a given community uses.   Although little of the requisite research needed to assess how social tagging is like or unlike traditional systems has been performed, we fear they will commonly be found to be incompatible.  If it is the case that end users classify a domain in ways that are fundamentally different from how traditional schemes classify the same domain, how should the traditional KO systems respond?  By redoubling our efforts to educate end users on how to use the tools the profession has developed for them?  By developing mappings between commonly used tags and classes/descriptors in the KO systems?  By adopting the perspective of the end user?  (Which end user[s]?)

Other insights:

1. KO systems generally need more semantics.  An important aspect of this effort is the recognition of a richer array of relationships.  (And our paradigmatic relationships need to go beyond hierarchy.)  Here the knowledge organization community shares some similar concerns with the natural language processing and Semantic Web communities, in contrast to the Web 2.0 community.
2. Facet analysis is one of the most important tools that the KO community has.  Information access and discovery might be improved by faceted search and navigation.  Are there ways of better leveraging the underlying faceted structure of legacy KO systems?
3. The KO community needs to focus its attention on using meta-analysis to build syntheses of multiple classification schemes.  In this quest for providing interoperability, one of the most difficult issues will arise from hierarchical inheritance in different systems.
4. The KO systems needed for organizing information resources may not be the same KO systems needed for organizing information.  Minimally, the latter will be at a finer level of granularity.
5. The KO community has not always succeeded in telling either itself or others what it is that we know.  Too often we have waited for others to ask us to organize information/ information resources.  With few exceptions, they didn’t ask, but often tried to develop such schemes on their own.  At best, they have rediscovered principles of knowledge organization.  The KO community needs to be proactive in developing rigorous classifications for emerging information discovery contexts.
6. The KO community may generally have more success developing smaller, local classifications than developing broader classifications.  But there is still a need for a framework to integrate such smaller classifications.
7. Conversation is often the context of learning and knowledge construction.  Can it also be the context for knowledge organization?  This point was illustrated with Wikipedia categories, the result of “conversations” among potentially many people.  It could also be illustrated with the DDC, with its circles of conversations, involving the editorial team, the Editorial Policy Committee, translation teams, user groups, professional organizations, etc.

Pictures from the conference (lots of them!) are available on flickr using the search term nasko_2007.

Dewey Breakfast/Update at ALA

The Dewey Breakfast/Update at the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC, is scheduled for this Saturday (June 23), 7:00 - 8:30 a.m., in Franklin C/D Rooms, Four Points by Sheraton, 1201 K Street, N.W.  The program features updates on Dewey development and research activities, plus a preview of "Representation of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) System in MARC 21 Formats," a discussion paper slated to be considered at the first meeting of the ALCTS/LITA/RUSA Machine-Readable Bibliographic Information Committee (MARBI) later the same morning (see here for more information).

If you haven't already done so, please register for the Dewey Breakfast/Update here.  See you in DC!

Transgendered People

We just posted a discussion paper on the Dewey web site in which we explore improvements to the Dewey provisions for people by gender or sex. The main focus of the paper is on the proposed new development at T1—0867 for transgendered people.

We also pose a question about the ongoing need for existing provisions for “asexuality and asexuals,” “people with no sexual orientation,” and “neutral sexual orientation.”

Please review the paper (which includes the new development), and then advise us on the following two questions:

• Is the development for transgendered people at T1—0867 a satisfactory placement?
• Is there any need for provisions for “asexuality and asexuals,” “people with no sexual orientation,” or “neutral sexual orientation”?

We will accept comments through August 24, 2007.

Shell Jewelry from 82,000 Years Ago

Archaeologists have found shell beads in a limestone cave, the Grotte des Pigeons, Taforalt, in Eastern Morocco, dated at 82,000 years old.  The twelve marine snail shells (Nassarius gibbosulus) were perforated in their centers, showed signs of being suspended or hung, and appeared to have been covered in red ochre.  The shells were dated using four different techniques.  Similar ancient shell jewelry, made from shells of the same genus of snail, has been found at sites in South Africa, Algeria, and Israel.  The shell jewelry from Israel may be 100,000 years old, but it has not been as reliably dated. 

Comprehensive works on the ancient Moroccan shell beads are classed in the interdisciplinary number for jewelry, 391.7 Jewelry.  Subdivisions for place and time cannot be added because the topic is in standing room.  Even a more general work on the history of bead jewelry, like The History of Beads: from 30,000 B.C. to the Present, is classed in standing room in 391.7, without T1—09 Historical treatment.

Comprehensive works on the prehistory of Taforalt are classed in 939.71 Mauretania to 647, which has 930 History of ancient world in its upward hierarchy.  If the number 939.71 were not already in the schedule, it could be built with 9 (the base number for history) plus T2—3971 Mauretania, according to the instructions under 930-990 History of ancient world; of specific continents, countries, localities; of extraterrestrial worlds.  Ancient Mauretania (T2—3971) is located in a different area than modern Mauritania (T2—661). Under 964 Morocco, which has 940-990 History of modern world in its upward hierarchy, is an entry for an optional number (964.01 Ancient history to 647) with a note that points to the preferred number: "(Optional number; prefer 939.71)."

Comprehensive works on the snail genus Nassarius are classed in 594.32 Prosobranchia.

Dewey in MARC 21

Our discussion paper for MARBI on "Representation of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) System in MARC 21 Formats" is now published on the Library of Congress web site. It will be discussed by MARBI (the ALCTS/LITA/RUSA Machine-Readable Bibliographic Information Committee) at its meeting on the morning of Saturday, 23rd June, at the ALA Annual Conference in Washington.  The MARBI agenda is published here.

This discussion paper arises out of the redevelopment of the DDC Editorial Support System (ESS), which was discussed in an earlier blog.   It affects the MARC 21 format because we want to use that format to represent Dewey, rather than the proprietary format currently used in the ESS. We will be using the MARC Classification format for Dewey number records and Manual note records, and the MARC Authority format to represent Relative Index terms and mapped headings from subject thesauri such as LCSH and MeSH. We are making this conversion because we want the Dewey data to be available in a format supported by an international standard, and one that supports flexible data representation. We also want the data to be more fully integrated with data in OCLC's WorldCat and related authority files.

Another motivation for the discussion paper is that the German and Austrian MARC communities are converting from their MAB format to MARC 21. They had developed ways of representing Dewey numbers and components of Dewey numbers in the MAB bibliographic format, and were looking to doing something similar in the MARC 21 format.  Although the proposal for representing component parts of numbers in the MARC Bibliographic format arose from the German and Austrian MARC communities, we expect others will take advantage of these fields to encode information for enriched access to bibliographic records and metadata.

Some of the most important proposals in the discussion paper are:

(1) Representing internal tables using a new $y subfield. DDC has both external tables (Tables 1 to 6) and internal tables to provide notation for number building. Some examples of internal tables are those at 290, 333.7-333.9, 592-599, 616.1-616.9, 820.1-828, 913-919, and 930-990. Dewey can have internal tables within external tables, e.g., those at T1--08 and T3B--81-89, and this adds an extra layer of complication. Some Dewey classes and spans have several internal tables associated with them, particularly in literature, e.g., 810.1-818 and 820.1-828, which means that we need to refer to each of those internal tables separately. What we are suggesting is the use of $y subfield in the MARC Classification format to identify specific internal tables in appropriate fields such as the 153 field of the Classification format.

(2) Inclusion of component parts of numbers in bibliographic records. The MARC 21 Classification format has a 765 field to represent the component parts of classification numbers built with add instructions, add tables, etc. The German MAB format had a way of doing that for Dewey numbers in bibliographic records, but one which is quite different from the method used in MARC 21. The discussion paper suggest using a new 085 field in the MARC 21 Bibliographic format to do this, in a way similar to the 765 field in the Classification format.

Other suggestions that we are making for the MARC 21 format include:

(3) Identifying external table numbers in the Bibliographic format.

(4) Giving classification number edition and source information in the Bibliographic format.

(5) Marking optional numbers in the Bibliographic format.

(6) Changing the 082 field in the Bibliographic format so that additional information about Dewey numbers can be coded in the field. That additional information would include whether the number was a primary number (i.e., the single number that would be assigned following the instruction in the edition cited in subfield $2 or an additional number (or component part of a number) providing for extra subject access (e.g., a Table 2 number for geographic location).

(7) Giving segmentation information for Dewey numbers in the Classification format.

(8) Encoding topic information in some Classification format fields.

(9) Giving Dewey number hierarchy information in field 153 of the Classification format.

For fuller details, read the discussion paper already cited.

Emigration

Immigration 2 comes to the Dewey screen! (In the United States, Memorial Day--celebrated earlier this week--marks the unofficial beginning of summer. And since summer often introduces movie sequels, we celebrate the coming of summer in the Northern hemisphere by bringing you this follow-up to the earlier blockbuster blog entry on immigration.)

We see in both immigration and emigration the base word migration, to which the prepositions in- (in, into) and ex- (out of) have been prepended (it’s almost Dewey-style notation applied to words!). Migration involves a change in location from one locale to another, often crossing national boundaries. Emigration and immigration profile the two ends of one journey, in which the traveler begins as an emigrant and ends as an immigrant. Since the change in location is usually purposive, often it is one’s status as an immigrant that is more important than one’s status as an emigrant.

Given the general parallelism between emigration and immigration, on the one hand, but the temporal and purposive asymmetry between the two, on the other hand, it makes an interesting study to compare and contrast how emigration and immigration are treated in the classification scheme.

Political aspects of emigration are classed in 325.2 Emigration, directly following 325.1 Immigration. Political aspects of emigration from a specific area are classed in 325.23-325.29 Emigration from specific continents, countries, localities. For example, French Colonists and Exiles in the United States is classed in 325.244 Emigration from France (built with 325.2 Emigration plus T2--44 France, following instructions at 325.23-325.29).  As immigration into France is classed in 325.44 (versus emigration from France in 325.244), the numbers for emigration are consistently one digit longer than the corresponding numbers for immigration. There is also an interesting asymmetry here. Notation for emigrating from specific parts of the ancient world (325.23) immediately precedes notation for emigrating from specific parts of the modern world (325.24-325.29). For example, Emigration from Italy in the Republican Age of Rome should be classed in 325.23709014 (built with 325.2 Emigration plus T2--37 Ancient Italy, following instructions at 325.23-325.29, plus the standard subdivision T1—09014 999-1 B.C.). However, the corresponding notation for immigration—the block of numbers immediately preceding 325.4-325.9 (specifically the notation at 325.33-325.39)—has been reserved for colonization by specific countries. Immigration to the ancient world is classed instead at 325.093; note the bracketing of 325.094-325.099, but not 325.093. (If this blog entry were about immigration, 325.093 would be analyzed, but it’s about emigration, compared to and contrasted with immigration. Or, in other words, enough already!)

Emigration laws, like immigration laws, are classed in 342.082 Entrance to and exit from national domain, where emigration is named in the including note. Emigration laws in a specific jurisdiction are classed in 342.3-342.9 Constitutional and administrative law in specific jurisdictions and areas. For example, The Right to Leave: The New Soviet Draft Law on Emigration is classed in 342.47082 Former Soviet Union emigration law (built with 342 Constitutional and administrative law plus T2—47 Former Soviet Union plus 082 from 342.082 Entrance to and exit from national domain, according to the instructions under 342.3-342.9). This follows the same pattern used for Immigration Made Simple: An Easy to Read Guide to the U.S. Immigration Process. Preliminary materials, such as bills and hearings, if considered in a legal context, are classed in the same numbers. Notation 0262 Preliminary materials from the add table under 342-347 Branches of law cannot be added because emigration is in standing room.

Interdisciplinary works about emigration that include at least some sociology are classed in 304.82 International movement of people, the same number used for interdisciplinary works about immigration. Works about emigration from specific areas are classed in 304.809 Geographic treatment of movement of people.  For example, Emigration Dynamics in Developing Countries is classed in 304.8091724 Movement of people from developing regions (built with 304.8 Movement of people plus standard subdivision T1—09 Geographic treatment plus T2—1724 Developing regions). Interdisciplinary works about emigration to a specific area (or to a specific area and from a specific area) are classed in 304.83-304.89 Migration. For example, Tunisian New Entrepreneurs and Their Past Experiences of Migration in Europe: Resource Mobilization, Networks, and Hidden Disaffection is classed in 304.840611 Immigration into Europe from Tunisia (built with 304.8 plus T2—4 Europe, plus 0, plus T2—611 Tunisia, following instructions at 304.83-304.89; note that collocation here is by the location immigrated to, not the location emigrated from.