lazykoblog   occasional musings about knowledge organization

I’ve been taking little bites of domain analysis of KO, working my way through conference proceedings, and as CFPs allow, taking other bites as well (the legacy of Two kinds of power was one, and north American pioneers was another). This year I presented what was supposed to be a meta-analysis at CAIS. Unfortunately, CAIS has got this new procedure whereby you don’t really write a paper, so, there’s no paper, sorry. Just an extended abstract.

Here’s the citation, and the abstract of the abstract:

“Domain Coherence within Knowledge Organization: People, Interacting Theoretically, Across Geopolitical and Cultural Boundaries.” In McKenzie, Pam, Catherine Johnson and Sarah Stevenson eds., Exploring Interactions of People, Places and Information, Proceedings of the 39th Annual CAIS/ACSI Conference, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, N.B. Canada, June 2-4, 2011. http://www.cais-acsi.ca/conferences.htm.

Domain analysis is the study of the evolution of discourse within research communities. Domain analytical studies of knowledge organization are here drawn together for meta-analysis to demonstrate coherence of theoretical poles within the domain. Despite geopolitical and cultural diversity, the domain shows theoretical coherence.

Here’s a colorful visualization of the intension and extension of the domain. It shows us coherence within the domain, despite geographical distinctions. There also a shift from emphasis on universal bibliographic classifications to increasing granularity as the Internet imposes new challenges, from 1993 onward.

Inspired by encountering quotations from Two Kinds of Power in conference papers last summer I undertook an analysis of the domain defined by those who cite Wilsons famous book. The paper is to be presented at the 2007 conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science/L’Association canadienne des sciences de l’information: Among Patrick Wilson’s most influential books was Two Kinds of Power, which has influenced scholars in information science, and particularly in knowledge organization. Tools of domain analysis are used to analyze the corpus of literature that cites Two kinds of power. Aboutness and relevance are demonstrated keys to this specialization.

The Proceedings are here: http://www.cais-acsi.ca/2007proceedings.htm. I am really quite fascinated by the concept that author co-citation analysis gives us a picture of symbolic interaction. That is, that what we see is how the scholarly community perceives intellectual connections among the co-cited authors. As I mentioned only briefly in the paper, there seem to be clear social networks in the map that focus on the lineage of dissertation advising. For my presentation I added a final slide using this quotation from Two Kinds of Power (p. 132): “Let us imagine a Supreme Bibliographical Council, whose task it was to evaluate the bibliographical situations ….” I decided that’s what we’re looking at here. Marcia Bates is the “chief justice” and there are two parties, one in IR represented by Belkin and Saracevic, and another in KO dominated by Hjorland, with Howard White as the swing vote. Well, it’s a metaphor ….

Fascinating to see Åström’s paper in JASIST 58(7): 947-57, in which he finds informetrics and ISR stable but that user-oriented and experimental IR research have merged into one field–ISR. This is comparable I think, to my finding that “aboutness” was a historical node but has given way to IR and KO. Interesting ….

The relatively new domain of Music Information Retrieval or MIR is a rapidly evolving, technology-driven recent entrant on the information retrieval scene. Generated by information scientists, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and musicologists, among others, the domain has contributed new systems for automatic storage and retrieval of music. Mapping the domain is itself a fascinating business. Recently I asked “Music Information Retrieval: An Example of Bates’ Substrate?” in a paper for the Canadian Association for Information Science/L’Association canadienne des sciences de l’information. This is the abstract:

Bates suggested that the intrinsic unity of information science lies in ‘substrate’-the properties of information and its transmission. Music Information Retrieval (MIR), and ISMIR annual conferences offer a rich panoply of intellectual and cultural diversity. We map the evolution of MIR using conference papers from 2000 through 2005. Results indicate tight thematic coherence in the domain around the problems of information retrieval and classification, and the locus of most research within computer science departments.

The paper is available here: http://www.cais-acsi.ca/search.asp?year=2006.

Author co-citation analysis was also revealing: indicat[ing] tight thematic coherence in the domain around the problems of information retrieval and classification, and the locus of most research within computer science departments. Citation practice indicates the habits of a hard science. Author co-citation within the domain is abundant, J. Stephen Downie is clearly the founding focal point, but the domain is very focused, reinforcing the notion of a tightly-packed, emerging and continuously successful domain. ACA data from outside the domain provides an interesting comparison; watch for another paper soon.

Greetings from rainy Syracuse. This is a small group (around 20 people at any given moment), but the program and the business meeting have both been fascinating. The 10 papers are all really pithy. Based around the concept of North American pioneers, the proceedings are here: http://iskocus.org/nasko2009-proceedings.php. As part of my paper developed using author co-citation analysis of North American KO authors I ran up a quick co-citation analysis from the 10 papers: there were two clusters–Smiraglia, Miksa, and Shera in one; Hjorland, Mai, Tennis, Olson, and Bates in the other–the conceptual basis of the clusters seems to be bibliographic classification and fundamentals of KO. The link between the clusters stretches from Shera to Hjorland (which I thought was fascinating). The cluster on faceting (La Barre, Cochrane, Richmond, Ranganathan) dropped off while I was trying to make the map readable; when I have more time I’ll run it again. Anyway, stay tuned ….