lazykoblog   occasional musings about knowledge organization

On 14 March, on the American television show 60 Minutes there was a story about COVID-19 mutants. Now, scientists understand mutations, so there was nothing surprising, scientifically, in the story. But the shock for me came when the scientist showed the journalist a large visualization of the data about mutations of the virus. Okay, maybe the journalist was just a bit lead-handed about the question; but the answer was completely unsatisfying for a scientist of information who has spent decades helping to visualize science.

The point of the chart, of course, was the visualization—the ability to “see” the mutations as they arise and spread.

Today the leading scientists of information with regard to visualization are Katy Börner of Indiana University (see her atlases of science [2010] and knowledge [2015]) and my colleague Andrea Scharnhorst (DANS [Data Archiving and Networked Services, Royal Netherlands Academy of the Arts and Sciences]) (see for example her team’s visualization of the whole of Wikipedia [Salah et al. 2011] http://scimaps.org/mapdetail/design_vs_emergence__127 ). Most recently we have been working to map the knowledge organization structures that exist hidden within the LOD Cloud (our book Linking Knowledge will appear later this year).

KO experts have used visualization as a key tool both for data analysis (e.g., co-word analysis or author co-citation analysis or network analysis) and for expressing abstract ideas (e.g., ontological maps or reference models such as the CIDOC cultural heritage Conceptual Reference Model http://www.cidoc-crm.org/ or its sibling the IFLA Library Reference Model https://www.ifla.org/publications/node/11412 ).

Like the 60 minutes example:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-variants-infectious-strains-60-minutes-2021-03-14/

whose map shows both the proximity of variants to the viruses from which they mutated and the distance among the distinct variants and the rate of mutation over time; showing all on the same map helps scientists visualize both the particulars and the full picture.

CBS News made it impossible to grab a real visual from their video so you will have to look for yourself—and warning, you cannot even pause the video to look at the visualization—but here is what I was able to capture:

We can see striations of different color, and along them we can see nodes that represent instantiations of the virus; the striations apparently represent mutations. We can see how the lines thicken and grow together over time as the virus and its mutations gain ground (and efficacy at transmission). This simple capture shows the importance of visualization. The knowledge of the degrees of mutation and of transmissibility is useful, but the visualization makes it all the more clear what sort of battle lies ahead for epidemiology, which is the science of controlling pandemics.

Research in knowledge organization is replete with visualizations. From my own work I can recommend three examples:

“Universes, Dimensions, Domains, Intensions and Extensions: Knowledge Organization for the 21st Century.” In A. Neelameghan and K.S. Raghavan eds. Categories, Contexts, and Relations in Knowledge Organization: Proceedings of the Twelfth International ISKO Conference, 6-9 August 2012, Mysore, India. Advances in Knowledge Organization 13. Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2012, 1-7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287850076_Universes_dimensions_domains_intensions_and_extensions_Knowledge_organization_for_the_21st_century

“Prologomena to a New Order: A Domain-Analytical Review of the Influence of S.R. Ranganathan on Knowledge Organization.” In Sarada Ranganathan Endowment for Library Science, Bangalore Golden Jubliee. SRELS Journal of Information Management (2013): 709-19. http://www.i-scholar.in/index.php/sjim/article/view/43812

Smiraglia, Richard P. 2018. “The Evolution of the Concept: A Case Study from American Documentation.” Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science 42: 113-34. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/717390/pdf

Currently in IKOS (The Institute for Knowledge Organization and Structure, Inc. https://knoworg.org ) we are working on a study of home care nursing in the pandemic. To guide our research we continually analyze our data even as the data store grows, mirroring the work of the medical researchers in the 60 Minutes report above. For example, after a simple analysis of video transcripts of home care nurses being interviewed in the press we were able to return a visualization of frequently occurring themes.

This visualization helps us guide our further research by showing clear facets in the nurses’ experiences. We see especially the important core of PPE and the frequent mention of the “front lines” in the “home_care” facet. This gives us important clues to the emotional component of the profession of home care nursing at the moment. Stay tuned for publications from our work in the near future.

It is important that scientists of visualization in the KO community speak up and make their work known, preferably in popular venues, such as the Economist, so that the world will understand the role we play in solving the great riddles of science. KO is vital to science.

References

Börner, Katy. 2010. Atlas of Science: Visualizing What We Know. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Börner, Katy. 2015. Atlas of Knowledge: Anyone Can Map. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Salah, Alkim Almila Akdag, Cheng Gao, Andrea Scharnhorst, and Krzysztof Suchecki. 2011. Design vs. Emergence: Visualisation of Knowledge Orders. Courtesy of The Knowledge Space Lab, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Places & Spaces: Mapping Science VII.5 http://scimaps.org/mapdetail/design_vs_emergence__127

Smiraglia, Richard P. 2012. “Universes, Dimensions, Domains, Intensions and Extensions: Knowledge Organization for the 21st Century.” In Categories, Contexts, and Relations in Knowledge Organization: Proceedings of the Twelfth International ISKO Conference, 6-9 August 2012, Mysore, India, ed. A. Neelameghan and K.S. Raghavan. Advances in Knowledge Organization 13. Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 1-7. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287850076_Universes_dimensions_domains_intensions_and_extensions_Knowledge_organization_for_the_21st_century

Smiraglia, Richard P. 2013. “Prologomena to a New Order: A Domain-Analytical Review of the Influence of S.R. Ranganathan on Knowledge Organization.” In Sarada Ranganathan Endowment for Library Science, Bangalore Golden Jubliee. SRELS Journal of Information Management (2013): 709-19. http://www.i-scholar.in/index.php/sjim/article/view/43812

Smiraglia, Richard P. 2018. “The Evolution of the Concept: A Case Study from American Documentation.” Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science 42: 113-34. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/717390/pdf

Smiraglia, Richard P. and Andrea Scharnhorst, eds. 2021. Linking Knowledge: Linked Open Data for Knowledge Organization. Baden-Baden: Ergon Verlag. Forthcoming.

For years students and colleagues rolled their eyes any time I said anything about epistemology. Once, famously, a paper submitted for a major international conference was accepted with revisions, one of which was to explain what that was because the readers (all holders of PhDs mind you) didn’t know what epistemology was, and (apparently) were unable to look it up or otherwise figure it out. Sigh.

But then epistemology became an important part of the science of knowledge organization, originating in papers by diverse scholars, leading to panels at international ISKO conferences and eventually even two anthologies (Smiraglia and Lee 2012; Ibekwe-SanJuan and Dousa 2014). Epistemology, how we know what we know, is one of the two major poles in a domain-centric knowledge organization.

So the question arises, how can we teach it without getting everybody dizzy from eye-rolling? I took a stab at it recently and I think it worked out nicely. In my introductory course in KO I often begin class discussions by asking the students to post an observation about some thing that has some order. This time around I got everything from a grandmother’s farmer’s market vegetable table to how big-box hardware stores hide microfiber cloths. I enjoy responding to each post, pointing out the nature of the organization–hierarchy for the vegetables, for example. It helps to point out to them that everything everywhere is organized in some manner, not just libraries.

This time I followed up with a secret epistemology discussion by asking them to post something they absolutely knew for sure. I gave them a couple of examples: “I know George Washington was president because it’s history I was taught; I never met the man. I know the speed limit on Lincoln Memorial Drive is 30 but I’d better drive 70 or people will plow into me or drive me into the lake. I know this because it happens to me daily. Of course, we have here examples of historicism and empiricism (okay, facetious empiricism, but if you live in Milwaukee you’ll get it). They did a great job. Here’s a table of a few of the things they came up with:

I think it turned out well, and although we didn’t go further into epistemology in this introductory course, it allowed me to reference this discussion at the end when they were exploring the heirarchies in DDC numbers assigned to specific resources, which subtly makes the point about the role of epistemic stances.

References

Ibekwe-SanJaun, Fidelia and Thomas M. Dousa, eds. 2014. Theories of Information, Communication and Knowledge: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Dordrecht: Springer-Netherlands.

Smiraglia, Richard P. and Hur-li Lee, eds. 2012. Cultural Frames of Knowledge. Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag.

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.

Birger Hjorland and his colleagues have created several lifeboats. You can find them here:

http://www.iva.dk/jni/lifeboat/

http://www.iva.dk/bh/lifeboat_ko/home.htm

http://www.iva.dk/bh/Core%20Concepts%20in%20LIS/home.htm

The site is intented both to be my own working space, a source for my own students, and a source for everybody that might find it useful for their own research, teaching and practical work.

As you see it is overall very comprehensive and ambitious. It is not however finished, and it is not intended ever to be finished. It is intended to grow, to function as my own memory about bibliographical references, links, full-text sources, definitions, quotes and data that I encounter in my reading and scanning and which I believe I will need in the future (or might be helpful, in student projects etc).

Some parts of it will, however, be relative finished. When I prepare lectures, I place bibliographical references, definitions, quotes and data for the students and provide a list of the pages I am referring to in my teaching. This way, I hope to gradually build up a textbook, or some textbooks of an interactive nature.

If you consider when a single entry is dated you will observe, that many entries are updated very often. If a student ask a question, if i read something in a journal, if somebody discuss with me (or send a friendly or an angry message) I often update some entries. Of course this is a very demanding task, and I always need to do more work, that time allows me to do. So, please do not be angry because you feel something is missing, but suggest how you would like it changed.

Signed contributions from you are also welcome. The intention is to make a tool that might help bring us forward by working together. I believe such a tool is much needed.

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 ….