What do a seventeenth-century mortality table (whose causes of death include "fainted in a bath," "frighted," and "itch"); the identification of South Africans during apartheid as European, Asian, colored, or black; and the separation of machine- from hand-washables have in common? All are examples of classification -- the scaffolding of information infrastructures. In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. In a clear and lively style, they investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis. The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. Sorting Things Out has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work. The book is an important empirical source for understanding the building of information infrastructures.

https://www.reciis.icict.fiocruz.br/index.php/reciis/article/download/794/1436

Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences

This study presents an extensive domain analysis of a discipline—information science—in terms of its authors. Names of those most frequently cited in 12 key journals from 1972 through 1995 were retrieved from Social Scisearch via DIALOG. The top 120 were submitted to author co-citation analyses, yielding automatic classifications relevant to histories of the field. Tables and graphics reveal: (1) The disciplinary and institutional affiliations of contributors to information science; (2) the specialty structure of the discipline over 24 years; (3) authors' memberships in 1 or more specialties; (4) inertia and change in authors' positions on 2-dimensional subject maps over 3 8-year subperiods, 1972–1979, 1980–1987, 1988–1995; (5) the 2 major subdisciplines of information science and their evolving memberships; (6) “canonical” authors who are in the top 100 in all three subperiods; (7) changes in authors' eminence and influence over the subperiods, as shown by mean co-citation counts; (8) authors with marked changes in their mapped positions over the subperiods; (9) the axes on which authors are mapped, with interpretations; (10) evidence of a paradigm shift in information science in the 1980s; and (11) evidence on the general nature and state of integration of information science. Statistical routines include ALSCAL, INDSCAL, factor analysis, and cluster analysis with SPSS; maps and other graphics were made with DeltaGraph. Theory and methodology are sufficiently detailed to be usable by other researchers. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

/pdf/visualizing-a-discipline-an-author-co-citation-analysis-of-9669jpcptg.pdf

Visualizing a discipline: an author co-citation analysis of information science, 1972–1995

What kind of knowledge is needed by information specialists working in a specific subject field like medicine, sociology or music? What approaches have been used in information science to produce kinds of domain‐specific knowledge? This article presents 11 approaches to domain analysis. Together these approaches make a unique competence for information specialists. The approaches are: producing literature guides and subject gateways; producing special classifications and thesauri; research on indexing and retrieving specialities; empirical user studies; bibliometrical studies; historical studies; document and genre studies; epistemological and critical studies; terminological studies, LSP (languages for special purposes), discourse studies; studies of structures and institutions in scientific communication; and domain analysis in professional cognition and artificial intelligence. Specific examples and selective reviews of literature are provided, and the strengths and drawbacks of each of these approaches are discussed.

Domain analysis in information science

Although relevance judgments are fundamental to the design and evaluation of all information retrieval systems, information scientists have not reached a consensus in defining the central concept of relevance In this paper we ask two questions: What is the meaning of relevance? and What role does relevance play in information behavior? We attempt to address these questions by reviewing literature over the last 30 years that presents various views of relevance as topical, user-oriented, multidimensional, cognitive, and dynamic We then discuss traditional assumptions on which most research in the field has been based and begin building a case for an approach to the problem of definition based on alternative assumptions The dynamic, situational approach we suggest views the user — regardless of system — as the central and active determinant of the dimensions of relevance We believe that relevance is a multidimensional concept; that it is dependent on both internal (cognitive) and external (situational) factors; that it is based on a dynamic human judgment process; and that it is a complex but systematic and measurable phenomenon

A re-examination of relevance: toward a dynamic, situational definition

The objective of this study was to describe the criteria mentioned by users evaluating the information within documents as it related to the users' information need situations. Data were collected by asking users in an academic environment to evaluate representations and the full text of documents that had been retrieved specifically for each user's information need situation. Users were asked to mark the portions of the document representations or of the full text of documents that indicated to the users whether they would or would not pursue the information within documents. An open-ended interview technique was then employed to discuss each marked portion with users. The interviews were audiotaped, the tapes transcribed, and the transcriptions were content analyzed in order to identify and describe evaluation criteria.



The results indicate that the criteria employed by users included tangible characteristics of documents (e.g., the information content of the document, the provision of references to other sources of information), subjective qualities (e.g., agreement with the information provided by the document) and situational factors (e.g., the time constraints under which the user was working). The implications of this research for our understanding of the concept of relevance, and for the design and evaluation of information retrieval systems, are discussed. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

User-defined relevance criteria: an exploratory study

A strong definition of aboutness and a theory of its role in information retrieval systems have not been developed. Such a definition and theory may be extracted from the work of T. A. van Dijk. This paper discusses some of the implications of van Dijk's work for bibliographic classification theory. Two kinds of intertextuality are identified: that between documents classified in the same class of the same classification system; and that between the classification system as a text in its own right and the documents that are classified by it. Consideration of the two kinds of intertextuality leads to an investigation of the linguistic/cognitive processes that have been called the ‘translation’ of a document topic into a classificatory language. A descriptive model of the cognitive process of classifying documents is presented. The general design of an empirical study to test this model is suggested, and some problems of implementing such a study are briefly identified. It is concluded that further investigation of the relationships between text linguistics and classification theory and practice might reveal other fruitful intersections between the two fields.

Bibliographic classification theory and text linguistics: aboutness analysis, intertextuality and the cognitive act of classifying documents

Les recherches en classification ont souvent privilegie l'axe syntaxique. Cet article discute les raisons qui justifient le choix d'un axe semantique dans le domaine de la recherche bibliographique. L'evolution de ce choix est examinee a travers le developpement de la theorie de la classification au 20eme siecle dans quatre domaines: litterature, philosophie, science, education, culture. Une plus grande attention devrait etre donnees a la valeur de ce choix semantique dans la creation des systemes de classification dans des domaines specifiques. (INTD)

Semantic validity: concepts of warrant in bibliographic classification systems

New technologies have made the increased globalization of information resources and services possible. In this situation, it is ethically and intellectually beneficial to protect cultural and information diversity. This paper analyzes the problems of creating ethically based globally accessible and culturally acceptable knowledge representation and organization systems, and foundation principles for the ethical treatment of different cultures are established on the basis of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The concept of “cultural hospitality”, which can act as a theoretical framework for the ethical warrant of knowledge representation and organization systems, is described. This broad discussion is grounded with an extended example of one cultural universal, the concept of time and its expression in calendars. Methods of achieving cultural and user hospitality in information systems are discussed for their potential for creating ethically based systems. It is concluded that cultural hospitality is a promising concept for assessing the ethical foundations of new knowledge representation and organization systems and for planning revisions to existing systems.

A proposed ethical warrant for global knowledge representation and organization systems

In this article, ethical decision-making methods for creating, revising, and maintaining knowledge representation and organization systems are described, particularly in relation to the global use of these systems. The analysis uses a three-level model and the literature on ethically based decision-making in the social and technical sciences. In addition, methods for making these kinds of decisions in an ethical manner are presented. This multidisciplinary approach is generalizable to other information areas and is useful for encouraging the development of ethics policies for knowledge representation and organization systems and for other kinds of systems or institutions.

Ethical decision‐making for knowledge representation and organization systems for global use

Vue d'ensemble sur l'histoire du genre des documents (genre litteraire, scientifique, didactique...). Application de certains aspects de la tradition a la conception de systemes d'information actuels.

https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/bult.192

Clare Beghtol

Papers

Bibliographic classification theory and text linguistics: aboutness analysis, intertextuality and the cognitive act of classifying documents

Semantic validity: concepts of warrant in bibliographic classification systems

A proposed ethical warrant for global knowledge representation and organization systems

Ethical decision‐making for knowledge representation and organization systems for global use

The Concept of Genre and Its Characteristics