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Bibliocentrism, Cultural Warrant, and the Ethics of Resource Description: A Case Study
Abstract
We have not properly studied the uses to which catalogs are put by their users, nor have we attempted until recently to consider empirical evidence in the construction of cataloging rules. The result is an oddly rationalized sort of pragmatism inherent in generations of rules for resource description. This lack of theoretical commitment in resource description has ethical implications for all of information organization because it leads to poorly served users of catalogs. One particularly egregious ethical issue is bibliocentrism. Beghtol challenges us to engage in applications research to affirm a theoretical basis, contrasting cultural warrant with ethical warrant. The importance of cultural warrant in the ethics of knowledge representation follows closely on Hjørland's emphasis on activity-theoretic and domain-specificity. The present study asks whether schemas for resource description restrict access by constraining objectivity. The objective is to discover empirically, via case-study method, some of the ways in which standards for resource description might present threats to information ethics. The analysis of a set of specific cases uses bibliographic records analyzed using the aforementioned lenses: bibliocentrism, activity theory and use, cultural warrant, and exploitative power. Results show a paradigm of description that has little reference to potential uses of resources, raising a specter of unfulfilled expectations. We see the ethical limits of just this one aspect of resource description. We look toward design of an ethical, culturally focused, information retrieval paradigm.
... Though the influence of FRBR would see RDA take a more deliberate approach to disentangling content from carriers, this standard has also been criticized for carrying on legacy approaches to nonbook materials. Smiraglia (2009) referred to this as "bibliocentrism," a trend particularly prominent in Anglo-American description, resulting in practices that tend to apply book-biased descriptive features to all materials rather than treating different material types with equal consideration. ...
... A reliance on the title page privileged the views of the resource producer in descriptions, reflecting publisher perspectives and conventions while deemphasizing information from external sources. The preeminence of the title page would also contribute to the long-standing bibliocentric approach to understanding library resources (Smiraglia, 2009). With the 1908 Anglo-American Catalog Rules, Strout (1956, 274) noted a move away from this trend, with increasing allowance of information from beyond the title page. ...
This article details the Anglo-American library cataloging tradition. Cataloging is a knowledge organization process through which resources are represented in the context of a catalog. Emerging from the work of individual libraries in the United Kingdom and United States in the mid-nineteenth century, modern Anglo-American cataloging practices have undergone continuing development over the course of almost two centuries, largely through a succession of widely implemented descriptive standards. They have come to represent a distinct, coherent tradition that has grown in influence beyond English-speaking settings to exert a global impact on contemporary knowledge organization. While standardization and internationalization have both played a part in establishing the influence of the Anglo-American cataloging tradition, other trends have carried significant impact as well, including technological development and increasing cooperation among libraries. This article explores the meaning, development, and implications of Anglo-American library cataloging through an examination of its historical, practical, and theoretical foundations, along with a consideration of current and emerging developments related to this tradition.
... In creating his On the Construction of Catalogues of Libraries for the Smithsonian, Jewett (1852) aspired to set a national standard, and in order for catalogers at a variety of institutions to use the rules, he designed them in such a way as to minimalize individual judgment. Jewett's and other early codes achieved this in part due to heavy reliance on the resource itself, a practice that Cutter (1876) described as the "cult of the title page" (16) and that privileged the viewpoint of the resource producer (Dunkin 1969;Smiraglia 2009). This kind of legalistic approach (Osborn 1941) would wane through the progression of subsequent Anglo-American codes. ...
... Universalist solutions have faced criticism within the knowledge organization community, particularly in contrast with more specialized alternatives (Schmierer 1989;Hoffman 2009). Smiraglia's (2009) exploration of the bibliocentric nature of cataloging standards and the ensuing potentials for resource misrepresentation is especially applicable. ...
Every standard embodies a particular set of values. Some aspects are privileged while others are masked. Values embedded within knowledge organization standards have special import in that they are further perpetuated by the data they are used to generate. Within libraries, descriptive catalog codes serve as prominent knowledge organization standards, guiding the creation of resource representations. Though the historical and functional aspects of these standards have received significant attention, less focus has been placed on the values associated with such codes. In this study, a critical, historical analysis of ten Anglo- American descriptive catalog codes and surrounding discourse was conducted as an initial step towards uncovering key values associated with this lineage of standards. Two values in particular were found to be highly significant: authority and universalism. Authority is closely tied to notions of power and control, particularly over practice or belief. Increasing control over resources, identities, and viewpoints are all manifestations of the value of authority within descriptive codes. Universalism has guided the widening coverage of descriptive codes in regards to settings and materials, such as the extension of bibliographic standards to non-book resources. Together, authority and universalism represent conventional values focused on facilitating orderly social exchanges. A comparative lack of emphasis on values concerning human welfare and empowerment may be unsurprising, but raises questions concerning the role of human values in knowledge organization standards. Further attention to the values associated with descriptive codes and other knowledge organization standards is important as libraries and other institutions seek to share their resource representation data more widely.
... Given the large number of records made publicly available (over 25 million), researchers chose to limit the present examination to just book records, leaving analysis of additional formats for future consideration. Books present the best starting format for this analysis because they represent the highest proportion of records, and at the same time, it is the most classic type of resource in the library catalog and one that has been best supported by library cataloging standards (Frost & Taylor, 1983;Smiraglia, 2009). ...
Purpose] The library catalog is not only a useful tool for patrons to find and access library collections but also a valuable dataset for various types of quantitative analysis on our cultural assets. This research aims to develop the latter potential of library metadata by conducting a large-scale analysis of how the metadata fields encoded in the Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) standards. [Design/methodology/approach] We examined more than 6 million book records from 1980 to 2018 in the catalog of the Library of Congress. We particularly focused on how bibliographic records have changed over time and whether these changes correlate with the introduction of new cataloging policies. [Findings] Our results show that more than 200 unique fields and 1,300 unique subfields have been used in the MARC format, though the majority of them are used in fewer than 1% of all records. At the same time, bibliographic records have become increasingly complex, with more fields and subfields per record over the past 40 years. Additionally, there are clear, although sometimes asynchronous, parallel developments between MARC tags and cataloging standards. [Originality/value] This study represents the first large-scale quantitative analysis of the history of library metadata, revealing significant and interesting changes over time and highlighting challenges for the meaningful use of library metadata in the current data environment.
... After the seminal work of Hulme, a number of additional warrants have been instituted to refer to other bases of organising knowledge (e.g. Beghtol, 2002;Smiraglia, 2009). ...
There is a broad consensus that better models for assessing the impact of information efforts are needed to inform information and knowledge management and digital preservation. In contrast to measuring the quality of information, less attention has been directed to the assessment of knowledge and information processes as its constituent. Using archaeology and archaeological information as a sample context, the aim of this conceptual paper is to probe in to the evaluation of the impact and usefulness of information by taking into account the practices of how it is produced, managed and used. On a basis of a review and discussion of earlier literature on the impact of information and evaluation and management of information in archaeology, it is proposed that a better understanding of how the impact of information unfolds as a part of its production, management and use could contribute to the development of infrastructures, repositories and procedures for the management of the preservation and use of these resources.
... The needs of the individual do not seem to be adequately met by library catalogues, even when they meet the needs of society by having knowledge organised in this way. Smiraglia (2009Smiraglia ( , 2015 reminds us that "The online [library] catalog of the digital age is just one of many retrieval systems making up a rich complex of tools for resource discovery" (2015, p. 1). Svenonius (2000) emphasised that "The role of the bibliographic record in a digital environment is not yet clear. ...
This paper presents an evaluation of the ways in which three different groups of readers (recordkeepers, teachers and secondary school students) categorise documents. This is used to show how they understand documents, documentary forms and genre. Drawing on a card sorting activity conducted around a set of cards of documents related to The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, the paper discusses the significance of familiar categories as cultural markers (closely linked to particular rhetorical genres). It considers the impact of domain knowledge on the process of sorting and naming of categories, and compares the approaches taken by participants with those of library catalogues. It finds that there is no single, consistent approach to categorising the cards, with different literary genres, rhetorical genres, reasons for using, format, accessibility, and form all affecting the final categories each participant developed.
... The idea that cataloging is the simple recording of information found on a resource likely has not been discouraged by the longstanding bibliocentrism of our standards. Richard Smiraglia (2009) has pointed out that when description is centered on transcription of the title page, access is impoverished. Regard for the skills involved in cataloging is also reduced. ...
Most knowledge organization practices have opinionated detractors. Some criticisms are informed and serious, but unsubstantiated assertions and fatuous dismissals are so commonplace that practitioners grow weary of the perpetual need to refute them. Many have had the experience of conducting and publishing research that contradicts a popular misguided claim, and then seeing this evidence have little effect on the continued repetition of the claim. In this paper, which is part polemical essay, I attempt to contribute another tool for tackling this problem: a taxonomy of attacks on knowledge organization. Categorizing and devising names for the major strains of deprecation of knowledge organization, cataloging, and metadata will not defeat those arguments, but identifying and reframing them might strengthen the knowledge organization community's resolve to take them on. Warning: there might be neologisms!
... There have been several studies that have pointed to inherent biases in the contents (or omissions) of catalogue records (e.g. Bade, 2002;Olson, 2000Olson, , 2002Smiraglia, 2009). Subjectivity becomes even more of an issue with the interpretation of the aboutness of an item via the choice of subject headings and classification numbers. ...
Purpose
New social discovery systems have social‐type Web 2.0 features that allow users to enhance the content of bibliographic records by adding their own tags, ratings, and reviews. One of the primary underlying principles of cataloguing is that catalogue records be designed with the user in mind, i.e. user convenience. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the principle of user convenience and social discovery systems.
Design/methodology/approach
A review of the literature and codes of ethics of associations of information professions was undertaken to examine: the ethical dimensions of creating catalogue records to reflect user convenience, the relationship between culture and user convenience, and how social discovery tools can facilitate the creation of interactive and flexible catalogue records that reflect the culture(s) and needs of the library communities in which they exist.
Findings
Social discovery systems can address the primary barriers to creating catalogue records that meet user convenience: determining and reflecting the needs and cultural warrant of the users, and maintaining the quality and integrity of the catalogue records.
Practical implications
Social discovery systems can serve as a bridge between cataloguers' desire to create accurate catalogue records that conform to accepted cataloguing standards, and their ethical imperative to ensure that these records meet the needs of the clients.
Originality/value
The findings of this study pave the way for further research into how user‐contributed metadata allow clients to express their needs and cultural warrant and to interact with one another and library staff.
Purpose
The library catalog is not only a useful tool for patrons to find and access library collections but also a valuable dataset for various types of quantitative analysis on our cultural assets. This research aims to develop the latter potential of library metadata by conducting a large-scale analysis of how the metadata fields encoded in the Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) standards.
Design/methodology/approach
We examined more than 6 million book records from 1980 to 2018 in the catalog of the Library of Congress. We particularly focused on how bibliographic records have changed over time and whether these changes correlate with the introduction of new cataloging policies.
Findings
Our results show that more than 200 unique fields and 1,300 unique subfields have been used in the MARC format, though the majority of them are used in fewer than 1% of all records. At the same time, bibliographic records have become increasingly complex, with more fields and subfields per record over the past 40 years. Additionally, there are clear, although sometimes asynchronous, parallel developments between MARC tags and cataloging standards.
Originality/value
This study represents the first large-scale quantitative analysis of the history of library metadata, revealing significant and interesting changes over time and highlighting challenges for the meaningful use of library metadata in the current data environment.
Can a catalog “care” about its users? This question, introduced at the first Ethics of Information Organization conference in 2009, asked whether catalogs adhere to the ethic of care, the theory put forward by Tronto (1994) and others that calls for context and flexibility in ethical decision-making. This keynote address for the 4th International Conference on the Ethics of Information & Knowledge Organization expands on that question, adapting the notion of the “uncanny valley” (Mori 1970), where the ability for a catalog to “care” is disrupted by ethical decisions that cause conceptual violence for its users. This keynote address provides an informal summary of the first three Ethics in Information Organization conferences, identifying themes that have been acted upon in practice, ethical challenges knowledge organization continue to face, and new challenges that have emerged, demonstrating that a “caring” catalog is still a work in progress.
This paper considers the Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA) recommendation to “decolonize library access and classification” and begins by exploring the difficulty involved when addressing this recommendation working from within a colonial institution that represents a colonial worldview. It compares general characteristics of Western and Indigenous worldviews and considers the affect that these perspectives have on the organization of knowledge and information especially in relation to a controlled subject vocabulary like the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). It presents the “term circle” as a way to mitigate colonial biases by creating a hybrid subject language system using SKOS RDF/XML in a linked data context. This hybrid system facilitates Indigenous community participation in the control and development of subject metadata and suggests a new role for library metadata.
Purpose
Within standards for bibliographic description, common usage has served as a prominent design principle, guiding the choice and form of certain names and titles. In practice, however, the determination of common usage is difficult and lends itself to varying interpretations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the presence and role of common usage in bibliographic description through an examination of previously unexplored connections between common usage and the concept of warrant.
Design/methodology/approach
A brief historical review of the concept of common usage was conducted, followed by a case study of the current bibliographic standard Resource Description and Access (RDA) employing qualitative content analysis to examine the appearances, delineations and functions of common usage. Findings were then compared to the existing literature on warrant in knowledge organization.
Findings
Multiple interpretations of common usage coexist within RDA and its predecessors, and the current prioritization of these interpretations tends to render user perspectives secondary to those of creators, scholars and publishers. These varying common usages and their overall reliance on concrete sources of evidence reveal a mixture of underlying warrants, with literary warrant playing a more prominent role in comparison to the also present scientific/philosophical, use and autonomous warrants.
Originality/value
This paper offers new understanding of the concept of common usage, and adds to the body of work examining warrant in knowledge organization practices beyond classification. It sheds light on the design of the influential standard RDA while revealing the implications of naming and labeling in widely shared bibliographic data.
This articie examines the classification of migration and the political implications of its vocabulary. It begins with an analysis of the challenge that the topic of migration poses to traditional methods of classification. These challenges are evident in the case study of the 2016 petition to change the subject heading of "Illegal aliens'∗ at the Library of Congress, the Library's proposal to replace the term with "noncitizens" and "illegal immigration," and subsequent pressure from the House of Representatives to reinstate the original phrasing in order to match the terminology of federal laws. © 2018 International Society for Knowledge Organization. All Rights Reserved.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to update and review the concept of warrant in Library and Information Science (LIS) and to introduce the concept of epistemic warrant from philosophy. Epistemic warrant can be used to assess the content of a work; and therefore, it can be a complement to existing warrants, such as literary warrant, in the development of controlled vocabularies. In this proposal, the authors aim to activate a theoretical discussion on warrant in order to revise and improve the validity of the concept of warrant from the user and classifier context to the classificationist context.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors have conducted an extensive literary review and close reading of the concept of warrant in LIS and knowledge organization in order to detect the different stances and gaps in which the concept of epistemic warrant might apply. The authors adopted an epistemological approach, in the vein of some of the previous commenters on warrant, such as Hope Olson and Birger Hjørland, and built upon the theoretical framework of different authors working with the concept of warrant outside knowledge organization, such as Alvin Plantinga and Alvin Goldman.
Findings
There are some authors and critics in the literature that have voiced for a more epistemological approach to warrant (in opposition to a predominantly ontological approach). In this sense, epistemic warrant would be an epistemological warrant and also a step forward toward pragmatism in a prominently empiricist context such as the justification of the inclusion of terms in a controlled vocabulary. Epistemic warrant can be used to complement literary warrant in the development of controlled vocabularies as well as in the classification of works.
Originality/value
This paper presents an exhaustive update and revision of the concept of warrant, analyzing, systematizing, and reviewing the different warrants discussed in the LIS literary warrant in a critical way. The concept of epistemic warrant for categorizational activities is introduced to the LIS field for the first time. This paper, and the proposal of epistemic warrant, has the potential to contribute to the theoretical and practical discussions on the development of controlled vocabularies and assessment of the content of works.
Considering the need for a constant questioning on the role of the information professional, more specifically with respect to the ethical aspects of their practice, this study discusses how information science has been addressing over the past decades the ethical aspects inherent to the field of knowledge organization. In this context, we discuss the concepts of interactive epistemography and transcultural ethics of mediation by Antonio Garcia Gutiérrez, multilingualism in knowledge representation by Michèle Hudon, cultural hospitality by Clare Beghtol and the power to name by Hope Olson, in their aspects of convergence, complementarity and dialogicity.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1518-2924.2015v20nesp1p19
Considerando que a atuação do bibliotecário é permeada pela dicotomia entre a não neutralidade do processo de organização e representação do conhecimento e o compromisso ético em buscar corresponder as necessidades informacionais de uma comunidade usuária cada vez mais culturalmente diversificada, destacam-se as possíveis tensões que podem ocorrer nesse contexto, em especial quanto aos valores éticos que permeiam a atuação do bibliotecário. Desse modo, este artigo propõe-se a apresentar um cenário teórico no que tange os valores e problemas éticos que permeiam os processos de organização e representação do conhecimento a partir de um panorama teórico que abrange vinte e dois anos – 1990 a 2012 − da literatura internacional da área de Biblioteconomia e Ciência da Informação.
Each of the three types of memory institutions - library, museum and archive - has developed its own conceptual forms of descriptive cataloguing for the objects and materials it holds. The static model «Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records» (FRBR), which is oriented towards the needs of the user, was created to enable more precise bibliographic cataloguing in libraries. But this model lacks a detailed concept of the entity «work» and is not especially useful for non-book materials. The CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM), which has been the primary cataloguing method in museums, has proven to be highly suitable for heterogeneous types of museum objects, i.e. artifacts of artistic or intellectual endeavour. IFLA and ICOM have collaborated to harmonize FRBR and CRM. The outcome, FRBR infin; (object-oriented FRBR), displays advantages in terms of a more strict interpretation of the Group 1 entities of FRBR, and also in a closer illustration of processes and events. Examples of how FRBRinfin; is applied are given here to demonstrate its enhanced value in scientific cataloging of manuscripts, prints, online publications, performing arts, maps, and musical works within a CRM-based database.
Libraries face a double challenge in the digital age: both the describing framework and the describing object are under change. Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) attempts to generate a coherent theory and yield a new Paradigm of cataloging. This study deploys current conceptualizations of the FRBR Group 1 entities within the FRBR models family with a view to semantic interoperability. FRBR cannot be considered as simple metadata describing a specific resource but more like some kind of knowledge related to the resource. This study reveals that there are different perspectives of what is introduced by FRBR as the cataloging object in the context of various interpretations of the model, namely Resource Description and Access (RDA), FRBRization projects, and FRBROO.
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. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Type of Material: Book (Print, Microform, Electronic, etc.) Personal Name: Morgan, Ted, 1932-Main Title: FDR : a biography
- R P Smiraglia
R. P. Smiraglia LC Control No.: 85010741 Type of Material: Book (Print, Microform, Electronic, etc.) Personal Name: Morgan, Ted, 1932-Main Title: FDR : a biography / Ted Morgan. Published/Created: New York : Simon and Schuster, c1985. Description: 830 p., [32] p. of plates : ill. ; 24 cm. ISBN: 0671454951
Reaching for glory : Lyndon Johnson's secret White House tapes, 1964-1965 / edited and with commentary by Michael Beschloss Related Names: Beschloss, Michael R. Description: 475 p., [16] p. of plates : ill
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Main Title: Reaching for glory : Lyndon Johnson's secret White House tapes, 1964-1965 / edited and with commentary by Michael Beschloss. Published/Created: New York : Simon & Schuster, c2001. Related Names: Beschloss, Michael R. Description: 475 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. ; 25 cm. ISBN: 0684804085
Information Seeking and Subject Representation
- Hjørland
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Cataloging Motion Pictures and Videorecordings using AACR2, " in Policy and Practice in Bibliographic Control of Nonbook Media
- Sheila Intner
Sheila Intner, " Cataloging Motion Pictures and Videorecordings using AACR2, " in Policy and Practice in Bibliographic Control of Nonbook Media, ed. Sheila Intner and Richard P. Smiraglia (Chicago: American Library Assn., 1987), 128–137.
Bibliographic Control of Music Music Library Association Index and Bibliography Series no
- Richard P Smiraglia
- J Bradford Young
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