Oct. 13 readings

Everything is Miscellaneous David Weinberger

This book made me say “Ah Ha!” as I read it. I’ve never thought very much about the physical order of things vs. the digital order. When I organize any of my own information digitally, like photos, I always operated under the assumption that everything had a single place. I always thought simpler was better. However, after reading Everything is Miscellaneous, I realize that with digital information, complicated is better. The analogy he uses throughout the book of things be organized on a “tree” with each piece of datum being a leaf really made sense to me.

The more labels I put on a given picture, the easier it will be to find later. This would never work if I had to keep every picture under every heading in different physical photo albums, but it works wonderfully if I give each picture many tags in my digital album. Instead of labeling this picture “Ireland 2010” I can label it “Melissa, Ireland 2010, 2/19/2010, Ring Fort, Sheep’s Wool (what I’m holding in my hand), what we found after driving over those INSANE mountain passes”, etc.

The benefits of being able to label things with as many words as possible makes finding information (digitally) easier than ever before. There are so many ways to sort and search it boggles my mind a little bit. I can only imagine how each successive generation of search engines will benefit data retrieval.

The book contained a lot of other good information. I learned a little more about Wikipedia. I have slightly more trust in the info I find there now than I did before. The fact that the amount of space available in printed material necessarily making some topics more complete than others makes a lot of sense. The encyclopedia does not have physical space to print EVERYTHING. Wikipedia does, and so in Wikipedia a topic is given the space it need to be complete. In print the information has to fit in the space allotted, which will inevitably leave some information out.

Some of the information on the Semantic Web (190-195) went over my head, I really couldn’t figure out what the Semantic Web is, so I hope we’ll talk about it in class.

Now, I’m off to add tags to all my under-labeled photos…

Information as Thing Michael K. Buckland

The definition of “Information-as-thing” is important, as the author points out in the summary, because “it is the only form of information with which information systems can deal directly.” In addition “Varieties of “information –as-thing” vary in their physical characteristics and so are not equally suited for storage and retrieval.”

“Information-as-thing” can be any physical thing that is informative. Letters, documents, magazines, most anything you can see. Some things are easy to store for later retrieval. Books, magazines, etc. are commonly used “information-as-things.” They are relatively easy to catalog and search for using existing data retrieval methods.  Other things are more challenging. It is hard to store the view of the lake from the terrace. It is easier to store a picture of the view as a representation of the view. It is not the same as seeing it in person, but it is as close as we can get.

The science of data storage and retrieval is a very important one. Bring able to define “information-as-thing” as opposed to “information-as-process” and “information-as-knowledge” is very important for the field.

The Power to Name Hope A. Olson

A lot of what I read in The Power to Name made me think of Everything is Miscellaneous. Many of the problems the author points out are a direct result of having to put materials in one physical location, as opposed to being able to “tag” them so they will come up in searches in multiple areas.

Some of the things the author points out about the language being used are valid points. Prostitutes are assumed to be female, unless listed specifically as “male prostitutes” and so on. This is a problem that needs to be addressed.

The problem of trying to classify the books Talking back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black and When the Moon Waxes Red illustrates where “digital disorder” would be very helpful. Granted, the books still need to placed on the shelves in one physical location (unless there are multiple copies of books shelved in multiple places). However, if when searching for books you can search under multiple “tags” or “topics” you can more easily find the information you want. That information can be matched to other information that more closely matches the particular information you want to find. Assume Talking Back is filed under Afro-American, Feminism-United States as it is under the LCSH headings. If you have read Talking Back because you are interested in “thinking black” and you go to the physical shelf where it is placed and look to see what is around it, you won’t find any other books relating to what you are interested in. However if you do a digital search for “thinking black” you will find materials related to your topic of interest.

I can see this being a big focus of future data retrieval systems used in the library. The current search engine I use at my local public library is quite limited. More often I do an internet or Amazon search for the topic I want, and then search the library’s catalog by title. I get faster, better results that way.