Knowledge Organization in Electronic Books

Systems of KO for Digital Libraries - Hodge

2005-04-13T12:16:00.000-05:00

I finally acquired the report (1). It turns out the reference information I had on the report was incorrect. I finally found the correct citation for locating it.

A very interesting report on the mechanics of KOS for digital materials. The report covered 5 major topics: 1) knowledge organization systems; 2) linking digital library resources; 3) making the resources available to others; 4) planning and implementing and KOS in a digital library; and 5) the future of KOS on the web.

The report focused on the what a KO system is and practical methods to implement a KOS in a digital library. The report has a very good overview of the development of KO systems and how that impacts digital libraries.

The discussion of the practical methods to make a KO available tracks very well with the discussions we have in class on KOS systems for disciplines. The report highlights may of the ideas we discussed in class.

(1) Hodge, G. (2000). Systems of knowledge organization for digital libraries: Beyond traditional authority files. Washington DC: The Digital Library Federation.

Full-Text Searching (Vendor Comment)

2005-04-13T10:47:00.000-05:00

I remembered a comment by one of the vendors about the usefulness of full-text searching that we discussed.

He said that his company provided Marc records for their e-books, but it was no longer necessary. The Marc record was to provide the library the ability to catalog the book in their system, but with the full-text searching capability in e-books the end user no longer need to see the cataloging materials. A person can find everything on topic of interest. If they isolate their search to a subject heading, they might miss a pertinent bit of information from a book in another subject heading.

When I inquired about the number of useless hits this search would result, he said that it was the users interpretation that determined a useless hit, not the search engine.

I thought this an interesting, but uninformed comment/answer.

Cataloging and Knowledge Organization

2005-04-12T11:08:00.000-05:00

In my previous posting, I indicated finding an article through a vendor demo. I thought the article had great potential. The title is "Cataloging and Knowledge Organization" by Clare Beghtol. It was an interesting read, but not very useful for my topic. It was an introductory article on cataloging and KO. It was written for the non-library reader. There was not much substance for e-books to hang their hat on.

ACRL Conference

2005-04-12T09:23:00.000-05:00

I attended the ACRL Conference last week (April 6-10). I always enjoy attending library conferences. It is a time of refreshing and being encouraged by what others are doing in the profession.

I appreciate the vendors contribution financially to the conference; therefore, I try to spend some time (1-2 hours) listening to presentations and discussing products I'm mildly interested in. This conference was quite different. I spent an entire day (about 8 hours) talking to various publishers about their e-book marketing research and marketing plans. Interestingly, when I explained that I am a Ph.D. student with a research focus on e-books, the barriers dropped.

I had several intriguing conversations, including conversations with David Bass, Senior VP of Sales and Marking at Ebrary, Kari Paulson, General Manager at Ebook Library, and Brad Edick, Senior Sales Rep at Thompson Gale. Each conversation lasted 30 minutes to an hour. Can I say I was pumped at the end of the day.

Synopsis of the conversations:
Ebrary has been around for about 6-7 years. The original marketing plan promoted books to the general public via the Internet. About 3 years ago, the primary marketing plan changed to marketing e-books to higher education, particularly research institutions. They noticed what everyone is noticing, casual/leisure reading is not the market for e-books. There is a market for providing access for researchers/students seeking information. They use a proprietary software for delivery, which has better functionality than Acrobat software (Bass' opinion).

Ebook Library is an Australian company, which has been around for about 3 years. They primarily marketing to higher education. Same reasons as Ebrary. Excellent conversation. I will contact again.

Thompson Gale is obviously a publisher of hardcopy books. They are venturing into e-book publishing of reference works for higher ed. Do I see a trend? Edick commented on the original netLibrary model for e-book publishing as unsustainable. That is why they went bankrupt and were bought by OCLC. The new model is more tenable. He raise several concerns from the publishing perspective, including piracy, security, a profit model that doesn't cause publishers to go bankrupt, marketing to higher ed, seeking a market niche because there is no market in leisure reading, etc. He gave me the name and contact number of their e-book guru. I agreed not to make that public.

I had discussions with a number of publishers who are venturing or soon to be venturing into the e-book market. One of the interesting comments by almost everyone of the reps: there is very little market for leisure reading, but there is a good market for research materials. One vendor even mentioned the journals model of success. There is a market for the aggregation of e-book collections for the purpose of research. Everything else will come in time. One vendor was strikingly absent from the conference, netLibrary.

I got a bonus from one of the publisher. While demo-ing their product, I asked for them to search on KO. A great article by Clare Beghtol was retrieved that I had not found in my previous research. They were kind enough to print me a copy. What a deal! Watch for forthcoming comments.

Subject Access Points

2005-04-12T08:22:00.000-05:00

I have been very interested in reading an article by Hjorland on subject access points. WAW Library owns it. I requested it on Febrary 15th. I received a response about a week later that the item was checked out and would be recalled. I inquired about it again last week. The ILL Supervisor let me know that she had placed a recall on it, but it has not been returned. I'll seek it through SBU's ILL. It may be too late for the class, but I'm still interested in it.

Updates

2005-04-12T08:14:00.000-05:00

It has been a while since I've posted to the blog. Life has been busy, but the research continues. I will be posting several updates this week.

KO Model - Research

2005-03-25T12:37:00.000-06:00

Given and Olson applied the KO model to qualitative, quantitative, and textual research. The authors identified the problem of organizing research data as the ability to turn raw data into a cohesive structure of terms that makes sense of the research data.

The KO model, when used for organizing information, flows from the choice of controlled vocabulary through its application via indexing to create a logically organized database ready for searching.

Applying KO to research, the model flows from the choice of variables or themes to be coded, through their application to data, to create an organization body of data ready for analysis.

The article gives an excellent overview of how issues, such as, coextensiveness, specificity, precision, exhaustivity, and recall affect the KO model. In addition, the article discusses the problem with the level of precision in relation to recall, and the problem of consistency in indexers.

The authors want us to understand the focus of the KO model is to retrieve, from a mass of information, that which is relevant. Hjorland (2) asserts that books are not always capable of identifying there own subject. Integrating these thoughts brings me to the question of whether an e-book that is full-text searchable is able to assist in the organization of knowledge without the influence of knowledge organizers, such as catalogers?

(1) Given, L.M. & Olson, H.A. (2003). Knowledge organization in research: A conceptual model for organization data. Library & Information Science Research, 25, 157-176.

(2) Hjørland, B. (2003). Fundamentals of knowledge organization, Knowledge Organization, 30(2), 87-111.

Bothmann-Cataloging Electronic Books

2005-03-25T11:24:00.000-06:00

Bothmann expressed the same frustrations that I have experienced while seeking information on KO and e-books. To use his words: "A review of the literature has not revealed anything that focuses on the cataloging of electronic books." Extrapolating this to KO, there is almost no information available on KO and e-books. It seems to be a mute point.

Two ideas that Bothmann made helped my understanding of e-books and KO:

1) For an e-book to be considered as a manifestation of an original print book does not require the reproduction to maintain the original format, but the original content. For instance, the National Academy Press distributes HTML versions of print books. LC considers this a manifestation even thought the format is completely different.

2) The International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) defines e-books as a manifestation of a work--that is, "the physical embodiment of an expression of a work." The IFLA used netLibrary as an example of this definition. NetLibrary's distribution of books in the portable documents format (PDF) where the facsimile means an exact image or copy with the intent to preserve the llok and feel of the earlier manifestation. The treatment of the e-book would be as a manifestation of the original.

Bothmann didn't differentiate between a manifestation of an original print book and a book only published in electronic form. I would assume they would be treated as an original work? I recognize it was not Bothmann's intent to discuss this issue in this article.

(1) Bothmann, R. (2004). Cataloging electronic books. Library Resources Technical Services, 48(1), 12-19.

Formatting and Structuring Knowledge

2005-03-01T17:44:00.000-06:00

I read Rowley's and Farrow's book Organizing Knowledge. The first couple of chapters are theoretical background on KO. It then quickly moves to the practical application of KO in LIS. I read chapters 1 & 2 and skimmed the rest. Nothing interesting caught my eye in the latter chapters.

However, Rowley and Farrow present a couple of ideas in chapters 1 & 2 that interesting me. Both can be extrapolated to e-books, but neither is specifically about e-books. They were just ideas that interested me.

1) They developed a knowledge map for information management that could as easily define knowledge creation as information management.

The 7 Rs of Knowledge Management:

Reading - leads to "Information"
Recognition - leads to "Subjective Knowledge"
Re-Interpretation - leads to "Public Knowledge"
Reviewing - leads to "Validated Knowledge"
Release - leads to "Knowledge Domain"
Restructuring - leads to "Accessible Collections of Knowledge"
Retrieval - leads to "Relevant Knowledge"

2) They break the types of knowledge into three broad categories:
Personal Knowledge - Subjective (Both Explicit & Tacit)
Published Knowledge - Documented Knowledge
Organizational Knowledge - Related to employment.

(1) Rowley, J. & Farrow, J. (2000). Organizing knowledge. Hampshire, England: Gower.

References / Resources

2005-02-23T16:44:00.000-06:00

I found some intriguing/interesting references. Again, nothing is coming easy. Most of the references are hardcopy only, or I cannot gain access to the items in electronic format.

Acquired:

Smiraglia, R. (2001). Further progress toward theory in knowledge organization. Canadian Journal of Information & Library Sciences 26(2/3) 31-51.

Ordered

Williamson, N. & Beghtol, C. (2004). Knowledge organization and classification in international information retrieval. Haworth.
This is a compilation of papers by international authors on the globalization of informatio and knowledge

Seeking:

Hedberg, J. (2000). DLF report. College & Research Libraries News: 61(7), 612-617.
Report on the Digital Library Federation on Systems of Knowledge Organization for Digital Libraries.

Milstead, J. (2000). Track 2: classification and representation. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science & Technology: 26(2), 12-17.

Smith, A. & Reiner, L. (2000). Personalized knowledge organization and access for the web. Journal of Academic Librarianship: 26(1), 75-84.

Vizine-Goetz, D. (1997). From book classification to knowledge organization: Improving internet resource descriptions. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science & Technology: 24(1), 24-28.

Hope Olson Article

2005-02-22T12:11:00.000-06:00

It seems that my search for information is going to be fraught with difficulty. Hope Olson published an article on KO in research (1) that sounds interesting. It may not be directly related to e-books, but it looks like a good article in relation to KO. WAW Library owns it in electronic and paper format, but neither is currently available. The electronic version is only available for one year and the paper copy is being bound. I've requested it through ILL (time delay).

The last article I ordered from WAW Library, the bound volume was checked out. The ILL librarian has recalled it. I don't have a schedule for receiving it. So, I've found some citations, but the articles are not in hand.

(1) Given, M. & Olson, H. (2003). Knowledge organization in research: A conceptual model for organizing data. Library & Information Science Research 25(2), 157-76.

Fundamentals of Knowledge Organization

2005-02-16T16:56:00.000-06:00

I did some research on Social SciSearch to see if anyone else had referenced Hjorland's article. There was on reference. It was Hjorland's & Nicolaisen's rebuttal to Betthol's article on "Naive" classification systems. Not very helpful.

SAPs / Hjorland Update

2005-02-16T11:16:00.000-06:00

After his initial response to my inquire, I have received no further communication from Dr. Hjorland.

------------------

I have become interested in Hjorland's discussion of subject access points (SAP) in electronic information. I have requested the article "Subject Access Points in Electronic Retrieval" from WAW Library. Again, we are dealing with digitized data, not necessarily e-books as I have defined them.

In "Fundamentals of Knowledge Organization", Hjorland states that computer technology made it possible to use many kinds of SAPs, both from traditional subject cataloging to words within documents. As a result, librarians'/information specialists' monopoly of subject access was not only removed, it setup a direct competition between different agencies.

Later in the article, Hjorland makes the comment that documents may be implicit or even wrong about their own subject matter and hence there is still a need for information professionals. I would like more of an explanation than he gives in the article and I hope his other article will expound on the subject.

Communication from Hjorland

2005-02-07T19:25:00.000-06:00

I had the great thrill to have Dr. Hjørland response to my inquiry about his article. Unfortunately, he related that the article is not available in English. However, he held out hope that I could have follow-up discussions with him on the topic. I have responded with a direct question concerning his comments that information professional are still needed to organize electronic information. He stated that electronic materials sometimes cannot tell us their own subject. I thought this to be an interesting comment. I hope to get more information from him.

E-MAIL COMMUNICATION:
>>> Hjørland Birger <BH@db.dk> 02/07/05 3:04 AM >>>
Dear Edward, no, I regret, this paper is not available in English. As you can see on thepage numbers it was only a small paper. Did you find anything useful in my English-language papers?
kind regards
Birger
-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----Fra: Edward Walton [mailto:walton_edward@stumail.emporia.edu]Sendt: 6. februar 2005 16:55Til: bh@db.dkEmne: Kunskapsorganisation
Dr. Hjorland,
I am doing research on Knowledge Organization in relation to e-books. Ihave read several of your articles on KO, including "Fundamentals ofKnowledged Organization". I found a citation for "Kunskapsoganistion"that I thought had great application for my research, but I was unableto find an English version. Is this article available in English?
As part of my Ph.D. class on Information Organization, I am recording myprogress in a blog. If you find the time to look at another studentswork, I would appreciate any comments you would be willing tocontribute. The website for the blog is ko-ebooks.blogspot.com.
Thanks,Ed Walton

Kunskapsorganisation

2005-02-05T17:05:00.000-06:00

I found what looks like a great article by Hjorland, but it is not in English. The English abstract looks like the kind of article that would be very insightful. Based on the abstract I believe the title is Knowledge Organization. I seems to cover the some of the issues I'm interested in.

Abstract:
Knowledge organization
The article discusses the following issues: 1) The future role of libraries in providing subject access to documents. 2) Whether knowledge organisation is needed in the future electronic environment. 3) What the principles of knowledge organisation are and 4) What will be the role of librarians and information specialists in the organisation of knowledge?

Hjorland, B. (2000). Kunskapsorganisation. Tidskrift for dokumentation, 55(2): 51-5.

New Blog

2005-02-05T15:29:00.000-06:00

This is the beginning of my adventures in learning about knowledge organization particularily in relation to e-books.

I have working in information management positions most of my carreer, but this is the first time, I have looked at information organization from a theoretical framework. I have been focused on the practical issue related to specific work products.

I am currently the dean of a university library that implemented a e-book system about 2 years ago with the assumption that students would embrace the technology. The university implemented a netLibrary system (http://www.netlibrary.com) with a collection of 16k+ e-books available on a wide variety of disciplines. The result is students do not care to use the e-books, but actually prefer hardcopy materials. We have learned this is true of electronic journals as well. Students find journals online, but print them to read and write papers.

As part of the LI924 class assignment, I have set up this blog to track my inquires into knowledge organization theory and it's implications on e-books. The first issue that I face is the fact the e-books is a subset of digital data. Everywhere one looks, information is being digitized in one form or another. My challenge will be to look at topics on digitized information with a view to e-books. When I refer to e-books, I am defining e-books in the context of books published in electronic format in a commercially available system. I am not referring to digitized materials in stand-alone collections.

For example, Birger Hjorland(1) in summarizing the fundamental issues in knowledge organization (KO) discusses five technology drive stages in KO which can apply to e-books, but is not specifically about e-books.

(1) Hjorland, B. (2003). Fundamentals of knowledge organization. Knowledge Organization, 30(2):87-111.