Competency G: Introduction
G. Demonstrate understanding of basic principles and standards involved in organizing information such as classification and controlled vocabulary systems, cataloging systems, metadata schemas or other systems for making information accessible to a particular clientele.
With the advent of the internet and the rapid expansion of computing and information storage capacity, the current age holds a unique set of opportunities and challenges for information professionals. Just as a skeleton provides shape and strength to a body, so do information organization systems provide form and function to information stores.
Within traditional library structures, one of two classification systems are typically used: the Library of Congress system and the Dewey Decimal system (citation). The Dewey Decimal system is typically used in public libraries due to it’s ease of use, whereas the LOC system is usually used in academic libraries. Like all subject-based classification systems, both the Dewey Decimal and LOC systems have weaknesses, chiefly that they do not always account for new and evolving subjects or formats.
Within digital environments such as those within library catalogs, websites, or social media, information taxonomy is established through tagging; either with a controlled vocabulary or an uncontrolled vocabulary.
Controlled vocabulary is formed by the archive designers, and consists of items that can only be tagged with pre-determined terms. While this requires a great deal of up-front effort and may need to be modified as the archives grows, it benefits any information retrieval system used in conjunction with it by avoiding misleading or duplicate tags.
Uncontrolled vocabulary uses tags generated by the end user in order to form their taxonomy. This can result in an extremely flexible system that can keep up with rapidly evolving content such as what is found in social media. However, it can also create system bloat and weaken the information retrieval system by accepting tags that are nonsensical or misspelled.a
Over the course of our Beginning Cataloging and Classification class, we built up a list of records based on our current understanding of the class material. The end result was a set of 25 MARC (machine-readable cataloging) records created from nonfiction books of our choice. The purpose of this project was to learn, practice, and integrate the proper methodology for creating MARC records for nonfiction books, and to better understand the function and form of control records as a whole, as well as learning to use resources such as OCLC (https://www.oclc.org).
For this assignment, were were tasked with creating a set of controlled vocabulary for an MLIS pathway of our choice- mine being the Digital Curation pathway. To do this we started with a base description of the pathway compiled from nine academic journal articles. From there, we sifted through the language to locate the base concepts. Finally, we grouped like terms and refined the results until we had a condensed list of descriptor terms. It was fascinating to see how a huge range of topics under one umbrella could be distilled down into their most essential parts.
Application and Conclusion
While I am not involved with collection development at this time, understanding the concepts contained in Competency G as greatly helped in understanding my library’s current transition from Dewey Decimal to the Library of Congress classification system. Learning how tagging and taxonomy are integrated into information systems has also increased my proficiency in working with digital database-style programs such as Drupal and Workflows.