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LIBR 502: fOUNDATIONS OF RESOURCE DESCRIPTION AND ACCESS – COURSE SYLLABUS

 

Program: Master of Library and Information Studies
Year: 2006-2007 Winter Session, term 1
Course Schedule: Tuesday 9:00-12:00
Location: Family & Nutritional Sciences 40
Instructor: Joseph T. Tennis
Office location: TEF III 338
Office phone: 604-822-2431
Office hours: by appointment
E-mail address: jtennis@interchange.ubc.ca

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Course Goal: Serves as an introduction to issues in organization of information and documents including: analysis of intellectual and physical characteristics of documents; principles and practice in surrogate creation, including standards and selection of metadata elements; theory of classification, including semantic relationships and facet analysis; creation of controlled vocabularies; and display and arrangement. Provides the student with the analytical tools to assess how information is organized in an information system.

Course Objectives:
Upon completion of this course, students will:

• understand the basic nature and characteristics of documents
• be able to identify core issues in the selection, arrangement, and formation of metadata elements in surrogates
• be able to describe the basic purposes and processes of authority control
• be able to analyze subjects on a conceptual level
• be able to recognize and describe different types of classification schemes and controlled vocabularies
• articulate the purposes of bibliographic control and resource discovery
• demonstrate an understanding of the general role of resource description and access in the information transfer process, and its particular role in information systems design and operation

Course Topics:

• representation, organization, and control of information
• bibliographic control
• documents and works in information systems
• catalogues and their objectives and functions
• resource description
• resource access
• authority control
• encoding descriptions
• interpreting documents for their significant characteristics
• vocabulary control for information systems
• subject languages
• classificatory structures
• metadata for resource discovery
• application profiles
• semantic web

Prerequisites: LIBR 500 and LIBR 501 required as co- or prerequisite; LIBR 503 preferred as co-requisite. LIBR 502 is limited to SLAIS students admitted to the MLIS or Joint Degree Program, to students admitted to the MAS program and taking the First Nations Curriculum Concentration, or to education students in the MEd in teacher-librarianship program. Other students may be admitted to LIBR502 with the approval of the SLAIS Graduate Adviser.

Format of the course: Lecture, discussion, workshops, and guest speakers.

Required and Recommended Reading:

[•••• THIS LIST IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE BY INSTRUCTOR ••••]

Texts to buy:

• Wilson, P. (1968). Two kinds of power: an essay on bibliographic control. ( Berkeley : University of California ).
• Custom Course Materials

Recommended:

• Taylor, A. (2004). Organization of information. 2nd ed. Westport , CT : Libraries Unlimited. And its supplemental glossary: http://www.pitt.edu/~agtaylor/courses/glos-sup.html

Notes on Readings :
My class has three types of readings: Required, Optional, and Reference. Required readings are not marked, however Optional and Reference readings are marked. There are also resources that require a VPN to access.

Required* – you are expected to read these before class the class session, and be able to comment on these readings

Optional – these readings offer additional perspectives, information, and context for weekly topics

Reference Material – these readings are not to be “read” but rather, to be used for assignments, practice exercises, and for future information work related to information organization

[VPN] – these readings require you to log in either by proxy or by VPN to access them, if you’re off campus. For information on proxy or VPN see: http://www.library.ubc.ca/home/proxyinfo/

* Where you are not required to read the whole piece, I have placed a [skim] note next to the citation

Schedule of Readings

Week 1: Introduction to Resource Description and Access
No readings required.

Week 2: Systems of Description and Access
[search for “Mark Twain”]
Catalogues:
The University of British Columbia ’s Catalogue. Available: http://webcat.library.ubc.ca

North Carolina State University ’s Catalogue. Available: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/

The George Kelly Paperback and Pulp Fiction Collection. Available: http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/kelley/KelleyAdvanced.asp

WorldCat. Available [VPN]: http://tinyurl.com/hbh9c. And the Dewey Browser version. Available: http://deweyresearch.oclc.org/ddcbrowser/wcat

Library Thing:
http://www.librarything.com

Social Info on Library Thing
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/1530

Amazon.com
Available: http://www.amazon.com

Thesauri
Art and Architecture Thesaurus
http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/vocabularies/aat/

ERIC Thesaurus
http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal? _nfpb=true&_pageLabel=Thesaurus&_nfls=false

Indexes (“Databases”):
INSPEC. Available [VPN]: http://www.engineeringvillage2.com

BIOSIS. Available [VPN]: http://tinyurl.com/f2yd3

Examples for Week 1 [in the CCM]

Burke, T. (2004). Burn the catalog. Available: http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/tburke1/perma12004.html

Borges, J. L. (1998). "Library of Babel ." In Collected fictions. Andrew Hurley (Trans.) ( New York : Viking): 112-118.

Optional:
Encyclopedias:
Wikipedia. Available: http://www.wikipedia.com/

Reader’s Advisory Tools: FictionFinder. http://fictionfinder.oclc.org/

Image Search Tools: http://flamenco.berkeley.edu/demos.html

Borko, H., & Bernier, C. L. (1975). "Characteristics and types of abstracts." In Abstracting concepts and methods ( San Diego , CA : Academic Press): 13-21.

Week 3: Catalogues, Classifications, and Indexes in the Life of the User and the Information Professional
Wilson, P. (1968). “Introduction” In Two Kinds of Power: An Essay on Bibliographical Control. ( Berkeley , CA : University of California ): 1-5.

[user studies and behavior – pick one]
Novotny, E. (2004). “I don’t think I click: a protocol analysis study of use of a library online catalog in the internet age.” In College and Research Libraries 65(6): 525-537.

Stieg Dalton, M. and Charnigo, L. (2004). “Historians and their information resources.” In College and Research Libraries 65(5): 400-425.

Graham, R. Y. (2004). “Subject no-hits searches in an academic library online catalog: an exploration of two potential ameliorations.” In College and Research Libraries 65(1): 36-54.

[catalogues and the web user studies – pick one]
Slone, D. J. (2005). “A bird's eye view of cross-platform web interaction.” In Journal of Documentation 61(5): 657-669.

Campbell , D. G. and Fast, K. (2004). “Panizzi, Lubetzky, and Google: How the Modern Web Environment is Reinventing the Theory of Cataloguing.” In Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science 28(3): 25-38.

Week 4: Texts and Works
Wilson, P. (1968). "Chapter I: Bibliographical Universe." In Two Kinds of Power: An Essay on Bibliographical Control. ( Berkeley , CA : University of California Press): 6-19.

Smiraglia, R. P. (2003). "The history of 'the work' in the modern catalog." In Cataloging and classification quarterly 35(3/4): 553-567.

IFLA. (1997). Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records. Section: 3: 12-29. Available: http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/frbr/frbr.pdf

Week 5: Document Analysis and Indexing Languages [DCMI]
Guest lecture, October 3, 9-Noon, FNS 40 - Ann Doyle, Xwi7xwa Library
Make up class, October 10, 9-Noon, FNS 40

Taylor, A. (2004). “Subject Analysis.” In The Organization of Information 2 nd edition. ( London : Libraries Unlimited): 241-259.

ISO 5963-1985. Documentation – Methods for Examining Documents, Determining Their Subjects, and Selecting Indexing Terms.

Wilson, P. (1968). "Chapter V: Subjects and the Sense of Position." In Two Kinds of Power: an Essay in Bibliographical Control. ( Berkeley , CA : University of California Press): 69-92.

Wilson, P. (1968). “Chapter VI: Indexing, Hunting and Coupling” In Two Kinds of Power: an Essay in Bibliographical Control ( Berkeley , CA : University of California Press): 93-113.

Week 6: Indexing, Relationships and Controlled Vocabularies
Make up class, October 11, 1:30-4:30, FNS 40

Aitchison, J., Gilchrist, A., and Bawden, D. (2000). “Section F Structure and relationships.” In Thesaurus Construction and Use: A Practical Manual ( Chicago : Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers): 49-84.

ANSI/NISO. (2005). Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and> Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies. Available: http://www.niso.org/standards/

Week 7: Classification
Rowley, J.  (1992). "Chapter 13. The Theory of Bibliographic Classification," In Organizing Knowledge:  An Introduction to Information Retrieval. 2nd ed. ( Hants , England : Ashgate): 176-199.

Hjørland, B. (1998) "The classification of psychology: a case study in the classification of a knowledge field."  In Knowledge Organization, 25(4): 162-201.

Week 8: Representation
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). "Metaphorical systematicity: highlighting and hiding." In Metaphors we live by ( Chicago : University of Chicago Press ): 10-13.

Wilson, P. (1968). "Chapter II: Describing and Exploiting." In Two kinds of power: an essay on bibliographical control ( Berkeley : University of California ): 20-40.

Week 9: Bibliographic Description and Authority Control
Joint Steering Committee for Revision of AACR. (2002). Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition. 2002 Revision [AACR2r 2002]: 1-47.

Hagler, R. (1997). "Access points."  In TheBibliographic Record and Information Technology.  3rd ed.  ( Chicago :  ALA ):  95-121.

Joint Steering Committee for the Revision of Anglo-American Cataloging Rules. (2006). RDA: Resource Description and Access: Frequently Asked Questions. Available: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/jsc/rdafaq.html

Optional
Bates, M. J. (1989). “The design of berrypicking techniques for the online search interface.” In Online Review 13 (October): 407-424.

Week 10: Purposes of the Catalogue [ASIST]
Guest lecture, November 7, 9-Noon, FNS 40 - Susan Andrews, Principal Cataloguer UBC
Make up class, November 14, 9-Noon, FNS 40

Svenonius, E. (2001). "Bibliographic Objectives." In The Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization. ( Cambridge : MIT Press): 15-30.

Tillet, B. (2001). “Bibliographic relationships.” In Relationships in Organization of Knowledge. (Bean, C. A. and Green, R. eds.). ( Norell , MA : Kluwer): 19-35.

Wilson, P. (1968). “Bibliographical instruments.” In Two Kinds of Power: An Essay on Bibliographical Control ( Berkeley , CA : University of California Press): 55-68.

Week 11: Resource Discovery: Metadata and the Dublin Core
Make up class, November 15, 9-Noon Koerner Library 216 (including guest lecture by Mark Jordan, Head of Systems, SFU Library)

Hillmann, D. (2005). Using Dublin Core. [about 6 pages]. Available: http://www.dublincore.org/documents/usageguide/

Duval, E., Hodges, W., Sutton, S. A., Weibel, S. L. (2002). "Metadata principles and practicalities." In D-Lib Magazine 8(4). [about 14 pages]. Available: http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april02/weibel/04weibel.html

Week 12: Web Description: Social Tagging / Semantic Web
Golder, S. A. and Huberman, B. A. (2006). “Usage patterns of collaborative tagging systems.” In Journal of Information Science, 32(2): 198-208.

Gruninger, M. and Jintae, L. (2002). “Ontology Applications and Design.” In Communications of the ACM 45(2): 39-41.

Shadbolt, N., Hall, W., and Berners-Lee, T. (2006). “The Semantic Web Revisited.” In IEEE Intelligent Systems 21(3): 96-101. Available: http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12614/01/Semantic_Web_Revisted.pdf

Week 13: Wrap up – Resource Description and Access
Optional
Bibliographic Services Task Force, University of California Libraries. (2005). Rethinking how we provide bibliographic services for the University of California . Available in full: http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/sopag/BSTF/Final.pdf
Available in executive summary: http://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/sopag/BSTF/ExecSum.pdf

The Cornell Report or The Calhoun Report. Calhoun, K. (2006). The Changing Nature of the Catalog and its Integration with Other Discovery Tools. Prepared for the Library of Congress. Available: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/calhoun-report-final.pdf

Thomas Mann’s response. Mann, T. (2006). The Changing Nature of the Catalog and its Integration with Other Discovery Tools. Final Report March 17, 2006 . Prepared for the Library of Congress by Karen Calhoun. A Critical Review. Prepared for AFSCME 2910, The Library of Congress Professional Guild representing over 1,500 professional employees. Available: http://www.guild2910.org/AFSCMECalhounReviewREV.pdf

Course Assignments, Due dates and Weight in relation to final course mark:

Assignment	Due Date	Weight
System Survey	Week 4	25%
Act of Indexing	Week 7	25%
Bibliographic Description	Week 11	25%
Portfolio	Finals Week	25%

Course Schedule [week-by-week]:

Date	Topic	Assignment
Week 1	Introduction to Resource Description and Access
Week 2	Systems of Description and Access
Week 3	Catalogues, Classifications, and Indexes in the Life of the User and the Information Professional
Week 4	Texts and Works	Systems Survey due
Week 5	[DCMI] - Document Analysis and Indexing Languages
Week 6	Indexing, Relationships and Controlled Vocabularies
Week 7	Classification	Act of Indexing due
Week 8	Representation
Week 9	Bibliographic Description and Authority Control
Week 10	[ASIST] - Purposes of the Catalogue
Week 11	Resource Discovery: Metadata and the Dublin Core	Bibliographic Description due
Week 12	Web Description: Social Tagging / Semantic Web
Week 13	Wrap up – Resource Description and Access	Portfolio due

Attendance: The calendar states: “Regular attendance is expected of students in all their classes (including lectures, laboratories, tutorials, seminars, etc.). Students who neglect their academic work and assignments may be excluded from the final examinations. Students who are unavoidably absent because of illness or disability should report to their instructors on return to classes.”

The University accommodates students with disabilities who have registered with the Disability Resource Centre. The University accommodates students whose religious obligations conflict with attendance, submitting assignments, or completing scheduled tests and examinations. Please let your instructor know in advance, preferably in the first week of class, if you will require any accommodation on these grounds. Students who plan to be absent for varsity athletics, family obligations, or other similar commitments, cannot assume they will be accommodated, and should discuss their commitments with the instructor before the drop date.

Academic Dishonesty : Please review the UBC Calendar “Academic regulations” for the university policy on cheating, plagiarism, and other forms of academic dishonesty. Also visit www.arts.ubc.ca and go to the students’ section for useful information on avoiding plagiarism and on correct documentation.

Evaluation: All assignments will be awarded letter grades using the evaluative criteria given on the SLAIS web site.

Written & Spoken English Requirement: Written and spoken work may receive a lower mark if it is, in the opinion of the instructor, deficient in English.

Course Discussion List:
Each of you must sign-up for the class internet discussion list. From whatever email account you wish to use, send the following [leave the Subject line blank]:

address-- To: majordomo@interchange.ubc.ca
message-- subscribe l-502
end

This is the mechanism that we will use to make announcements to you outside class. You are also welcome to post comments/questions to the list if relevant to other students. For particular problems or questions you should e-mail or phone me directly.