IMT530B: Organization of Information Resources

Master of Science in Information Management Executive Program-- Winter 2008


Readings

  • All readings are available on the course eReserves site.  Each week has required and optional readings, for those who wish to explore the topic further or get different viewpoints.  A few readings are very technical or extensive, and you may just want to scan them as indicated to get a sense of their content.  You are expected to read the required chapters and articles BEFORE the class session in which we discuss them.

The required text for the course is:

  • Taylor, Arlene G. The Organization of Information, 2nd ed. Westport, Conn. : Libraries Unlimited, 2004.

Readings from this book are indicated by the author's name and chapter at the beginning of each class session.

Saturday, January 12

Module 1a:  Course overview

Module 1b:  Nature and characteristics of information objects

  • Taylor, A. (2004).  Chapter 1-3
  • Buckland, M. (1997). What is a "Document"? Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 48(9), 804-809. <eReserves>
  • Levy, D. (2001). Meditation on a receipt. Chapter 1 of Scrolling Forward. New York: Arcade Pub. <eReserves>

Saturday, January 19

Module 2a:  Information systems

  • Taylor, A. (2004).  Chapter 5
  • Selamat, M.H. & J. Choudrie. (2004). The diffusion of tacit knowledge and its implications on information systems: The role of meta-abilities. Journal of Knowledge Management, 8(2), 128-139. <eReserves>
  • Soergel, D. (1985). Chapter 5: The structure of information systems. <eReserves>
  • (optional) Broder, A.Z. & A.C. Ciccolo. (2004). Towards the next generation of information search technology. IBM Systems Journal, 43(3), 451-454. <eReserves>

Module 2b:  Modeling information objects and relationships

Saturday, January 26

Module 3a:  Ontologies

  • Maedche, A. et al. (2003 March/April). Ontologies for enterprise knowledge management. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 26-33. <eReserves>
  • Noy, N. & McGuiness, D. (n.d.). Ontology development 101: A guide to creating your first ontology. Retrieved December 16, 2005 from Stanford University, Deborah L. McGuiness web site: http://www.ksl.stanford.edu/people/dlm/papers/ontology101/ontology101-noy-mcguinness.html. <eReserves>
  • Uschold, M. (2003).  Where Are the Semantics in the Semantic Web? AI Magazine, Vol 24; Part 3, pages 25-36. <eReserves>
  • (optional) Kim, H.H. (2005). ONTOWEB: Implementing an ontology-based web retrieval system. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 56(11), 1167-1176. <eReserves>
  • (optional) Kim, H.M. & M. Biehl. (2005). Exploiting the small-worlds of the Semantic Web to connect heterogeneous, local ontologies. Information Technology and Management, 6, 89-96. <eReserves>
  • (optional) Qin, J. & S. Paling. (2001). Converting a controlled vocabulary into an ontology: the case of GEM. Information Research, 6(2). <eReserves>
  • (optional) Staab, S., R. Studer, H.P. Schnurr, & Y. Sure. (2001 January/February). Knowledge processes and ontologies. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 26-34. <eReserves>
  • (optional) Stephens, L.M. & M.N. Huhns. (2001 September/October). Consensus ontologies: Reconciling the semantics of web pages and agents. IEEE Internet Computing, 92-95. <eReserves>

Module 3b:  Metadata standards and schemas

  • Taylor, A. (2004).  Chapter 6
  • Taylor, A. (2004).  Chapter 4
  • Burnett, K. (1999). A Comparison of the Two Traditions of Metadata Development. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(13), 1209-1217. <eReserves>
  • (optional) Bodoff, D. et al. (2005). "Web Metadata Standards: Observations and Prescriptions," IEEE Software, vol. 22, no. 1, 2005, pp. 78-85.  <eReserves>
  • (optional) NISO. (2004). Understanding metadata standards. NISO Press.  <eReserves>

Saturday, February 2

Module 4a:  Application profiles

Module 4b:  Description and access

Saturday, February 9

Module 5a:  Authority control and Encoding Schemes

Module 5b:  Subject analysis and Subject Indexing

  • Taylor, A. (2004).  Chapter 9. 
  • Layne, S. (1994).  Some Issues in the Indexing of Images. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 45(8), 583-588. <eReserves>
  • Mai, J. (2004). The role of documents, domains and decisions in indexing. Advances in Knowledge Organization, 9, 207-213. <eReserves>
  • Rowley, J. (1994). The Controlled versus natural indexing languages debate revisited. Journal of Information Science, 20(2), 108-119.  <eReserves>
  • (scan) ISO (1985).  ISO Standard 5963:  Documentation—Methods for Examining Documents, Determining their Subjects, and Selecting Index Terms. <eReserves>
  • (optional) Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire and Dangerous Things:  What Categories Reveal About the Mind. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press. <eReserves>
  • (optional) Mai, J. (2000). Deconstructing the indexing process. Advances in Librarianship, 23, 269-298. <eReserves>
  • (optional) Sykes, J. (2001). The value of indexing. A White Paper Prepared for Factiva, a Dow Jones and Reuters Company. <eReserves>
  • (optional) Wilson, P. (1968). Chapter 5: Subjects and the Sense of Position  <eReserves>

Saturday, February 16

Mid-Term Assignment due at beginning of class

Module 6a:  Introduction to controlled vocabularies

  • Buckland, M. (1999). Vocabulary as a central concept in Library and Information Science. Preprint of paper published as Vocabulary as a Central Concept in Library and Information Science in: Digital Libraries: Interdisciplinary Concepts, Challenges, and Opportunities. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science (CoLIS3, Dubrovnik, Croatia, 23-26 May 1999). Ed. by T. Arpanac et al. Zagreb: Lokve, 3-12.  <eReserves>
  • Rosenfeld, L. & P. Morville. (2002). Chapter 9, "Thesauri, Controlled Vocabularies, and Metadata" in Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. 2nd ed. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly. (p. 176-208). [Available as e-book here] <eReserves>
  • (optional) McCulloch, E. (2004). Multiple terminologies: An obstacle to information retrieval. Library Review, 53 (5/6), 297-300. <eReserves>
  • (optional) Will, L.  (2005).  Glossary of terms relating to thesauri and other forms of structured vocabulary for information retrievalhttp://www.willpowerinfo.co.uk/glossary.htm.  <eReserves>

Module 6b:  Social tagging

  • Golder, S.A. & B.A. Huberman. (2006). The structure of collaborative tagging systems. Journal of Information Science, Vol. 32, No. 2, 198-208. <eReserves>
  • Guy, Marieke; Tonkin, Emma. (2006). "Folksonomies: tidying up tags?" D-Lib Magazine 12(1). doi:10.1045/january2006-guy. <eReserves>
  • Peterson, Elaine. (2006). "Beneath the Metadata. Some Philosophical Problems with Folksonomy". D-Lib Magazine, November 2006, Volume 12 Number 11.  http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november06/peterson/11peterson.html <eReserves>
  • Shirky, Clay.  (2005). Ontology is overrated.  http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html  <eReserves>
  • (optional) Cutrell, E., Robbins, D.C., Dumais, S.T. & Sarin, R. (2006). Fast, flexible filtering with Phlat - Personal search and organization made easy. In Proceedings of CHI'06, Human Factors in Computing Systems, (Montréal, April 2006), ACM press, 261-270. <eReserves>
  • (optional) Damianos, Laurie; Griffith, John; Cuomo, Donna.  Onomi: Social Bookmarking on a Corporate Intranet. (2006).  WWW2006 Tagging Workshop.  <eReserves>
  • (optional) Millen, David R; Feinberg, Jonathan; Kerr, Bernard. (2006). Dogear: Social Bookmarking in the Enterprise.   CHI 2006 Proceedings • Social Computing 1 April 22-27, 2006 • Montréal, Québec, Canada <eReserves>
  • (optional) Weinberger, D. (2006). "Tagging and why it matters." http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/2005-0. <eReserves>

Saturday, February 23

Module 7a: Creating controlled vocabularies

Module 7b:  Semantic factoring and semantic relationships

  • Clarke, S. (2001). Thesaural Relationships. Relationships in the Organization of Knowledge, Ed. by C.A. Bean & R. Green, 37-52.  <eReserves>
  • Svenonius, E. (2005). Design of Controlled Vocabularies. in Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, 1 (1), 822-838. Retrieved December 29, 2005, from http://www.dekker.com/sdek/abstract~db=enc~content=a713532081 <eReserves>
  • (optional) Kwasnik, B.H. (1999). The role of classification in knowledge representation and discovery. Library Trends, 48(1), 22-47. <eReserves>
  • (optional) Shearer, J. A. (2004). A Practical Exercise in Building a Thesaurus. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 37(3/4), 35-56. <eReserves>
  • (optional) Soergel, D. (1985). Chapter 14: Index language structure I: Conceptual. <eReserves>

Saturday, March 1

Module 8a:  Facet analysis

Module 8b:  Practical example of metadata in action

Saturday, March 8

Module 9a:  Construction and use of classification schemes

Module 9b:  Issues in classification

  • Gould, S. (1983). What, if anything, is a zebra? Ch. 28 of Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections on Natural History. New York: Norton, 355-365.
  • Mai, J. (2004). Classification in context: Relativity, reality, and representation. Knowledge Organization, 31(1), 39-48.
  • Gladwell, M. (2006). Troublemakers: What pit bulls can teach us about profiling. The New Yorker, February 6, 2006. Retrieved February 2, 2006.
  •  (optional) Mai, J. (2004) Classification of the Web: Challenges and Inquiries. Knowledge Organization. 31 (2): 92-97.

Saturday, March 15

Final Assignment due at beginning of class

Module 10a:  Information displays and arrangement

  • Taylor, A. (2004).  Chapter 12 
  • Ceglar, A. et al. (2005). Visualizing hierarchical associations. Knowledge and Information Systems, 8, 257-275. 
  • Dürsteler, J. (2005).  Inf@Vis!:  The Digital Magazine of InfoVis.net.  http://www.infovis.net/index.php?lang=2
  • (optional) Ziade, R. & M. Kittredge. (n.d.). Information objects: Applying cognitive load theory & object-oriented thinking to information design. ARC90 White Paper. 

Module 10b:  Course wrapup and closing discussion