LBSC 773: Classification Theory

Spring 2010
Wednesdays 5:30 pm-8:15 pm
Hornbake 0108
Section 0101

Kari M. Kraus, PhD

Office: 4121H Hornbake
Office hrs: Wednesday 4:00-5:00 pm or by appt.
karimkraus@gmail.com

College of Information Studies

Room 4105 Hornbake Library Building, South Wing
University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland

CATALOG DESCRIPTION
Survey of classificatory principles from bibliographic, philosophical, biological,
psychological, and linguistic perspectives. Challenges to traditional principles from the
cognitive sciences and their implementations for bibliographic classification.

COURSE OBJECTIVES
At the end of the semester, students should be able to:

• appreciate the variety of contexts in which classificatory thinking comes into play
• understand classification not only as a set of prescriptive rules, but also as a design
space
• offer historical and cross-cultural perspectives on classification systems
• recognize how classification systems are enabled and constrained by the architecture of
the human brain
• provide interdisciplinary perspectives on classification systems
• discuss current trends and issues in the field, such as user-driven approaches to
classification
• recognize the ethical, political, and societal stakes of classification
• discriminate between synchronic and diachronic classification systems
• evaluate existing classification schemes and identify their underlying assumptions
• identify and distinguish between qualitative and quantitative approaches to
classification
• inter-relate classification with related concepts, such as notation and collation

1
TEXTS
The following texts are required and can be purchased through Amazon or the campus
bookstore:

Hunter, Eric J. Classification Made Simple. 3rd ed. Ashgate, 2009. ISBN: 978-0-7-5467558-
7
Kövecses, Zoltán. Metaphor: A Practical Introduction. Oxford University Press, USA, 2002.
ISBN: 978-0-1-9514511-3
Wright, Alex. Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages. Cornell University Press,
2008. ISBN: 978-0-8-0147509-2

Additional readings will be distributed as handouts, accessible on the WWW, or made

available through Blackboard, our course management system.

It is your responsibility to bring copies of the required readings to class on the day we're
slated to discuss them. In the case of electronic texts, copies saved locally to disk are also
acceptable—indeed encouraged—for those with netbooks or laptops.

COURSE POLICIES AND EVALUATION

Academic Accommodations. If you have a documented disability, you should contact

Disability Support Services 0126 Shoemaker Hall. Each semester students with documented
disabilities should apply to DSS for accommodation request forms which you can provide to
your professors as proof of your eligibility for accommodations. The rules for eligibility and
the types of accommodations a student may request can be reviewed on the DSS web site at
http://www.counseling.umd.edu/DSS/receiving_serv.html.

Religious Observances. The University System of Maryland policy provides that students
should not be penalized because of observances of their religious beliefs; students shall be
given an opportunity, whenever feasible, to make up within a reasonable time any academic
assignment that is missed due to individual participation in religious observances. It is the
responsibility of the student to inform the instructor of any intended absences for religious
observances in advance. Notice should be provided as soon as possible but no later than the
end of the schedule adjustment period.

Academic Integrity. The University of Maryland has a nationally recognized Code of

Academic Integrity, administered by the Student Honor Council. This Code sets standards
for academic integrity at Maryland for all undergraduate and graduate students. As a student
you are responsible for upholding these standards for this course. It is very important for you
to be aware of the consequences of cheating, fabrication, facilitation, and plagiarism. For
more information on the Code of Academic Integrity or the Student Honor Council, please
visit http://www.studenthonorcouncil.umd.edu/whatis.html
2
The University of Maryland is one of a small number of universities with a student-
administered Honors Code and an Honors Pledge, available on the web at
http://www.jpo.umd.edu/aca/honorpledge.html. The code prohibits students from cheating on
exams, plagiarizing papers, submitting the same paper for credit in two courses without
authorization, buying papers, submitting fraudulent documents, and forging signatures.

Late Work. All assigned work is due on the date given on the course calendar, unless you
have extenuating circumstances and have made specific prior arrangements with me. Late
work will be docked up to one full letter grade (or not accepted at all if more than a week
overdue). If you have a documented disability and wish to discuss academic accommodations
with me, please let me know as soon as possible.

Late Arrivals. Attendance will be taken at the start of each class. My policy is to count two
late arrivals as one absence.

Attendance. Because it is a relatively small class, LBSC773 allows for far more student
input than a large lecture course would permit: you have a voice in class discussions and your
contributions add to our collective knowledge. If you are absent, you will be missed: the class
simply won't function optimally without you. I will confer with anyone who seems to be
having trouble making it to class regularly, and may ask such persons to drop the course.
(Clear documentation of prolonged absences for extenuating circumstances, such as H1N1,
may lead me to consider alternatives to in-class participation such as electronic postings.)
Please note that it is your responsibility to contact me about material you may have missed.

Email. You are welcome to email me to clarify an assignment, schedule an appointment,

notify me about an illness or university-sanctioned absence, or discuss other course-related
matters. Please do not send me "why did I get this grade" emails in response to graded
assignments. While I am happy to answer them, questions of this nature need to be handled
in person. Come see me during office hours or set up an appointment. Additionally, please
do not submit assignments to me via email unless I have specifically requested that you do so.

Course Evaluations. Your participation in the evaluation of courses through CourseEvalUM

is a responsibility you hold as a student member of our academic community. Your feedback
is confidential and important to the improvement of teaching and learning at the University as
well as to the tenure and promotion process. CourseEvalUM will be open for you to
complete your evaluations for spring semester courses between Tues, April 27 and Wed, May
12. Please go directly to the website (www.courseevalum.umd.edu) to complete your
evaluations starting April 27. By completing all of your evaluations each semester, you will
have the privilege of accessing online, at Testudo, the evaluation reports for the thousands of
courses for which 70% or more students submitted their evaluations.

Assignments. Written instructions for each assignment will be offered a week or more in
advance of a due date. I will collect individual assignments and projects on the dates

3
specified on the syllabus and return them to you with feedback and a letter grade. All grading
will use the university's plus/minus system. The requirements for the course, and their weight
in determining your final grade, are as follows:

--Participation: 10% (attendance, class discussion, news items, blog posts)

--Class Facilitation (group assignment): 20%
--Blog Entries (individual assignment): 20%
--Term Paper Proposal (individual assignment): 15%
--Final Term Paper (individual assignment): 35%

WEEK BY WEEK COURSE CALENDAR

(tentative schedule, subject to revision; any changes will be announced in class)

week 1 overview due readings assignments

wed. 27 Introduction to
january LBSC 773
week 2 overview due readings assignments

*Selection from Kenneth D.

Bailey, Typologies and
*Blog post
Taxonomies: An Introduction
*Fundamental guidelines
to Classification Techniques
Classificatory introduced
(Blackboard)
Concepts (submit top
*Alex Wright, Glut, pp. 5-38,
*The Limits of three entries for
66-70, 137-141, 152-164, 171-
wed. 3 Abstraction evaluation on
180, 184-192, Appendices
february *Historical 31 March)
*Joel Spolsky, Law of Leaky
Perspectives on *Class
Abstractions (Recommended)
Classification Facilitation
*Umberto Eco, The Search for
(Aristotle, guidelines
the Perfect Language,
Wilkins, Leibniz) introduced
Selections on Leibniz and John
*Sign-Up Sheet
Wilkins (Recommended)
(Blackboard)

week 3 overview due readings assignments

wed. 10 Hunter, Classification Made

4
 Review: Faceted
and Hierarchical
february Classification Simple, pp. 9-72; 85-107
Schemes

week 4 overview due readings assignments

*Melanie Feinberg, “Beyond
Retrieval: A Proposal to
Expand the Design Space of
Classification” (Blackboard) Term Paper
*Melanie Feinberg, “An Proposal
*Classification as
wed. 17 Examination of Authority in guidelines
a Design Space
february Social Classification Systems” introduced
*Folksonomies
*Jennifer Trant, “Social (proposal due:
classification and folksonomy 10 March)
in art museums: Early data
from the steve.museum tagger
prototype”
week 5 overview due readings assignments
wed. 24
TBA
february
week 6 overview due readings assignments

Conceptual
Metaphors and Zoltan Kovecses, Metaphor: A
wed. 3
Cognitive Practical Introduction
march
Linguistics

week 7 overview due readings assignments

*Selection from Sorting Things
Out: Classification and Its
The Political, Consequences (Blackboard)
Term Paper
wed. 10 Ethical, and *Eleanor Rosch, “Principles of
Proposal
march Social Stakes of Categorization” (Blackboard)
Due
Classification *George Lakoff, “Cognitive
Models and Prototype Theory”
(Blackboard)
5
week 8 ovcrview due readings assignments
*Hunter, Classification Made
Simple, “More about
Notation,” pp. 73-84
Spring Break *Jeffrey Long, “How Could the
wed. 17 (reading list will Notation Be the Limitation?”
march be revised (Blackboard)
accordingly) *Jeffrey Long, “Ultra-
Structure: A New Notation for
Representing Business and
Other Rules” (Blackboard)

week 9 overview due assignments

readings
Richard Rinehart, The Media
Art Notation System:
Documenting and Preserving
wed. 24
Notation Digital / Media Art
march
Jon Ippolito, "Death by Wall
Label"
Introduction to Labanotation
week 10 overview due readings assignments
*Significant Blog Posts
*M. Hedstrom, M. and C. A
Properties of (choose
Lee, “Significant Properties of
Digital Objects three to
wed. 31 Digital Objects: Definitions,
*FRBR Entities submit from
march Applications, Implications”
and Relationships the ones
(Blackboard)
*FRBRoo Entities you’ve
*TBA
and Relationships authored)
week 11 overview due readings assignments
wed. 7
april *Selections from Aitchison,
Diachroni Words in the Mind: An
*Cognitive
c Introduction to the Mental
Linguistics
Classificat Lexicon (Blackboard)
*Organization of
ion and *Selection from Stanislas
the Mental
Numeric Dehaene, Reading in the Brain,
Lexicon
Taxonom Chpt. 1, “How Do We Read?”
*Wordnet
y; (Blackboard)
collation *WordNet
april

6
week 12 overview due readings assignments
*V. S. Ramachandran and
Diane Rogers-Ramachandran,
“The Neurology of Aesthetics”
(Blackboard)
*Classification:
*V. S. Ramachandran, BBC
Perspectives from
Reith Lectures 2003
Neuroscience
wed. 14 * Jorge Luis Borges, "Funes,
*Peak Shift
april the Memorius" (Blackboard)
*Classificatory
*Douglas Fox, “The Inner
Failure
Savant”
*Dissimilarity
*Recommended: A. R. Luria,
The Mind of Mnemonist: A
Little Book About a Vast
Memory
week 13 overview due readings assignments
*Megan Winget, “Describing
Art: An Alternative Approach
to Subject Access and
Interpretation"
Classification of *Nancy Mayer "Reclaiming
wed. 21
Images and Other Our History: The Mysterious
april
Cultural Artifacts Birth of Art and Design"
*William Adams,
“Archeological Classification:
Theory Versus Practice”
(Blackboard)
week 14 overview due readings assignments
wed. 28 *Diachronic Final Term *Robert J. O’Hara, “Trees of
april Classification and Papers History in Systematics and
Numeric Biology”
Taxonomy *Robert J. O’Hara, “Mapping
(Computational the Space of Time: Temporal
Biology, Representation in the Historical
Historical Sciences”
Linguistics, *David Searls, "From
Textual Criticism) Jabberwocky to Genome:
*Similarity Lewis Carroll and
Metrics Computational Biology"
(Blackboard)
*Selection from Charles
7
 Romesberg, Cluster Analysis
for Researchers (Blackboard)
week 15 overview due readings assignments
*Kraus, “Picture Criticism:
Textual Studies and the Image”
(Blackboard)
*Randall Cream, The Sapheos
Project: Transparency in Multi-
*Textual, Visual,
image Collation, Analysis, and
wed. 5 and Genomic
Representation
may Collation
*NINE’s Juxta Software
*Wrap-Up!
*Recommended: Steven Escar
Smith, " 'The Eternal Verities
Verified': Charlton Hinman and
the Roots of Mechanical
Collation”