Course blog

This week’s readings brought me back to my studies abroad at the University of Sussex in England. After completing an economics course to fulfill requirements for my UCLA major, I had the choice of many intriguing electives for the second half of the summer session. One class in particular, titled “Museums & Material Culture,” stood out, so I decided to give it a shot. Other than weekly field trips to museums around the country, we spent class time focusing on how curators make decisions on which objects to display, and how to classify them into different categories. As soon as I started to dive into the article “Classification and its Structures,” it reminded me of this museums course. Sperberg-McQueen defined ‘classification’ as having the purpose to first of all group together objects with shared properties, coupled with the ability to distinguish between things “which are different in ways relevant to the purpose of the classification.” This definition brought back memories of our field trip to the British Museum in London, where a curator sat us down and gave us a lesson on how they classify their massive collection of objects. While my time browsing objects in museums was spent looking at physical collections instead of digital images, both pertained to deciding what information is relevant, along with taking into account how information can be divided, and the long-term implications of decisions made by a curator, which is similar to someone who sorts out a digital archive.

As I continued to read through the articles, I kept thinking of the curator at the British Museum. Annie Gilliland’s article “Setting the State,” which focuses on the increasing amount of metadata available, reminded me of the vast database the museum boasts. Back in 1998, the British Museum began to put its massive collection online, which allowed viewers to click through about 260,000 exhibits (link). Now that the museum’s collection has expanded to eight million objects, the database has grown accordingly. The process of information analytics is utilized to produce the metadata, which can be worked on in order to find similarities between various objects.

Meticulous attention to the creation of metadata has become crucial in today’s digitally obsessed world, paired with the vast expansion of digitally accessible information. With a collection that is commonly regarded as the largest and most comprehensive in the world, careful systematic utilization of metadata has proved to be of the highest importance for the British Museum.

 

Julia Gaffield’s article, Haiti’s Declaration of Independence: Digging for Lost Documents in the Archives of the Atlantic World explores the significance regarding the absence of historically-enriched documents and the restlessness that can follow.  Soon after becoming the second independent nation in the Americas, Haiti’s copies of its Declaration of Independence somehow disappeared.  This document not only represented its origins, but provided a symbolic statement that argued and gave credibility to its independence as a nation.  Even after two centuries, Haiti’s own Declaration of Independence remained lost, with no leads on its whereabouts.

Eventually, through vigorous research and devoted traveling, Julia Gaffield discovered copies of the document.  This not only brought closure, but ease to the country that had recently endured a devastating earthquake.  Though a great ending, this discovery brings to light the reality of other significant documents that may remain unfound.  Over at the National Archives, (http://www.archives.gov/research/recover/missing-documents.html#pres) many documents are presented as still missing.  Cases such as these re-emphasize the importance of indexing in order to close the gaps in history that continue to persist.  Dr. Carl Sagan once said, “You have to know the past to understand the present.”  Thus, without a past, one lacks a fundamental foundation to thoughtfully utilize for the future.  In order to prevent this, archives become crucial in respects to preserving the past and the information to be learned from it.

As a result of Gaffield finding the two copies of the Haitian Declaration of Independence, historians became encouraged to conduct their research in new ways such as extensive traveling and caused new discoveries to be made regarding Haiti’s history.  These positive changes to the present were influenced by historical documents and indicate how archives and proper indexing can be so important.   A sense of reconnection can be restored by bridging the chronological gap that once stood, as is the case in Julie Gaffield’s article.

The issue of unfound documents is further illuminated by CBS’ 60 Minutes special which focused on the many national artifacts, such as the Wright Brothers’ patent, that have gone missing in the libraries and museums they were once held.  Therefore, as individuals who learn from the past and thirst for knowledge, the issue of lost historical items becomes relevant to everyone.  Those of us who have experienced and grown up alongside the digital age may take for granted just how much information we have access to.  Not only is archival work difficult and fatiguing, but it places the archivist with a great responsibility of managing the world’s history and accurately documenting significant events.  Hence, the more information that is archived and can be obtained, the more we know of ourselves.

 

Work Citied:

1. Gaffield, Julie. “Haiti’s Declaration of Independence: Digging for Lost Documents in the Archives of the Atlantic World-Vol. 2, No. 1.” The Appendix Combined. N.p., 5 Feb. 2014. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

2. ThinkExist.com Quotations. “Dr. Carl Sagan quotes”. ThinkExist.com Quotations Online 1 Sep. 2014. 12 Oct. 2014 <http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/dr._carl_sagan/>

3. http://www.archives.gov/research/recover/missing-documents.html#pres

4.Ho, Erica. “Thousands of Historical Treasures Missing from National Archives.” TIME. N.p., 31 Oct. 2012. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

Of the examples of classification structures that Sperberg-McQueen introduces in his article, his discussion of different classification systems used in cataloguing books immediately made me think back to some of the systems I have encountered. Sperberg-McQueen provides examples of the modes of classifying and separating books under the Dewey Decimal System, a system I am sure many of us encountered in school or public libraries. The classification that UCLA employs, as do many other large libraries, is the Library of Congress system. Someone has already discussed the Dewey Decimal Classification system so I’ll devote my blog post to a bit of the Library of Congress Classification.

The Library of Congress divides works into broad categories that are each ascribed a letter of the alphabet. From there, the primary letter of classification can be followed by another letter that denotes a specific field in that genre of writing. For example, the class ‘N’ refers to fine arts, and a subclass ‘NB’ denotes sculpture while the subclass ‘NK’ refers to decorative arts.

This first letter or first two letters of classification can then be followed directly by a number that also narrows the scope of the subject. Taking the decorative arts subclass ‘NK’ as an example, a book classified as NK 7310 falls within the ‘other art and art industries section’ of decorative arts, more specifically it falls into the ‘metalwork’ category.

At this point any further letters or numbers that follow will specifically reference the work’s title, niche within the field of reference, author, year of publication, edition number, and sometimes whether the work has been translated. To continue the previous example, a book categorized as NK 7310.3 A78 R3813 1985 refers to a book on Art Deco jewelry of the 20^th century, written by Sylvie Raulet (hence the R in the classification), and published in 1985. For a more complete overview of how the Library of Congress organizes works see here.

In an earlier blog post, another classmate points out the problem of classifications systems filtering data which can unintentionally lead to a loss of information (as touched upon by the article on the Haitian Declaration of Independence). Some books and sources are not so easily put into a category because they encompass so much information. The Library of Congress has a very good system in place to classify materials but it is hard to create something that is entirely foolproof. This leads me to  wonder who or what has the last say in classifying a book? Is it the job of a group of humans or is there some sort of database/technology in place to resolve this conflict?

This week’s reading, “Haiti’s Declaration of Independence: Digging for Lost Documents in the Archives of the Atlantic World” caught my attention because it presents a challenge that present day society faces: if it isn’t on the internet, it doesn’t exist. Though this was not directly the situation with the Haitian Declaration of Independence, it is called into question through the assumptions that were made about the source. Many people believe that everything they would ever need to know is on the Internet and represented accurately. However, this concept has been refuted on multiple occasions, the discovery of the original Haitian Declaration of Independence being one of them. Once this original document was found, it gave the survivors of Hurricane Katrina a sense of nationalism. This sense of a properly represented self and presence on the internet that the original document gave the Haitians reminded me of the Native Peace Project, created by Professor Srinivasan from the Information Studies department at UCLA, which he describes in his paper “Indigenous, Ethnic and Cultural Articulations of New Media”. This project focused on representing the history and traditions of the San Pasqual reservation. Professor Srinivasan worked directly with the San Pasqual people to discover ways that he could assist them in creating a website that could hold all of their histories and honor their traditions without being influenced by other aspects of modern society. He also worked to ensure that the community goals that they held were represented on this page. This project worked in an attempt to represent the peoples in their own way, rather than having outsiders attempt to represent them. The project reminded me of the Haitian documents in this aspect because the nations were able to gain a sense of national identity through the words of their own people, rather than the comments of others.

The project also mirrored the Haitian documents because it served as a means to connect people who have been displaced from their original home. In the case of the Native Peace Project, the Internet allowed a connection for all of the 19 related reservations that were displaced from their original location on the sea to ones that were better for agriculture and across borders. The website became a place to reflect shared aspects of memory and aspiration among all of these individual groups. Similarly, the discovery of the Haitian Declaration of Independence acted as a unifying factor for people of Haitian descent to positively connect with during a time of national hardship, and allowed their community to focus on the goals of their Declaration in the rebuilding of their home.

 

 

Metadata, a system of information recollection or recording is used everywhere around us. We are in a period where everything we do and see is pretty much recorded one way or another, especially on social media sites. In most cases we do not even realize the extent of our information being collected and processed. Being an architecture major, I search for design inspiration everywhere I go. The easiest and fastest method is through the Internet. One particular site called “Pinterest” offers thousands of pictures related to the topic or word you type in the search bar. Like Facebook and Instagram, sites which are known as the most used for the gathering of metadata, Pintrest sorts and collects an array of information through people’s posts, likes, and “hashtags”. The information offered by Pinterest is a public resource that all can use to search the web for specific images. Websites like this have large archival systems that allow users to browse using their words of preference, or browse a randomly generated selection of images. One can type in “interior design” and an array of images with those words in the description will pop up. Not only will the image appear, but if you click on the picture, it will take you directly to the source of it.  An article by TechNews states that Pinterest’s “[…] guided search will help you discover when you didn’t know how to ask for things to begin with.”  This site is a creative way of searching for images that interest you and also have a chance to browse its original source.

Many users don’t realize that Pinterest it is indeed a large archive of metadata. Every picture a user posts must have a description, original links, and must be categorized within select word choices. Pinterest also allows users to share the image, store it in their “board” for others to see, e-mail it or even share it on another social media site. As described in the Getty article “Introduction to Metadata”, metadata has a couple primary functions. By “liking” or sharing the information provided on Pinterest, the user is recycling the metadata, it is reusing it and posting it on their behalf, and also preserving the image by doing so.

Pinterest indeed contains a large amount of metadata, it allows users to interact with this data and reuse it in the digital world. Websites such as Pinterest are attractive and user friendly which explains their popularity yet behind the easy to use interface is a complex system of information and data being customized to the users preference.

 

 

Links:

• http://www.techtimes.com/articles/6081/20140425/pinterest-puts-metadata-to-good-use-with-guided-search.htm
• http://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=interior%20design&term_meta%5B%5D=interior%7Ctyped&term_meta%5B%5D=design%7Ctyped

One of our readings this week was “Classification and its Structures” (Sperberg-McQueen), which explained the potential uses for a classification scheme and described different types of classification schemes. Nominal classifications were the first to be introduced, and they appeared to be the simplest: the different classes in the scheme are “discrete classes which, taken together, subdivide the set of things being classified.” Nominal classifications are easy enough if the different classes remain distinct; however, problems can emerge when the data grows over time to such an extent that the classification scheme demands additional classes, many of which have the potential for shared characteristics.

The article described this situation as a classification scheme that allowed for “variable depth.” Sperberg-McQueen’s example of the Dewey system subdividing the class of English drama (itself already a subdivision) by period made me wonder if anyone had tried to apply a similar system to music. iTunes sorts everything into about twenty generic classes, but it is pretty clear that a label like “Alternative” is so broad that it has the potential to encompass many very divergent acts. After a little research, I found the project Every Noise at Once, which displays impressive specificity in its attempt to represent every music genre conceivable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

According to the website, Every Noise at Once is “an ongoing attempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked and analyzed for 1284 genres by The Echo Nest.” In addition to that brief description of the project, the home page also includes ins tructions for browsing the website, and although the “calibration is fuzzy,” there does appear to be some sort of order to the visual representation of the data. Although the site might not function very well as a music discovery tool, the website incorporates so many subdivisions that finding relevant acts becomes a surprisingly efficient process. Understandably, there is some overlap between genres when searching by artist, and the website does not attempt to explain the distinctions that are being made, but it is still a very systematic look at a data set that had a number of possible organizational schemes.

 

While doing this week’s readings, the article introducing metadata immediately caught my eye. I had always heard references of this abstract concept known as metadata, but I never truly understood what it was or how it could possibly be relevant in my own life. In Anne J. Gilliland’s article “Setting the Stage” from Introduction to Meta, Gilliland describes the “big picture” definition of metadata as “the sum total of what one can say about any information object—[anything that can be addressed and manipulated as a discrete entity by a human being or an information system]—at any level of aggregation.” At this point, I still was not completely positive what the purpose of metadata was. As I read further, Gilliand explains, “Cultural heritage information professionals such as museum registrars, library catalogers, and archival processors often apply the term metadata to the value-added information that they create to arrange, describe, track, and otherwise enhance access to information objects and the physical collections related to those objects.” Finally, this I could understand, since I do exactly this everyday.

A fun-fact that you may not know about me is that I run a “food-blog Instagram” account. Basically, twice a day I upload deliciously sinful food pictures onto an Instagram account, which I use solely for this purpose. In each post, I geo-tag the location of the restaurant where the food is from, tag the restaurant’s own account, use specific hashtags to describe the food, and tag the user who deserves photo credit. Every step of this process categorizes each specific picture into its own unique domain on Instagram. As seen in the image above, the picture is geo-tagged at Novel Café in Westwood and the restaurant itself is hash-tagged (#novelcafe). In every picture I also include a “hashtag overload,” of other food-blog accounts’ personal hashtags. This allows other accounts access to my photos and have photos appear in their own Instagram domain. All of these tags on Instagram contain photos compiled into an archive from all of the different users who utilized the same tags, which allows easy access to specific images by searching for the desired tag. These tags allow users to archive, arrange, describe, and track the progress and information provided in each image.

My food Instagram provides me with a glimpse of the importance of metadata in everyday life. According to Gilliland, “Medata establishes and documents the context of the content; identifies and exploits the structural relationships that exist within and between information objects; [and] provides a range of intellectual access points for an increasingly diverse range of users.” As seen, metadata is essential in supplying a resource to create structure in our digital world.

Works Cited:

Anne Gilliland, “Setting the Stage,” from Murtha Baca, ed., Introduction to Metadata (Los Angeles: Getty, 2008)

The first thing that came to mind while reading this week’s reading covering selecting, sorting, and classifying is the Dewey Decimal Classification. In Classification and its Structures, C.M. Sperberg-McQueen actually mentions this system as an example of a classification scheme that operates within n-dimensional space. The DDC “assigns class numbers in the 800s to literary works. Within the 800s, it assigns numbers in the 820s to English literature, in the 830s to German literature, the 840s to French, etc. Within the 820s, the number 821 denotes English poetry, 822 to English drama, 823 English fiction, and so on. Further digits after the third make even finer distinctions” (Sperberg-McQueen). Creating a “tree-like hierarchy”, the DDC designated the widest, most important label first (i.e. country of origin), then refines it farther and farther into a classified system.

Researching more about the DDC, I wondered why and how Melvil Dewey decided “American” would be assigned number one, “English” number two, etc. in 1876. In a 2012 post to the Association for the Library Service to Children blog, guest contributor Tali Balas Kaplan emphasizes the outdated quality of the DDC, arguing, “Successful systems have clear logic and the different pieces are connected in ways that make sense to people who’re using the system. Students may be able to navigate the numbers if you spend enough time teaching Dewey and find pieces of it, such as the 636.7 books or the 745.5 books. But the logic, the sense of it, will escape them because it’s based on criteria that are unknown or irrelevant to them” (Kaplan). Answering my own question, the DDC has also received criticism for its bias towards Anglo-American voice in its hierarchical designations.¹

This particular disadvantage of the DDC relates closely with Julia Gaffield’s article Haiti’s Declaration of Independence: Digging for Lost Documents in the Archives of the Atlantic World. The process of filtering information, “by identifying the properties relevant for such judgments of similarity and dissimilarity can make explicit a particular view concerning the nature of the objects being classified” (Sperberg-McQueen). In the beginning of her research, her associates warned Gaffield of the very few resources available on the early period of Haiti’s independence. Nonetheless, Gaffield devised a new research strategy, in which she traveled to six other countries besides Haiti, including Jamaica, Great Britain, France, the United States, Netherlands and Denmark in order to “emphasize the interconnectedness of the Atlantic World” (Gaffield). In doing so, Gaffield discovered the long lost original copy of Haiti’s Declaration of Independence at the National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Further, Gaffield’s curation of her research process reveals “the interconnectedness of empires, colonies, and countries in the early modern period. Historians are beginning to conduct their research in new ways, traveling to archives in multiple countries and researching in several languages” (Gaffield). When confronted with a mass body of material like a library of a country’s history, one must decide how and why they curate information. The implications of both the DDC and Gaffield’s work show that their responsibility is enormous. The impact and voice of this information within culture is up to the way in which it is classified.

1. Fandino, Marta (2008). “UDC or DDC: a note about the suitable choice for the National Library of Liechtenstein”. Extensions and Corrections to the UDC. Retrieved 12 October 2014.

Works Cited

Balas Kaplan, Tali. “Done with Dewey.” Web log post. ALSC Blog. Association for Library Service to Children, 17 Apr. 2012. Web. 12 Oct. 2014.

Gaffield, Julia. “Haiti’s Declaration of Independence: Digging for Lost Documents in the Archives of the Atlantic World.” The Appendix 2, no. 1 (October 2014)

Sperberg-McQueen, “Classification and its Structures,” in Schreibman et al., ed., Companion to Digital Humanities (Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 2004)

 

In his article, “Classifications and its Structures”, C. M. Sperberg-McQueen gives readers an idea of the complex nature of classifications and the nearly infinite possibilities that we may encounter when trying to classify certain pieces of information. The section on “One-Dimensional Classifications” describes nominal classifications, which “consist simply of a set of categories: male and female; French, German, English, and other; noun, verb, article, adjective, adverb, etc.” (Sperberg-McQueen). This notion of a nominal classification of gender reminded me of the binary gender system I learned about when I took Gender Studies 10 last spring. Most of society assumes that there are only two finite choices in terms of gender, male or female; however, in actuality there are over 50 gender options. It has taken time and a lot of effort on the part of feminists and others who fight for gender equality, but Facebook now recognizes 51 different categories when asking users to identify their gender. I found an article entitled, “What Each of Facebook’s 51 New Gender Options Means” by Debby Herbenick PhD and Aleta Baldwin on thedailybeast.com (http://http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/15/the-complete-glossary-of-facebook-s-51-gender-options.html), relating to this foreign concept of many different gender identities.  Before I took Gender Studies 10, I had always identified myself as female and had never encountered any sort of problem when asked to pick between the common gender classifications. Since I did not have a problem with them, I naively disregarded the people who do not fit within the binary gender identities of male and female. Now, I see that the politically correct way for me to classify myself is “cis female” or “a female who identifies as a woman/ has feminine gender identity”. Even though the classification of gender is still nominal, as there is a discrete number of choices, it is much more complex than the majority of us realize. If you identify yourself as “gender nonconforming”, but must pick between the two categories of male or female when filling out paperwork at the DMV, you may face an internal conflict and feel marginalized. By recognizing a wider array of gender identities, Facebook is helping to eliminate the binary gender system and raise awareness about the complexity of gender classification. Sperbeg-McQueen recognizes that most classifications are even more complicated than “one-dimensional classifications” and fall under the category of “N-dimensional”. If something like gender, which seems so straightforward, is actually much more complex, I cannot even imagine the effort and time that goes into correctly classifying multivariable data sets.