Dragons and Sheep Parts....

Seems I haven't updated in ages. I have time for a quick entry though. Been quite busy lately with classes starting back and things getting back into swing. I have started taking all kinds of dance classes too: ballet, salsa, street, popping, anything else that happens to be going on. Won't be getting any dance classes in this week though (or football). June and I are going to Paris in the morning for 2 days. Then I have some catching up to do on Thursday and another packed day on Friday.

Yesterday I went to Chinatown for the Chinese New Year parade. I guess if you're short, you should get to these things hours before anyone else because I couldn't see a thing. I thought I'd catch the parade on its way back down to Trafalgar Square so I asked some people working the event where it would come by and they had no idea what was going on. I'm fairly certain these people were just grabbed off the street and given Yellow Vests of Authority for the sheer hell of it. Ended up missing the parade in all this mess. So went to find a spot to watch the performances in Trafalgar Square. It was over-crowded and I still couldn't see so I gave up and went to this bookstore I'd passed earlier and bought a book. Went to grab some Chinese takeaway and finally saw something interesting just before leaving for home. I got a video of it...


Chinese Dragon from Jessica Smith on Vimeo.

The cultural immersion continued when I got back home. Last night, we had a Burns Night dinner (a Scottish holiday). Katie made haggis with neeps and tatties for us and then Emma brought a sticky toffee pudding with custard. Good stuff.

I should go to bed now. Getting up early for the train tomorrow.

Until next time,
Duchess

Web 2.0: A Study on Folksonomies

Introduction

            The evolution of Web 2.0 has seen many novel approaches to technology and management of information. One of the notable changes to arise from this is the advent of folksonomies. This paper will examine the invention, purpose, and uses of this new organisational system. Pros and cons of the system will be analysed and weighed against each other in order to determine the true value of folksonomies and the effects which they have had on the Web 2.0 as a whole as well as users’ experiences of the web. We will consider the question of whether folksonomies are a better option than the more traditional, authoritative organisation systems and how exactly they differ from these systems.

What is a Folksonomy and what is it for?

Park informs us that the term folksonomy is used to refer to a “practice of collaborative categorization using freely chosen keywords by a group of people cooperating spontaneously” (Quintarelli 2005 cited in Park 2011, p. 515). Folksonomies put users in charge of organising information – they become an active part of the process of naming and labelling information. The advent of folksonomies affected a shift in the way information is managed and organised. Where once there was only one set, specific way to order or classify information, this is now done in a more democratic manner. As Mai observes, “Professionals have historically created order in the universe of knowledge based on analysis and understanding of objects in the universe of knowledge and their use. Folksonomies, on the other hand, emerge without the involvement of professionals’ interpretation and the users of the systems and the objects create order collaboratively” (2011, p. 115). Mai (2011) stipulates that there is not one right way to categorise information, but many and that folksonomies emerged as a result of thinking such as this. He points out that, “The argument is, therefore, that individual people engaged with the knowledge are in the best position to order it” (Mai 2011, p. 115).  

Mai cites Olson (2002), who said that naming a thing “is a means of structuring reality. It imposes a pattern on the world that is meaningful to the namer” (Olson 2002 cited in Mai 2011, p. 115). Naming is a way of creating a structured order. The names given to objects reflect where they belong in the grand scheme of things. If limitations are imposed, the variety of words that can be used to describe an object is far less than if there are no limitations. Giving the power of naming to users – as is the idea of folksonomies – grants users a great amount of freedom in this way. Of course, this is not to say that people name things in completely irrelevant ways; on the contrary, people are fairly accurate with naming objects and employ various ways of doing so. Furthermore, “context, purpose, and time do shape what is being said about something” (Mai 2011, p. 115). People name objects according to their context and their needs at the time.

Folksonomies were created when users of the web saw a need for labelling information objects. Tags – user-created phrases used as labels and classifications – were employed, giving people the ability to organise information in ways that are meaningful to them. Naming, then, becomes a “personal thing” and limitations are reduced as people see things in various ways dependent upon their own viewpoint (Mai 2011, p. 115). In classification systems that rely on professionals to assign names and terms, “a professional makes a decision regarding the assignment of a term or the creation of a class in an authoritative way, not because the professional has first-hand knowledge of the appropriateness of the term or class, but because the professional relies on second-hand knowledge gained from cognitive authorities” (Mai 2011, p. 118). Folksonomies, on the other hand, allow anyone to take part in creating meaning by assigning tags to objects of which each user has a more personal understanding. Users are put in charge “first-hand” of assigning tags to information in ways that will prove meaningful to each individual. This level of personal significance cannot be achieved when professionals are in charge of classifying information. However, although folksonomies put people in charge of their own organising of information, that is not to say that their way of classification is so very dissimilar to the recognized “professional” way. As a study by Spiteri (2007) shows, on the whole, users create “tags [that] correspond closely to the NISO guidelines pertaining to types of concepts expressed, the predominance of single terms and nouns, and the use of recognized spelling. Problem areas pertain to the inconsistent use of count nouns and the incidence of ambiguous tags in the form of homographs, abbreviations, and acronyms” (p. 13). Spiteri, then, perceives certain problems related to folksonomies, including: inconsistency (plural versus singular, how to express a space between words, etc.), ambiguous abbreviations, different ways of spelling the same word, and so forth.

Folksonomies in Action

The author finds the utilisation of free tagging to be most helpful in organising her own information on the web. For example, in the blog used for this course, she is able to assign different tags to each post. These tags are ones that she will remember and understand – a way to keep her thoughts organised and to let readers of these blog entries see the topic of the entries. More and more websites use the folksonomy method: Delicious, Flickr, Tumblr, etc. Twitter even ranks tags by their overall usage by all users and lists the most popular ones as “trending”.  

A key feature of folksonomies is the ability of people to see the tags assigned to objects by other people: “such sites allow users to publicly tag and share their resources, so that they can not only classify information for themselves, but can also browse the information classified by others” (Park 2011, p. 515). The purpose of implementing tags is “to share, discover, and recover them” (Park 2011, p. 516). Users label information so that they can share this information more easily with others, can find similar information posted by others, and can organise information in a way that makes it more readily accessible to them.  

There are three ways for users to interact within a folksonomy: “tagging, navigation, and knowledge sharing” (Park 2011, p. 516). In many folksonomies, users can track tags of interest to them in order to find information objects tagged with the same phrases. However, users may label the same objects differently to other users if their point of view of the objects is different. As Mai (2011) concludes: “The practice of meaning-making, representing, and organizing information objects has been enriched by the pressure from the social technologies and movements to involve everyone–and to allow for a plurality of viewpoints and opinions” (p. 120).  Park (2011) states that “Probabilistic approaches emphasize that categorization is not merely a conceptual structure identifying the world, but a cognitive process closely associated with the individual perception” (p. 520). Users are in charge of meaning-making in folksonomies. They assign tags to information which are relevant to the way that they perceive the information and which let other users know of their views on the presented information. While users create many tags that hold significance to only (or mainly) themselves, many tags are also, in a manner of speaking, agreed upon by larger groups of users: “Communal categories are generated in a social context where users interact with each other. When users share their categories and contents, they tend to use the suggested popular categories, or imitate others’ category formation” (Park 2011, p. 520). In other words, organisation schemes as utilised by other users are often widely adopted and a consensus of sorts is reached as to what an object means or is or at least what it should be tagged as meaning. On some websites, such as Delicious, tags are suggested to a user if they were employed by other users or by the original poster in reference to the given the information object (Spiteri 2007).  

In some ways, folksonomies can provide a more accurate view of classification: “The strength of folksonomy is the ability of any given user to organize the world as he or she sees it…. Therefore, a folksonomy can reflect the users’ conceptual model more accurately” (Park 2011, p. 520). Folksonomies and tags provide users with the freedom to define the world as they see it and thus their place in society and how they see objects as fitting into the grander scheme:

“Tagging does not aim to create a strict classification of objects, but rather allows a user to categorize an object according to their own interests with their own keywords. Although a few words alone cannot identify user interests, a culture of mass participation leads to social interaction among users, and influences the use of terms in a community” (Kim, Decker, and Breslin 2010, p. 58).

Users are given the means to shape the definition of information and to connect with other users who share the same definitions and views.

Spiteri (2007) advocates that “folksonomies could serve as a powerful, flexible tool for increasing the user-friendliness and interactivity of public library catalogs, and also may be useful for encouraging other activities, such as informal online communities of readers and user-driven readers' advisory services” (p. 13). Certainly, the further use of folksonomies is something that would be interesting to research. Perhaps the next step in this area is a more widespread use of this system; maybe it will become the norm for Web 2.0 and libraries can find a way of including such a system in their catalogues in order to assist users in sense-making in relation to library sources.

Folksonomies allow users to become a part of the classification process and have a say in the way that information is organised. These systems “would not work without the users… because tag assignments are used as information source to provide diverse features such as recommendation, search, or exploration features” (Abel et al. 2010, p. 34). It is therefore very much a system of organisation run and maintained by the people who use it. By using the system to define information, users also in effect define the system itself. They create tags that are relevant to their specific thoughts and needs and relate to the information in ways that are meaningful to them. Kim, Decker, and Breslin (2010) note that “tags can be seen as objects for sharing, exchanging, and integrating a user’s interests through tags attached to social objects on various Web 2.0 sites. Tag sharing can be an alternative method towards creating new knowledge from heterogeneous platforms” (p. 58). They go on to add that “The ease of participation [in folksonomies] leads users to express their interests in diverse resources to create a bottom-up consensus view of the world” (Kim, Decker, and Breslin 2010, p. 60). Thus, tags give users the means to negotiate meaning and form new knowledge by the ways in which they organise information. Users can construct a worldview and share it with other users by implementing the folksonomy system. There are many positive aspects of using this approach to information organisation: “The collective and self-motivated approach of social tagging offers novel opportunities to users, including flexibility with information organization, enhanced findability, and serendipitous browsing with respect to information activities” (Kim, Decker, and Breslin 2010, p. 60). Tagging, in other words, allows users to locate information in ways that make sense to their own experience and also to find new related information and knowledge that are labelled with the same tags.

Conclusion

It is easy to see that folksonomies present a very different means of organising and classifying information than do more traditional classification systems. With folksonomies, users are given to power to define what an information object means to them. Users can express to others how they see objects and can also gain a greater understanding of how other users see these same objects. The use of tags allows users more control over the world of information and more say in how they organise their worldview. The advent of folksonomies has given users a more active role in the creation, definition, and organisation of Web 2.0.

References

Abel, F. et al., 2010. Leveraging search and content exploration by exploiting context in folksonomy systems. New Review of Hypermedia & Multimedia, 16 (1/2), 33-70. Available from: http://www.ebscohost.com. [Accessed 8 January 2012].

Kim, H., Decker, S., and Breslin, J.G., 2010. Representing and sharing folksonomies with semantics. Journal of Information Science, 36 (1), 57-72. Available from: http://www.ebscohost.com. [Accessed 8 January 2012].

Mai, Jens-Erik, 2010. Folksonomies and the new order: authority in the digital disorder. Knowledge Organization, 38(2), 114-122. Available from: http://www.ebscohost.com. [Accessed 10 December 2011].

Park, H., 2011. A conceptual framework to study folksonomic interaction. Knowledge Organization, 38 (6), 515-529. Available from: http://www.ebscohost.com. [Accessed 6 January 2012].

Spiteri, L.F., 2007. The structure and form of folksonomy tags: the road to the public library catalog. Information Technology & Libraries, 26 (3), 13-25. Available from: http://www.ebscohost.com. [Accessed 8 January 2012].


***NOTE: The URL of this blog entry is: http://duchyinwonderland.blogspot.com/2012/01/web-20-study-on-folksonomies.html

Lord Mayor's Show & Hamlet

This past Saturday was a busy day of adventures. I set off early in the morning and got a bus to the Waterloo station, then made my way to the Young Vic to see if I could get tickets for the Hamlet show that night. Luckily there were some left, so I bought one for me and one for June. Then I walked back to the station and had breakfast at the Starbucks there. Y'all should try the gingerbread latte - it was pretty good.

After breakfast, I walked across the Thames and made my way to the parade route for the Lord Mayor's Show that was taking place that afternoon. I found where it was going to pass but had another OMG-why-is-this-city-so-complicated moment when I spent the next hour and a half looking for a bathroom. It shouldn't be that difficult. Finally ducked into a pub and then made my way back to find a good spot along the route to see the parade. June found me soon after the parade started. It was a good parade. Lots of horses and military people and military people on horses and bands and stuff.

There was a procession for the Lions Club International. I was really excited to see it! They even had a guy in a lion suit. Yay Lions Club! It made me miss the Georgia Lions Camp for the Blind and all my GLCB people.

At the end of the parade there was a golden carriage:

Fancy...

We had dinner at a restaurant back on the other side of the Thames and watched the fireworks once we were done. It was not as impressive as the ones we saw the week before on Guy Fawkes Day. It was only like 10 minutes of fireworks. Laaaame.

We slowly made our way to the theatre for Hamlet, which is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays (go watch the David Tennant version if you haven't seen it). It was an excellent show and a very interesting interpretation. Michael Sheen played Hamlet and he was absolutely magnificent in the role. The play was set in a psych ward and it was weird how well the play fit into that setting. It makes sense if you think about it though. The theatre was quite small so it all felt very intimate - the actors were right there in front of the audience. We had seats up in the gallery but they were still very close to the action. We have tickets to see Patrick Stewart portray Shakespeare himself in a play called Bingo at the same venue in a few months. I'm super excited for that one as well.

Until next time,
Duchess

Trip to Bath

View from the main street looking East

I took a trip to Bath this past Tuesday-Wednesday. It was so beautiful, guys. Seeing the city for the first time out of the train window took my breath away. I loved it there. The buildings and landscape were amazing. I wish I could put all of my pictures on here because everywhere I turned, it was just so pretty.

I arrived in Bath around noon on Tuesday, made my way to the YMCA where I was staying and got settled in then set out to find the Jane Austen Centre (of course that's stop numero uno). This was when I learned my first life lesson of the journey: don't trust Google maps. My map app told me the Jane Austen Centre was up the steepest hill of all time, so I walked, oh, four blocks up this hill that, if it had been any steeper, would have required climbing gear. It was all residential and I was kind of thinking, "Oh, what's up with this then?" but of course my unwavering (ill-placed) trust in my handy-dandy map caused me to push on. Finally I gave up and asked for directions only to find it was in the opposite direction.

Once at the Jane Austen Centre, I went to the tea room for lunch. I had the Jane Austen blend tea and smoked salmon sandwich. Deliciousness. I loved the tea, so I bought some to take home, although I haven't the slightest idea how to brew it (June will teach me I'm sure...or I'll find a youtube video - ironing part deux! - haha). The exhibit at the Centre was great too. I was able to refresh my memory and also learn a few new things about Austen and the time, like the different things you can be saying by holding a fan in certain ways (my favorite was the "My love for you is breaking my heart" one because what the hell is that?).

Next stop was the Roman Baths. It was really a magnificent experience to finally see this. I felt like I was stepping back in time, there was such a wondrous ancientness about the place. I spent a while wandering around the Baths, listening to the audio guide, and just enjoying the sights. Made a wish in the wishing well so fingers crossed on that one I guess? There was a shit-ton of money in that pool, too. I went back to the Pump Room for breakfast the next morning to try the water. It was weird tasting, yeah, but drinkable. I also had a Bath Bun and hot chocolate.

Next stop was the spa. I spent Monday polishing wine glasses to the point of perfection for rich people (OMG just get over yourselves) so I felt I deserved something nice...to feel a little posh myself, ya know. It was a little awkward being alone and I forgot to think about that, but it was still relaxing. They had different flavored steam rooms I guess you could say. Lotus, sandalwood, something-or-other, and mint. Mint was my favorite. I parked it in there for a while. I'm totally getting my own mint steam room when I grow up. That's now my life plan. Had a feta and grape tart for my included dinner. Once again, delicious food. After my three hours at the spa, I called it a night since everything was closed anyway.

The next morning I had breakfast at the Pump Room, as I've already mentioned. Then I went next door to Bath Abbey, which was the first big church type place I've been in over here since I have yet to go in the London ones. I walked in and my jaw literally dropped. The place was huge. This picture does it no justice really. It was just such a massive space...beautiful stained glass windows and such too.

After I left the abbey, I bought some lunch at the High Street market nearby and walked across the river to one of the parks and ate my lunch there. I spent the rest of my stay walking around the city and some of the parks.

This is the bridge I walked over to get over the river. It's apparently one of the only bridges in the world to be built like this with shops along it. I feel like this pigeon is posing for my picture. Random. I love it! I saw the Circus and the Royal Crescent which are both pretty impressive architecturally.

The Royal Crescent

I went to the train station to catch my train back to Paddington station only to find out it was canceled and I was put on the one 30 minutes later. So getting back to London and then to my place (and then to football practice) was utterly exhausting. I hate people on the tube when it's busy. They all become bigger assholes and do a lot more pushing and shoving. NOT OKAY! Anyway. Bath. Bath was amazing. I can go back now?

Until next time,
Duchess :)

DITA Assignment 1

Information Retrieval (and subsequently the means and systems used to retrieve information) is a pervasive force in our lives. We deal with Information Retrieval on a day-to-day basis probably without even being aware of it most of the time. Do you need more information about a topic? Want to find out when your favorite band’s new CD is being released? We use Information Retrieval Systems every day to find out more about a variety of topics.

Given that we utilize it so often, it is not surprising that we do not really appreciate the underlying complexity of Information Retrieval and its theoretical components. Jansen and Rieh (2010) identify no less than seventeen theoretical constructs of this field. They note that, “as a field of study, Information Retrieval is well established, with its own conferences and journals focused exclusively on Information Retrieval research” (Jansen and Rieh 2010, pg. 1517).

What exactly is Information Retrieval? Jansen and Rieh define it as: “finding material of an unstructured nature that satisfies an information need from within large collections stored on computers” (2010, pg. 1517). A user first has a need for a certain piece of information and wishes to find this information. This can be done by submitting a query, which will match the users terms against any found on the computer or on the web.

Broder (2002), in his article “A Taxonomy of Web Search,” observes that there are three types of queries which users might have: informational queries, navigational queries, and transactional queries. He expands this idea by saying, “the need behind a web search is often not informational – it might be navigational (give me the url of the site I want to reach) or transactional (show me sites where I can perform a certain transaction, e.g. shop, download a file, or find a map)” (Broder 2002). Thus, one can see that information retrieval can be used to find many different bits of information. It stands to reason that the way one searches would change with each separate need. Indeed, Yuan and Belkin based an experiment and consequent journal article on Belkin’s idea that:

an information-seeking episode could be construed as a sequence of different types of interactions with information, or different ISSs [or information-seeking strategies], each of which could be ‘optimally’ supported by different combinations of various retrieval techniques. Thus, there would be different choices of such techniques for best support of any particular ISS. (Yuan & Belkin 2002, pg. 1544)

Users must therefore adapt their information retrieval techniques to better fit their specific need. More experienced users understand the importance of having a specific search plan but also being able to adapt that plan: in an experiment by Navarro-Prieto et al., novice users said they did not have a set plan for searching and could not explain the reason behind their actions or choices when searching, whereas experienced users did have a better understanding and approached queries with a plan (Navarro-Prieto et al. 1999) Success depends upon user planning and flexibility, and users who have a greater understanding for information retrieval exhibit these qualities more than novices. Hölscher and Strube (2000) similarly come to this same conclusion, also noting the flexible nature of the system. Each person, having a separate and distinct strategy, will get different results from the system: “participants follow different paths trying to solve given tasks and hardly ever face exactly the same pages of results or have to reformulate the exact same search queries as another participant” (Hölscher and Strube 2000). Thus, there are many factors that go into information retrieval and users will have different experiences depending on their level of experience, their search methods (including their choice of search engine), and their way of interacting with the information presented by the search engine.

How, then, should one approach a query and what methods should be employed? Holt and Miller (2009) state that, “more frequently occurring terms are less distinguishing than less frequently occurring terms. The inverse term frequency of the search terms can be used as weights to rank the document.” In other words, if one were to use less common words, one could more easily pinpoint the specific information required by the query. This is an extension of the fact that in queries, stop words (such as “the,” “an,” etc.) should be removed. The less common the word, the more specific the result is. Another method is to use stems, as Robertson and Jones (1997) discuss: “terms are generally stems (or roots), rather than full words, since this means that matches are not missed through trivial word variation, as with singular/plural forms.” This returns results using various forms of a word so that items are shown that would have been missed otherwise.

The exercises performed in Session 4 of the Digital Information Technologies and Architectures course provide a perfect example of how all of these factors can affect a user’s queries. In this exercise, students were asked to use Google and Bing search engines to find information on a list of 10 topics. Students were also asked to try a variety of different search methods in each of these searches (e.g. natural language queries, Boolean operator queries, phrases, and operators such as “+” and “–”) to see how these changed the results of the searches. Both search engines offered adequate results on most searches, although in some cases these results differed between the search engines whereas in other cases the results were much the same between the two. Using various types of queries sometimes changed the results; however, most of the time there was at least one or two pages in the results list that remained after the change in query type. It is interesting to note that when the same type of query was used in both Google and Bing, the precision sometimes differed noticeably between the two search engines. Precision, of course, being measured by the number of relevant documents retrieved within the total number of documents (Morville and Rosenfeld 2006, pg. 159), was in this exercise calculated by examining the first five results of each query. This exercise showed that, although we do not actively notice it, our search methods and the way in which we approach queries greatly affects our success rate with information retrieval. It also served as an exhibit of just how intricate these details are and how much we have been programmed not to really think about each step when approaching the query as a whole. We make search plans, re-evaluate these plans, and adapt our searches accordingly in a matter of seconds with no real effort. Perhaps these ingrained behaviors have made us all more “expert” at information retrieval.

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***The URL of this blog entry is: http://duchyinwonderland.blogspot.com/2011/10/dita-assignment-1.html ***

Bibliography

Hölscher, C., Strube, G., 2000. Web Search Behaviour of Internet Experts and Newbies. Available from: http://www9.org/w9cdrom/81/81.html [Accessed 26 October 2011].

Holt, J.D., Miller, D.J., 2009. An Evolution of Search. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 6 (1), 11-15. Available from: http://www.ebscohost.com [Accessed 24 October 2011].

Jansen, B.J., Rieh, S.Y., 2010. The Seventeen Theoretical Constructs of Information Searching and Information Retrieval. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 61 (8), 1517-1534. Available from: http://www.ebscohost.com [Accessed 24 October 2011].

Morville, P., Rosenfeld, L., 2006. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites. 3^rd ed. Cambridge: O’Reilly.

Navarro-Prieto, R., Scaife, M., & Rogers, Y., 1999. Cognitive Strategies in Web Searching. In: Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Human Factors & the Web, 1999. Available from: http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/hfweb/proceedings/navarro-prieto/index.html. [Accessed 26 October 2011].

Robertson, S.E., Jones, K.S., 1997. Simple, Proven Approaches to Text Retrieval, University of Cambridge Technical Note, TR356. Available from: http://moodle.city.ac.uk [Accessed 25 October 2011].

Yuan, X., Belkin, N. J., 2010. Investigating Information Retrieval Support Techniques for Different Information-Seeking Strategies. Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 61 (8), 1543-1563. Available from: http://www.ebscohost.com [Accessed 24 October 2011].

Recap of Week 3 & 4 Classes

I was a slacker and didn't do a post for week 3 so I'm gonna just combine week 3 & 4.

Digital Information Technologies and Architectures (INM 348)
Week 3 involved looking at databases, which were created as a way to store data centrally and make it easier to access. Our exercise for this week was to construct 10 database queries. I found this exercise to be quite interesting. It was a challenge to learn how exactly do to this but once I got the hang of it, it was rather fun. You definitely get a sense of accomplishment from learning to apply what you learn to specific cases to get the right results. The standard format for queries is as follows:
SELECT columns
FROM tables
WHERE something is true;
So for example, the answer I got for problem one (to list the publisher, company and city of publishers in New York) was:
select pubid, name, company_name, city
from publishers
where city = "New York";
Week 4 was about Information Retrieval, which is basically what you do when you search for information via Google or other search engines. Precision of retrieval measures the proportion of retrieved documents which are relevant. You get this figure by dividing:

Relevant documents retrieved

                                                      

Total documents retrieved

Recall has an inverse relationship with precision and is measured as follows:

Relevant documents retrieved

                                                                              

Total # of relevant documents in the database

Library and Information Science Foundation (INM 301)

The topic for Week 3 was The History of Library and Information Science. Self-explanatory. We went from tasks of early librarians (organizing, adding titles, listing parts of documents, listing documents on shelf) to the development of a classification system of the world's knowledge in the form of a draft encyclopedia by Francis Bacon (1620) to Martin Schrettinger first coining the phrase "library science" in 1808, etc. The advent and role of special libraries was mentioned, and the steps of the information chain were listed: authorship/creation, dissemination/publication, organization, indexing and retrieval, and finally use.
Week 4 was about Information, Documents, and Collections. The three paradigms discussed were: system paradigm, cognitive paradigm, and socio-cognitive paradigm. We looked at Shannon and Weaver's Mathematical Theory of Communication, which calculates the amount of info that can be transmitted over a channel. Karl Popper (he keeps popping up in our discussions...get it? Hahaha. Yeah, lame, I know) suggested a theory of "Three Worlds," the first of which is the physical world, the second is the mental world of each individual, and the third is communicable knowledge. We also talked about the four levels of documents: 1) works (e.g. Shakespeare's Hamlet); 2) expressions (the English text of Hamlet); 3) manifestations (specific edition of the English text of Hamlet); and 4) items (this copy in my hand).

Spanish
We went over adjectives for things and for people (para cosas y para personas). Also, we covered gerunds (in English, the -ing verbs). So "talking" = hablando. This is used for any person the same; there's no changing the verb as there would be in present tense (hablo, hablas, habla, etc). Yolanda asked us: ¿Comó vienes a la uni? My answer: Vengo a pie/ Vengo andando. To which she replied: ¡Qué suerte! ("How do you come to university?", "I walk", "How lucky!").


Information Management and Policy (INM 341)
This was our two weeks of Information/Copyright Law. So...laws. What did I get out of it? England doesn't have a constitution. America wins. I think their law system is even more confusing than ours in America. How does that happen? I'll not hurt my brain again with all the breaches of confidence and actions in tort and contracts and whatnot. There's some laws. Don't break them. The end.

Research Evaluation and Communication (INM 356)
Week 3 was about Experimenting, Observing, & Evaluating. Experimenting is usually objective, positivist, and scientific, while observation is typically subjective and based on interpretation. Simple enough.
Week 4 was about Surveys, which can be split into interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, Delphi studies, and critical incidents. Interviews can be unstructured/naturalistic, semi-structured, or structured and can take place face-to-face, over the phone, or online/via chat. Questions can be closed or open. Focus groups involve usually 5-10 participants and allows group members to spark ideas off each other. A Delphi study involves a group interacting over time without ever actually coming together. It usually lasts 2 or 3 rounds to reach a consensus. Critical incidents are simply case studies. Sampling for studies can be complete, random, systematic/stratified, or convenience.

Woo! The end. No lectures next week so I can put off the recap of week 5 for a while, as I do. Now back to working on my DITA assignment! Slowly but surely, that one.

Adventure Update

I've been neglecting my blog. So sad. I've been busy and I tend to procrastinate like whoa. What have I been doing in my free time, you ask?

A few weeks ago, I went to a boat party along the Thames at night. There were some great views of the city at night, as you can see. A couple of weekends ago, I went out to Portobello Road Market and bought some antique trinkets to send back home. A lot of that stuff they try to sell is EXPENSIVE. Luckily I found a dude with random old shiny things more in my price range. After wandering around the market - and having a little ham sandwich and a cupcake for lunch - I passed by a book store and got two more books. I really need to stop buying so many books. I just...we don't have bookstores in Waycross and naturally I have to go in any I see...and of course I see something I just have to have in every one. I might need a support group for this.

After the bookstore, I walked to Hyde Park and spent a couple of hours wandering around. I'm not really sure what the statue thing in the picture here is all about but it was huge (and pretty) so I'm just gonna leave it here. I took a little reading break in the park because my feet were starting to hurt. Unfortunately, the tube system was partially down and I couldn't find a functional bus stop either so once I got from the Marble Arch station to Bank, I had to walk all the way home. That's like 30 more minutes of walking. Uphill. In the snow.

The weekend after that, June and I went to Brick Lane. It was nice. Lots of "vintage" clothes and such and lots of Indian food (which we didn't partake of since we were once again on a quest for pizza - which my phone helped us finally locate...we have a history of not being able to find pizza). Bought another book that day! It was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. You can't pass that up.

This past Saturday, we had lunch at a French restaurant with June's mum and Barry. Then we had some amazing adventures traveling on the over-crowded Victoria and District lines, and also great fun trying to find work clothes for me (I gave up). At one point we had to cross the road but there was a fence/barrier and the light turned green for oncoming traffic. What did I do? The most logical thing, of course: ran screaming across the road and jumped over the barrier. June did the safe thing and waited for traffic to pass, then walked around said barrier. On our way back, we stopped in King's Cross station and found Platform 9 3/4. I look like a dork here, but that's okay. I own it. We rode Boris's bikes home. Oh my heartattacks. I obviously don't do well with a heavy bicycle in heavy traffic. Uphill. I survived though. Maybe I'll forgive all the cyclists for nearly killing me all those times. It's harder to be a cyclist than a pedestrian. Definitely an adventure, that one.

Later Saturday night, we went to Ministry of Sound for Basement Jaxx. It was fun. Not so fun getting there. The tube was out and so were half the bus stops. We had no problem getting back home though, thank God. Maybe you just need to do all your traveling at 4am. Good to know.