Archive for the ‘Information Science’ Category

Strata 2013

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013

Strata 2013

Feb. 26-28, 2013
Santa Clara, CA

From the website:

The breadth and depth of expertise at Strata is unsurpassed—with over 120 speakers and 100 presentations and events, you’ll find solutions to your most pressing data issues. The conference program covers strategy, technology, and policy:

  • Data-driven Business: Solve some of today’s thorniest business problems with big data, new interfaces, and the advent of ubiquitous computing.
  • Big Data for Enterprise IT: Create big data strategy, manage your first project, demystify vendor solutions, and understand how big data differs from BI.
  • Beyond Hadoop: Dive deep into Cassandra, Storm, Drill, and other emerging technologies.
  • Connected World: Explore the implications—and opportunities—as low-cost networks and sensors create an ever-connected world.
  • Data Science: Immerse yourself inside the world of data practictioners—from the hard science of new algorithms to cultural change and teambuilding.
  • Design: Make data matter with highly effective user experiences, using new interfaces, interactivity, and visualization.
  • Hadoop in Practice: Get practical lessons, integration tricks, and a glimpse of the road ahead.
  • Law, Ethics, and Open Data: Tackle the biggest issues in compliance, governance, and ethics in the era of open data and heightened privacy concerns.

OK, it’s not Balisage (Markup Olympics (Balisage) [No Drug Testing])) but it isn’t in August/Montreal either. ;-)

Still, a great gathering of data/information folk, if more general than Balisage.

History of Information Organization (Infographic)

Thursday, March 8th, 2012

From Cartography to Card Catalogs [Infographic]: History of Information Organization

Mindjet has posted an infographic and blog post about the history of information organization. I have embedded the graphic below.

Let me preface my remarks by saying I have known people at Mindjet and it is a fairly remarkable organization. And to be fair, the history of information organization is of interest to me, although I am far from being a specialist in the field.

However, when a graphic jumps from “850 CE The First Byzantine Encyclopedia,” to “1276 CE Oldest Continuously Functioning Library” and informs the reader on the edge in between that was “3,000 years ago,” it seems to be lacking in precision or proofing, perhaps both.

Although information has to be summarized for such a presentation, I thought the rise of writing in Egypt/Sumeria would have merited a note, perhaps the library of Ashurbanipal (first library of the ancient Middle East) or the Library of Alexandria, just to name two. Noting you would have to go before Ashurbanipal to get 3,000 years ago. And there were written texts and collections of such texts for anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 years before that.

I do appreciate that Mindjet doesn’t think information issues arose with the digital computer. I am hopeful that they will encourage a re-examination of older methods and solutions in hopes of finding clues to new solutions.

ODLIS: Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science

Friday, February 10th, 2012

ODLIS: Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science by Joan M. Reitz.

ODLIS is known to all librarians and graduate school library students but perhaps not to those of us who abuse library terminology in CS and related pursuits. Can’t promise it will make our usage any better but certainly won’t make it any worse. ;-)

This would make a very interesting “term for a day” type resource.

Certainly one you should bookmark and browse at your leisure.

History of the Dictionary

ODLIS began at the Haas Library in 1994 as a four-page printed handout titled Library Lingo, intended for undergraduates not fluent in English and for English-speaking students unfamiliar with basic library terminology. In 1996, the text was expanded and converted to HTML format for installation on the WCSU Libraries Homepage under the title Hypertext Library Lingo: A Glossary of Library Terminology. In 1997, many more hypertext links were added and the format improved in response to suggestions from users. During the summer of 1999, several hundred terms and definitions were added, and a generic version was created that omitted all reference to specific conditions and practices at the Haas Library.

In the fall of 1999, the glossary was expanded to 1,800 terms, renamed to reflect its extended scope, and copyrighted. In February, 2000, ODLIS was indexed in Yahoo! under “Reference – Dictionaries – Subject.” It was also indexed in the WorldCat database, available via OCLC FirstSearch. During the year 2000, the dictionary was expanded to 2,600 terms and by 2002 an additional 800 terms had been added. From 2002 to 2004, the dictionary was expanded to 4,200 terms and cross-references were added, in preparation for the print edition. Since 2004, an additional 600 terms and definitions have been added.

Purpose of the Dictionary

ODLIS is designed as a hypertext reference resource for library and information science professionals, university students and faculty, and users of all types of libraries. The primary criterion for including a term is whether a librarian or other information professional might reasonably be expected to know its meaning in the context of his or her work. A newly coined term is added when, in the author’s judgment, it is likely to become a permanent addition to the lexicon of library and information science. The dictionary reflects North American practice; however, because ODLIS was first developed as an online resource available worldwide, with an e-mail contact address for feedback, users from many countries have contributed to its growth, often suggesting additional terms and commenting on existing definitions. Expansion of the dictionary is an ongoing process.

Broad in scope, ODLIS includes not only the terminology of the various specializations within library science and information studies but also the vocabulary of publishing, printing, binding, the book trade, graphic arts, book history, literature, bibliography, telecommunications, and computer science when, in the author’s judgment, a definition might prove useful to librarians and information specialists in their work. Entries are descriptive, with examples provided when appropriate. The definitions of terms used in the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules follow AACR2 closely and are therefore intended to be prescriptive. The dictionary includes some slang terms and idioms and a few obsolete terms, often as See references to the term in current use. When the meaning of a term varies according to the field in which it is used, priority is given to the definition that applies within the field with which it is most closely associated. Definitions unrelated to library and information science are generally omitted. As a rule, definition is given under an acronym only when it is generally used in preference to the full term. Alphabetization is letter-by-letter. The authority for spelling and hyphenation is Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language (College Edition). URLs, current as of date of publication, are updated annually.