Organizing Information
7 statements
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
What do we mean by
“organizing information”?
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Describing.
Grouping.
Relating.
Arranging (sorting).
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
What are some systems for
organizing information?
Libraries (and their classifications), Web sites (and
their information architectures), the periodic table of
the elements, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
(DSM) of mental disorders, the supermarket, the
racial categories on the U.S. Census forms, the
schools and departments in this university, your
kitchen, restaurant menus, the folders on your
computer, the International Classification of
Diseases (ICD), your iTunes playlists, the section
headings in a book, and the table of contents, and
the index, the colors to indicate elevation on a map,
the menus and commands in a software
application...
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
What are some systems for
organizing information?
Classification at
the Dairy Queen!
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
1. You cannot escape.
Classification surrounds you.
You add to the mass of classification without
even thinking about it.
Classification is part of your brain!
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
2. Any classification is only partial.
We need classification to simplify the world:
classification enables us to generate new
knowledge and communicate it to others.
But the real world is infinitely complicated. And
it bites back.
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
3. There is no one classification
to rule them all.
Paul Otlet: one of many who
wanted to classify the world.
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
3. There is no one classification
to rule them all.
But situations are different. People are different.
New ideas arise. And old ideas are reinterpreted.
Even in science! Phenetic (Linnean) taxonomy vs.
cladistic, for example, in biology.
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
4. Classifications are made by people.
They are not handed down from the divine, or
from Melvyl Dewey.
All classifications can thus be criticized.
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
4. Classifications are made by people.
Not the periodic table of the elements!!!!
Mendeleev discovered that. Nature created it!
Yes, in some sense, we can say that even the
periodic table of the elements is a human
creation.
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
5. Classification is creative.
By selecting the important properties of objects and
showing how these manifest in different groups,
each classification shows a unique way of viewing
the world.
Classifications can open our minds as well as
confirm our stereotypes. And creating a
classification that illuminates new relationships
between things can be thought of as a creative act!
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
6. Classification is political.
Classifications can validate or marginalize
certain ideas, or certain groups.
What are the significant properties behind any
category term?
What’s in and what’s out?
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
6. Classification is political.
From the Soviet library classification:
Religion
Atheism
E0 Marxism-Leninism on religion and atheism
E1 Freethinking and atheism
E2 / 9 Religion
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
6. Classification is political.
From the Dewey Decimal Classification:
• 200 Religion
• 210 Natural theology
• 220 Bible
• 230 Christian theology
• 240 Christian moral & devotional theology
• 250 Christian orders & local church
• 260 Christian social theology
• 270 Christian church history
• 280 Christian denominations & sects
• 290 Other & comparative religions
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
7. Classifications both reflect and
shape us.
What we create has a life of its own.
Why should it be weird to have pancakes for
dinner? Or meatloaf for breakfast?
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
Thank you
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
Borges’ “joke” classification
These ambiguities, redundancies, and and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain
Chinese encyclopedia entitled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. On those remote pages it is
written that animals are divided into
(a) those that belong to the Emperor
(b) embalmed ones
(c) those that are trained
(d) suckling pigs
(e) mermaids
(f) fabulous ones
(g) stray dogs
(h) those that are included in this classification
(i) those that tremble as if they were mad
(j) innumerable ones
(k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush
(l) others
(m) those that have just broken a flower vase
(n) those that resemble flies from a distance
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010
Not so much a joke?
“But the impossibility of penetrating the divine
scheme of the universe cannot dissuade us from
outlining human schemes, even though we are
aware that they are provisional.”
Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010