: THE IMPACT OF NETWORKED
KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS ON
E-resources Co-ordinator
Durham University Library CATALOGUING
@SimonXIX
Simon
Barron
CILIP Cataloguing & Indexing Group
Conference 2012
THE FUNDAMENTAL
INTERCONNECTEDNESS
#CIG12
OF ALL THINGS
Welsh & Batley,
Practical cataloguing, p. 172.
“FRBR suggests that the
library catalogue should
do more than enable the
location of a particular
item. In essence, in
creating a 'FRBRized'
catalogue record, we are
describing not only the
thing we have in our hands,
but its relationship to other
things in the bibliographic
universe - not only to its
creator(s) and previous
editions, but, theoretically,
to any other thing that may
be of use to an end user.”
“FRBR describes the
entities in the
bibliographic
universe, their
relationships and
attributes.”
‘The School of Athens’
by Raphael
information through the
ages, p. 7.
Wright, Glut: mastering
“A hierarchy is a
system of
nested
groups.”
‘The Fall of Man’ by Lucas
Cranach the Elder
“Linnaeus’s classification is
typical of a taxonomy in that the
relationships between living
things are depicted by means of
a hierarchical structure. This is a
structure in which successive
steps in division create smaller
and more specific classes. It is
usually represented visually as a
tree structure, with the tree
branching at each new level.
This sort of structure is probably
what is ordinarily thought of as a
system of classification.”
Broughton,
Essential classification, p. 13.
“…treat knowledge as if it were a unity which can
be subdivided into smaller and smaller units. At
the top of the tree is the whole universe,
which is divided
and subdivided
to arrive at
all the
different
entities,
events
and activities
represented in the subjects of books.”
Broughton, Essential classification, p. 32.
Wright, Glut: mastering information
through the ages, p. 70.
“…individuals function
as autonomous nodes,
negotiating their own
relationships, forging
ties, coalescing into
clusters. There is no
“top” in a network; each
node is equal and selfdirected. Democracy is
a kind of network; so is a
flock of birds, or the
World Wide Web.”
Wright, Glut: mastering information
through the ages, p. 7.
"Our biological existence, social world, economy, and
religious traditions tell a compelling story of
interrelatedness. As the great Argentinean author Jorge
Luis Borges put it, "everything touches everything."
Barabási, Linked, p. 5.
"Consider for example a network crucial for our ability to find
scientific information: the citation network. Each scientific
paper cites other papers, relevant to the discussed work. A
mathematics paper would cite other maths papers focusing
on similar problems or occasionally a biology or a physics
paper, illustrating the applications of the obtained results.
Therefore, all scientific publications are part of a web of
science in which nodes are research publications connected
by citations. These links are directed. Indeed, following the
references at the end of this book will allow you to find the
quotes papers. Yet none of these papers could send you to
this book, since they do not cite it. The citation network is a
very peculiar directed network in which the IN and OUT
components reflect the historical ordering of the papers and
the central component is very small if it exists at all."
Barabási, Linked, p. 169.
“Network thinking is poised to invade all domains of human
activity and most fields of human inquiry. It is more than
another helpful perspective or tool. Networks are by their very
nature the fabric of most complex systems, and nodes and
links deeply infuse all strategies aimed at approaching our
interlocked universe.”
Barabási, Linked, p. 222.
Institutional Repository Search
http://irs.mimas.ac.uk/demonstrator/
“[Consilience is] a “jumping
together” of knowledge by the
linking of facts and fact-based
theory across disciplines to create a
common groundwork of
explanation.”
Wilson, Consilience, p. 6.
“The map of the material world, including
human mental activity, can be thought a
sprinkling of charted terrain separated by
blank expanses that are of unknown extent
yet accessible to coherent interdisciplinary research…
If the consilience world view is correct, the
traverse of the gaps will be a Magellanic
voyage that eventually encircles the whole
of reality.”
Wilson, Consilience, p. 299.
“…obviously there is no
classification of the universe
that is not arbitrary and
speculative. The reason is quite
simple:
we do not know what the
universe is.”
Borges, ‘John Wilkins’ Analytical Language’ in
The total library: non-fiction 1922-1986, p. 231.
Bibliography
Adams, D., 1988. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective
Agency. London: Pan Macmillan.
Barabási, A-L., 2003. Linked: how everything is
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., (B. Massumi, tr.) 1987. A
thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Honderich, T., ed., 2005. The Oxford companion to
philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Robinson, L., and Maguire, M., 2010. ‘The rhizome
connected to everything else and what it means for
and the tree: changing metaphors for information
business, science, and everyday life. London: Penguin. organisation’. Journal of documentation, 66 (4), pp.
604-613.
Borges, J. L., 1942. ‘John Wilkins’ Analytical Language’
in Borges, J. L., (E. Weinberg, ed.) 2001. The total library: Tillett, B. B., 2007. ‘FRBR and RDA: resource
non-fiction 1922-1986. London: Penguin.
description and access’ in Taylor, A. G., ed., 2007.
Understanding FRBR: what it is and how it will affect
Bowman, J. H., 2003. Essential cataloguing. London:
our retrieval tools. London: Libraries Unlimited.
Facet Publishing.
Welsh, A., and Batley, S., 2012. Practical cataloguing:
Broughton, V., 2004. Essential classification. London: AACR, RDA and MARC 21. London: Facet Publishing.
Facet Publishing.
Wilson, E. O., 1998. Consilience: the unity of
knowledge. London: Little, Brown and Company.
Buchanan, M., 2002. Nexus: small worlds and the
groundbreaking science of networks. London: W. W.
Wittgenstein, L., 2001. Tractatus logicoNorton & Company.
philosophicus. Oxon: Routledge.
D’Alembert, J., 1963. Preliminary discourse to the
Encyclopedia of Diderot. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Wright, A., 2007. Glut: mastering information
through the ages. London: Cornell University Press.
Company Inc.
Image credits
‘Yet another bean photo’ by Flickr user kern.justin.
‘remember to thank all the books you haven’t read over the past three years’ by Flickr user osiatynska.
‘The School of Athens’ from Wikimedia Commons.
‘Pear tree branches circles on the fig tree’ by Flickr user Mammaoca2008.
‘Look Closer and You Can See…’ by Flickr user gogoloopie.
‘The Fall of Man’ from Wikimedia Commons.
Systema Naturae scan from Wikimedia Commons.
Jefferson’s library catalog scan from the Massachusetts Historical Society.
‘The Tree of Books’ by DeviantArt user vladstudio.
‘Alexandria Library’ by Flickr user Dallas75.
Several images of networks by Flickr user gephi_org.
‘Web 2.0 Digitage 2012’ by Flickr user ocean.flynn.
‘Rhizome seed’ from http://www.a-website.org/mnemosyne/no_signposts/pics/rhisome_seed.gif
‘Big bang’ by Flickr user entonceeees.