Organizing Information

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Organizing Information

• Lecture 10 Index display, locators, surrogate
  displays

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Arrangement of displayed index

• Alphanumeric display --arrangement of headings in
  order based on letters and numbers that make up
  the headings
• Relational (classified) display-- arrangement of
  headings based on relations among headings. The
  relations can be based on superordination and
  subordination, association, chronology, facets,
  roles, etc.
• Mixed

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Arrangement of displayed index (cont.)

• Homophobia
• Homosexuality
• SEE ALSO
• BROADER TERM
• Sexual orientation
• RELATED TERM
• Astrology and homosexuality
• Gay bars
• Homosexuality, Male
• Lesbianism
• Honesty
• Honor codes
• Honor Societies

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More on pre/post coordination, browsing and
searching

• Library card catalog
• Strictly alphabetical
• Yahoo style directory
• in clusters of relationships cut
• across facets
• Fully faceted display
• e.g. Gateway to educational materials site
• Dell product selector
• Facets in Art Architecture Thesaurus
• Flamenco image retrieval
• Free text search

Browsing
Degree of pre-coordination
Searching
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Browsing and searching

• Strength of browsing is particularly effective
  for information problem that are
• 1. ill defined or interdisciplinary
• 2. when the goal of information seeking is to
  gather overview information about a topic or keep
  abreast of developments in a field (Anderson
  Carballo 2000)

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Browsing and searching

• The limitations of browsing
• 1. Users information problems dont always
  correspond to the level of specificity/granularity
  of the controlled vocabulary.
• 2. Less efficient when the collection/indexes
  scale up
• The problem we are faced with is the undue
  display length of a browse list under a given
  search term. indexes will continue to expand at
  an ever-increasing rate. This factor alone will
  eventually make the alphabetical index less and
  less viable as a method of searching. Massicotte
  88 (cited in Drabenstott Weller 96)

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Browsable hierarchies

• Present the scope, content, and organization of
  the collection
• Present authorized terms
• A mechanism for narrowing and broadening the
  search

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Automatic classification/clustering

• Category or directory overview
• Automatically derived collection overview
• Vivisimo

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Issues in alphabetization

• blank spaces (data base, database)
• capitalization (university, University)
• numbers (one, 1, 1/2, .5, 50, I, II)
• non-alphanumeric characters (_at_, !)
• pronunciation vs. spelling (half, one-half)
• spelling variants (MacArthur, McArthur, , and,
  , dollar)
• abbreviations (Los Angeles, L.A., Saint Louis,
  St. Louis)

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Alphabetic displayWord-by-word vs.
Letter-by-letter

• Word-by-word (blank spaces as a sorting
  character)
• New Jersey
• New York
• Newark
• Newton
• Letter-by-letter (blank spaces are ignored)
• Newark
• New Jersey
• Newton
• New York

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NISO Z39.75 Organizing principles

• word by word
• as few rules as possible
• headings are alphabetized exactly as written
• only two minor exceptions because of headings
  containing numbers

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Basic order of NISO alphabetization

• Numerals (0-9)
• Letter (A-Z)
• Roman numerals arranged by value
• decimal fractions are arranged by value
• see (Anderson, 1997), p.34

.75 Ares are for sale ¾ for 3 100 a.m. 1.3
acres 2-1/2 minute talk treasury 6.41 per hen
per year 007 James Bond a report 10 review XX
century cyclopedia and atlas 1001 nights 1984 see
Nineteen eighty-four American songs Charles I,
King of England Charles II, Emperor of
Germany Charles (airplane)
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Syntax in index display

• the rules for the indication of relations among
  terms in an indexing language and for the
  construction of headings (e.g. citation order,
  role indicators, pre/post-coordinate syntax, See
  Lecture 7)
• the internal structure of a compound term

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Word order in compound terms
Inverted order in hierarchical display
pipes -- concrete
-- copper -- glass --
plastic
Standard concrete pipes copper pipes glass
pipes plastic pipes
Inverted word order
pipes, concrete pipes, copper pipes,
glass pipes, plastic
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Search syntax

• food AND obesity
• food obesity
• AND (food, obesity)
• food OR obesity
• OR (food obesity)
• food obesity
• food NOT obesity
• Google

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Locators

• Devices that link from an index term to the
  documentary unit (or to a fuller surrogate
  representation of the documentary unit)
• page number, paragraph, section (back-of-book
  indexes)
• projectors, 123compiling, 154-155
• considerations, 156
• controls, 136
• defined, 124, 136, 157
• project profiles, 451-461
• call number
• hyperlink

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Document surrogate display

• A brief representative of a full document
• Provide a user with a quick summary or overview
  of the important topic and features of the
  document
• The information based on which the user make
  relevance judgment
• Give options for displaying different layers of
  bibliographic information
• e.g. ACM Digital Library
• PubMed
• search engine best passage

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Design project

• Single view vs. multiple views
• A collection can be represented in
  multiple-dimensions, base on the content and the
  bibliographic attributes
• Criteria for evaluating the browsable hierarchy
• Does the index include the range of entities
  (e.g., people, disciplines, materials, parts,
  properties,
• abstract concepts, ideas, operations, processes,
  events, places, times) represented in the subject
  
• content of the work or collection?
• Does the overall organization form a logically
  coherent framework that reflects the structure of
  the
• problem to be solved and is in tune with the
  organization of knowledge and the expected
  pattern of
• thought of the users?
• Are the major categories mutually exclusive?
• Are the distinctions among categories useful?
• Is it easy to predict the subcategories from the
  top-level categories
• (From class2)

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Basic Elements in MARC record

• Library of Congress online catalog
• Tag and data

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Dublin Core metadata template

• Creating a D.C. metadata using a template
• An exercise Create a D.C. metadata for a
  electronic article using the template

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Schedule for the rest of the semester

• Nov. 4th
• Nov. 11th (ASIST, annual conference, no class)
• Nov. 18th
• Nov. 25th (Thanksgiving, no class)
• December 2nd (Student presentation)
• December 9th (Student presentation)

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User interface

• Different interfaces for Medline
• PubMed
• Ovid version of Medline
• National Library of Medicine Gateway
• HiBrowse
• Multiple Access to PubMed