INTRODUCTION TO INFORMATION SCIENCE

INTRODUCTION TO INFORMATION SCIENCE

By David Bawden and Lyn Robinson

'I believe this book is the best introduction to information science available at present. It tackles both the philosophical basis and the most important branches, and it is based on solid knowledge about the contemporary literature of the field. If students have the knowledge provided by this introduction, this would be a fine basis on which to go further with specific problems.' - Birger Hjørland, Royal School of Library and Information Science, Copenhagen, Denmark'.

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ICoASL 2013: 3rd International Conference of Asian Special Libraries, April 10-12, 2013

Library and Information Science Professionals are welcome to contribute papers for presentation on the below themes and related themes. The Papers should be based on research surveys; case studies or action plans rather than theoretical explanations.

Main theme is “Special Libraries towards Achieving Dynamic, Strategic, and Responsible Working Environment”.

Further information 

A New OpenCalais Release On the Way

OpenCalais, Thomson Reuters' entity extraction tool is due for a makeover. A new beta release is to be available in early August. A number of new entities, facts and events related primarily to politics and intra and international conflict will be extractable.

Further info...

OCLC adds Linked Data to WorldCat.org

DUBLIN, Ohio, USA, 20 June 2012—OCLC is taking the first step toward adding linked data to WorldCat by appending Schema.org descriptive mark-up to WorldCat.org pages. WorldCat.org now offers the largest set of linked bibliographic data on the Web. With the addition of Schema.org mark-up to all book, journal and other bibliographic resources in WorldCat.org, the entire publicly available version of WorldCat is now available for use by intelligent Web crawlers, like Google and Bing, that can make use of this metadata in search indexes and other applications.

Commercial developers that rely on Web-based services have been exploring ways to exploit the potential of linked data. The Schema.org initiative—launched in 2011 by Google, Bing and Yahoo! and later joined by Yandex—provides a core vocabulary for markup that helps search engines and other Web crawlers more directly make use of the underlying data that powers many online services.

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Review of Welsh/Batley “Practical cataloguing”

Practical Cataloguing: AACR, RDA and MARC21
Anne Welsh and Sue Batley

London: Facet, 2012.  ix, 217 p.  £44.95
ISBN: 978-1-85604-695-4

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The arrival of the Welsh and Batley book was eagerly awaited in the UK cataloguing community, so I dived in with great excitement.  It starts by discussing the history and theory of cataloguing, and the central tenet is outlined: FRBR and RDA are a natural progression in a long history of cataloguing rules. This thesis is emphasised throughout the rest of the book which unfolds as follows:

·         A chapter discussing FRBR-ised catalogues

·         An exposition on the main areas of bibliographic cataloguing, using AACR2 with comments on how RDA would differ

·         An extremely clear outline of the main principles of authority headings and authority control

·         A chapter covering RDA and FRBR, mostly from a historical viewpoint but finishing  with a small section on cataloguing management

·         A description of cataloguing a specific item.  This uses RDA – including numerous quotes from the RDA rules – as well as some comparisons to AACR2

·         The book then reverts back to using AACR2 for a chapter exploring the history and theory of MARC21

·         The final, shorter, chapters discuss the perceptions and implementation of RDA, and highlight the imminent “death” of MARC21

·         An appendix of ten examples of bibliographic records, using AACR2 (level 1 and level 2), RDA and MARC21, but the MARC21 coding only illustrates the AACR2 records

Overall, the book is well-written and provides life to what could be an unanimated subject.    Certain sections of the book are extremely admirable and their value is easy to see: for instance, the chapter on authority control is superbly written and offers a useful and up-to-date outline of an important area of “real-life” cataloguing.  Nevertheless, there are a number of significant issues in this book.  The organisation of material is unclear and the structure appears weak.  First, the text veers from theory to history to field-by-field description to management advice, mostly without any obvious reason or pattern.  Second, the rapid shifting between AACR2 and RDA focused chapters, while an admirable enactment of the hybrid environment that the authors are keen to emphasise, conceals any overall narrative arc to the text.

Another major question is the lack of any examples using MARC21 for RDA records: the examples in the MARC21 chapter and the Appendix only use AACR2 records to illustrate MARC21.  While it is understood that the authors wish to emphasise that RDA is independent of coding, RDA is mostly likely to be introduced into MARC21 catalogues in the first instance.  Therefore, it is a shame that the text does not provide any examples of RDA records in the format that most existing cataloguers are going to be trained and first use the new cataloguing rules.  There are other small quibbles such as the proof-reading of the examples (especially the duplicate physical description fields), a spurious argument about the “book-emphasis” of AACR2 (p. 19, where the explanation does not relate to the point being made) and the sometimes long-winded detours to cataloguing history which can interrupt the flow of the text (for instance in chapter 5). 

In conclusion, this book contains some worthy and occasionally excellent writings on cataloguing, even if the whole is not greater than the sum of its parts.  I fully recommend this book to those starting their cataloguing lives, as the usefulness of the contents will override other concerns; however, the lack of RDA/MARC21 information, the quantity of AACR2-specific material and structural issues will be more problematic to experienced cataloguers and those responsible for (re-)training them. Overall, this book is definitely worthy of excitement, but perhaps the excitement is a little muted. 

Deborah Lee

I think therefore I classify - next ISKO UK event - July 16

The next ISKO UK event (a joint event with the BCS Information Retrieval Specialist Group) will be on Monday July 16th, in London. It is a one-day seminar on the continuing need for classification, exploring how it is taught and how it is changing to meet the needs of an increasingly online world.

The event offers to the chance to hear from leading speakers talking about the philosophy, teaching, and applications of classification and how researchers, teachers, and practitioners can adapt to meet the new classification challenges posed by the Semantic Web. Participants will be able to join a number of breakout sessions to explore themes in more detail as well as investigate automated classification systems in vendor demonstrations. Lunch is included in the cost (only £25 for members and £60 for non-members) and the day will end with a chance to network over wine and nibbles.

For full programme details, speaker biographies, and booking form see the main event page.

Call for nominations: 2012 UKeiG Tony Kent Strix Award

The UKeiG Tony Kent Strix Award is given in recognition of an outstanding practical innovation or achievement in the field of information retrieval. This could take the form of an application or service, or an overall appreciation of past achievements from which significant advances have emanated. The Award is open to individuals or groups from anywhere in the world. The deadline for nominations is Friday 24th August 2012.

Nominations should be for achievement that meets one or more of the following criteria:

· a major and/or sustained contribution to the theoretical or experimental understanding of the information retrieval process;

· development of, or significant improvement in, mechanisms, a product or service for the retrieval of information, either generally or in a specialised field;

· development of, or significant improvement in, easy access to an information service;

· a sustained contribution over a period of years to the field of information retrieval; for example, by running an information service or by contributing at national or international level to organisations active in the field.

Key characteristics that the judges will look for in nominations are innovation, initiative, originality and practicality.

Full details for nominations can be found at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/content/2012-call-tony-kent-strix-nominations

Nominations for the 2012 Award are now invited.