[Sigia-l] Classification is an essential skill

[Jonathan Broad]

On Sun, 2003-02-02 at 00:36, Philip Hall wrote:
> 
> Classification is fraught with arbitrariness and subjectivity and is 
> liable to be full of the bias of the classifier. All the more reason to 
> embrace it as an essential skill and understand how to be the best at 
> it. And being the best means understanding that same arbitrariness and 
> subjectivity and learning how to manage it to best advantage. It means 
> recognizing bias and learning to control it.
 
Hear, hear!

I'm a bit embarrassed to phrase it this way, but I've come to think of
this skill as having a few recognizable stages of development.

1) We categorize, ignorant of how our biases are affecting our
judgment.  2) We realize how biased we are, and retreat to the comfort
of user analysis--trying to abstract an 'ideal user' we can defer
absolutely to, and categorize information for 'it' or 'them'.
3) We realize that 'they' do not exist, and that the strongest
classifications are rooted in our individual judgment--but that this
judgment must be constantly questioned by our appreciation of
'alternative scenarios' coming from user analysis.

I think that this 'self-control' of bias you noted is similar to the way
authors have to think in order to write well.  A good fiction writer has
a deeply personal voice, but must also be very sensitive to the
varieties of ways their work will be 'heard'.

> All of those people use 
> language and information in their own way and they will never all agree 
> on what that language means or what the information says to them. My 
> profession is to wade into this sea of information and help  make some 
> sense of it. Whether that is by helping one group of people prepare 
> their information before it goes out to the sea that is the web or by 
> sifting the information-flow from the web to gather the useful bits for 
> another group, the essential skill of classification is still there.

Again, well said.  We aren't trying to dominate the users use of
information, because that is always occurring in a very concrete context
that we are ill-equipped to appreciate.  Instead we try to make the
information collection itself more use-ful--usable, per se.  

As an aside to the peanut galler, there are many ways of doing this that
don't interfere with *any* particular use for which the information in
question might have been intended.  And now there are technologies that
enable ways of organizing information which open information to
qualitatively new uses.

The future is bright for the librarians-at-heart...

> 
> So. I'm with Gerry. Let's talk about how, when, where and get out off 
> the ground floor.

<sound of elevator door closing/> ?

Jonathan Broad