LIS 415: Information Organization

Topic Areas: Introduction to the course. An overview of Information Organization.

Learning Objectives:

• Communicate what is expected of you in the course, and what you can expect from the instructor.
• Identify the basic goals or “objects” of information organization.
• Identify environments and contexts in which information can be organized.
• Identify differences among the organizing processes in various information environments.

Guiding Questions:

• Is there a basic need to organize?
• Why do we organize?
• What is information organization?
• What is the difference between personal information organization and institutional information organization?
• How is information organization different among libraries, archives, museums, online environments, etc.?

Required Readings

Week 1: Introduction

FYI: Author hyperlinks lead to the bibliography.
URLs and title links lead to the actual resources.

Joudrey, The Organization of Information, preliminaries and Chapter 1 (p. 1-10)

Chin, "File Not Found" (link to article) 

Oh, "Types of Personal Information Categorization" (link to article)

Week 2: Information Environments

Joudrey, The Organization of Information, Chapters 1 & 2

Relevant Articles from The Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science

Allen and Stein, "Visual Resources Management in Cultural Institutions"

Baldoni and Joudrey, "Cataloging"

Cunningham, "Archives"

Dillon and Turnbull, "Information Architecture"

Helfer and Heinrich, "Technical Services"

Jorgensen, "Still Image Indexing"

Jones et al., "Personal Information Management"

Joudrey, "Cataloging"

Maxwell, "Bibliographic Control"

Mulvany, "Back-of-the-Book Indexing"

Myburgh, "Records Organization and Access"

Neilson. "Museum Registration and Documentation"

O'Hara and Hall, "Semantic Web"

Sweeney, "Provenance of Archival Materials"

Thomas, "Special Collections"

Turner, "Moving Image Indexing"

Weinberg, "Indexing: History and Theory"

Recommended Readings

Articles:

Malone, "How Do People Organize Their Desks?"

Oh, "Personal Information Organization in Everyday Life"

Books at Beatley:

Antoniou et al., Semantic Web Primer (link to e-book)

Buck & Gilmore, MRM5: Museum Registration Methods

Joudrey, Introduction to Cataloging and Classification, 11th ed., Chapters 1-2

Reibel, Registration Methods for the Small Museum, Chapters 5 & 6 (link to e-book)

Rosenfeld, et al., Information Architecture for the Web and Beyond, Chapters 1-3

Shepherd & Yeo, Managing Records

Course Outline

• Unit 1: Introduction to Information Organization
• Unit 2: Retrieval Tools and Systems
• Unit 3: Encoding
• Unit 4: Introduction to Metadata
• Unit 5: Conceptual Models, Description, and Access
• Unit 6: Authority Control
• Unit 7: Aboutness & Subject Analysis
• Unit 8: Vocabulary Control
• Unit 9: Classification & Arrangement