Mutuality as Miscellaneous: Feminist Theology-Library Science Crossover!

Since it's finally summer, and coursework for the year is over, I'm getting to some "fun" reading... which turns out to still be related to my Organization of Information and Resources class (so much so that I think it should have been required reading).

The book is called Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger, and I'm only halfway through, but I highly recommend it--and not just to librarian-types. It's definitely everyone-accessible.

But the interesting thing is not the book itself.

What's interesting is that I'm reading it through the context of feminism and all the feminist theology I've been reading lately (including Rachel Held Evans's "Week of Mutuality" #mutuality2012).

Weinberger explains that there are three types of order:

1. The order of physical things themselves--where things go, like books on shelves.
2. The order of information about the things of the first order--a directory of where things go, like a catalog.
3. The order of digital "things" which take up no space--the removal of the first and second orders' limitations

Weinberger talks about how, historically, people have been bound to ideas of "natural order" or "heavenly order" that, when analyzed critically, turn out to still be established rather arbitrarily. For example, planets are real things that exist in nature, but to classify an entity as a planet, it has to meet certain criteria, and this criteria is just a definition established by astronomers, and the astronomers don't even agree on the definition. Further, some think that the whole concept of a class of "planets" is totally cultural to begin with, and doesn't even translate globally. Weinberger says that "Maintaining a category of planets says less about the nature of our universe than about our need to imagine walking on speres other than our own blue one" (39).

He goes on to show how Aristotelian categorization has prevailed as the organizational structure of choice for millennia, with its hierarchical trees and nesting of smaller categories into larger.

Truly, the Aristotelian system is useful in many ways (if only because its engrained in our collective psyche). But with the rise of the digital age and postmodernity, its cracks are beginning to leak.

I see that this is also true in the patriarchal hierarchy of the church.

Weinberger says that "Classification is a power struggle--it is political--because the first two orders of order require that there be a winner. The third order takes the territory subjugated by classification and liberates it. Instead of forcing it into categories, it tags it" (91-92).

I refuse to believe that this is not as relevant to me as a woman in the church as it is to me as a librarian in a digital context.

There no longer has to be a winner. Men and women (and everyone in between) can live and serve and minister as miscellaneous persons, "tagging" themselves as they are called and doing what they are meant to do.

The first two orders are no longer sufficient for organizing information or society. We are in a new time--historically and in light of the incarnation and resurrection--and we should be liberated by the ability to be miscellaneous, be what we are, without trying to force our new wine into old wineskins. This new wine will burst the old wineskins. Let's allow it to spill out.

The Effect of Popularity on Social Metadata

For a class assignment, I had to choose two books and analyze their records in both WorldCat and LibraryThing. I chose one well-known book (Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club) and one lesser-known book (Val Webb’s Why We’re Equal). The gap in popularity between these two books had clear consequences for the thoroughness of their records. For example, Webb’s book had zero ratings and zero reviews in both catalogs, while Tan’s had hundreds. On some level, a book’s popularity should not determine how well done its record is; I feel like records should be somewhat objective. But at the same time, with the rise of social aspects of information sharing, the more people who access a material, the better filled-out its metadata will be. Looking at the two different catalogs addressed both of these issues.

WorldCat had the more “objective” records. Despite the fact that Webb’s book seems to be virtually unknown, its metadata did not feel to be lacking when compared to Tan’s. There were a few attributes in the “Details” section that Joy Luck Club had that Why We’re Equal did not, but the only one of these I felt was wrongly missing was that of “Genre.” Others, like “Additional Format” and “More Information” probably were just not applicable. Granted, Webb’s book was also missing the tags and reviews that Tan’s book had, but those were part of the social metadata anyway.

LibraryThing was definitely much heavier on the social tagging. And the number of “Members”  a book had definitely corresponded with how much information was in the book’s record. Tan’s book has 10,276 members, 103 reviews, and 30 tags, as well as extensive information about characters and setting, and relationships to other works—“Is contained in,” “Has the adaptation,” “Has a student’s study guide.” (I thought this “Work-to-work relationships” section was especially interesting.) Webb’s book, on the other hand, had only 11 members, and consequently no reviews, seven tags, and absolutely no information in the “Common Knowledge” section that contained all in the information that was available for Tan’s book.

Surely, part of this dearth of metadata (and publicity) could be due to the fact that Tan’s book is fiction, while Webb’s is non-fiction—i.e. there aren’t really characters in Webb’s book, so that facet would not be applicable. However, there were parts of the Webb record that were empty on LibraryThing simply because no one had gotten around to filling them out, and that could be because only 11 people had “added” it.

I love social tagging. I like being able to see what other people are reading and what they  think about it (though I prefer GoodReads to LibraryThing). And I think that having users fill out metadata fields can really add value to records, but I think it’s unfortunate that a book’s lack of popularity can result in it having an incomplete catalog record. There should be some kind of standard minimum. I think WorldCat did a good job of providing that minimum, but also integrating social features—tagging from users and reviews from GoodReads members.

In the end, though, a book’s popularity should not dictate the quality of its metadata.

Metadata Matters!

This is a picture of the Eymard Seminary baseball team from Suffern, New York, taken sometime between 1890 and 1910. Eymard scored a run in the 12th inning to win the game.

The only reason I know this stuff (except the winning run part; that's obvious) about a photo taken over 100 years ago is metadata.

It drives me crazy when I'm at thrift stores, and I find a basket of awesome old photos but there is nothing written on the back. No names, no dates, no information about what the photo is of. I mean, part of it's fun, because you can make up your own stories about the people in the photos (what, you don't do that?), but it's mostly frustrating.

The metadata class I'm taking right now is revealing to me the importance of accurate labeling. Not only for the purpose of recall and ease of use, but for posterity. It's especially important in today's digital age, where we have photo file names like DSC012894. So not descriptive! So not helpful for finding that photo or explaining to our great-great-grandchildren what it's a photo of. I don't want to be cursed by future generations for failing to properly label and tag my files!

Another MLIS candidate in my program has a great post on her blog about personal digital preservation, including labeling your files with appropriate metadata. Check it out! It's definitely inspired me to do some work on my own files.

All this talk about metadata also makes me think about how I tag my blog posts, and how I search for things online. I'd like to just snap my fingers (I can't not link to this. I tried, and I can't.) and have everything in the whole world labeled nicely. I guess that can't happen. But I can do my part!

How do you feel about metadata? (Easily the nerdiest question ever blogged.) Do you care about labels and tags?