Active Research 11 | -
Oct 31, 2016 | #1
Explain the concepts of 1) indexing, 2) abstracting, 3) classification in terms of reducing search time and search space to aid in real-world information seeking activities. Support your answers with appropriate literature and academic references.
INTRODUCTION
In academic terms, success often means besting others or, failing that perhaps, the appearance of besting others. This microcosm of a larger culture that often mistakes contention for elucidation means it can become easy to spend most of our time arguing over small details and becoming entrenched in minutiae. That is not to say that contentions are not important! Small details can have sweeping effects! Though many outsiders tend to believe that the stakes in librarianship are small, those on the inside know better. However, librarians are people too, to embrace the cliché, and can be distracted from important foundational issues as much as any other people passionate about their work.
In the worlds of indexing, abstracting, and classification, a current distraction is the glittering surface of whether or not librarians are obsolete in these arenas. Though Salisbury and others dispense with the idea, it is a "contention" often used in headlines (including Salisbury's) and lay articles that leaves many with the impression that the question is asked and answered. Many "techies" believe that librarians are obsolete, or virtually so, and many laypeople casually agree. After all, there are no ends to the software that instantly catalog an entire electronic work, then you just search for the words you want and you are home free! The same layperson will then find themselves spitting nails having searched for their problem seven times, only to find that Facebook's and Tumblr's "help" pages lead to more dead links and unhelpful (and unrelated) suggestions than a listing of MySpace pages from 2001. If that layperson calls tech services, they may well reach someone who wonders what sort of person is unable to fix something so simple.
What is missing in these interactions are the smoothing qualities of librarianship, particularly indexing, abstracting, and classification, though I suspect that many people who would be credulous at the idea of abstracting major Web sites would be delighted to have those sites professionally abstracted with something other than sales blurbs praising the company. Perhaps most people get what they are looking for most of the time, with the aid of friends and forums alike. As much as one might enjoy the feeling of having done it oneself, how much more would one enjoy the feeling of having done it oneself the first time? This is a key element of indexing, abstracting, and classification, especially with electronic information, when they are done and done well, they are virtually invisible to average end user, who often assumes their own skills got them there. The increased emphasis on electronic sources works best when it is understood that the methods are changing, but the goals remain the same.
But what are indexing, abstracting, and classification, and how to they make searching easier, i.e. more efficient?
Of the three concepts, it is probably the case that people in the United States become aware of indexing second, after classification. It is discussed early in grade school, and children are taught to use indexes as a means of doing research on a specific topic. Later, students learn that a good quality index, like a quality contents page, can give someone a good idea of what a book will contain and guide readers toward making choices between texts or prioritizing their research. But not even academic researchers seem to give much thought to how those indexes came to be, even as they move through the library stacks, flipping books open to the back and considering the book's value to their own work based entirely on the index, using mere seconds or minutes to choose the best texts to inform their work or teach their students, instead of the hours that would have to be invested if they needed to read each text to ascertain its contents and relevance.
Indexing, when done manually, is the process by which an informed reader iterates through a work and determines the key concepts of the text, represents them through an alphabetized system that refers back to their location in the text. The informed reader is informed by an awareness of the subject itself, thus indexers often specialize in legal, medical, humanities, engineering, and other fields. They are also made informed by their knowledge of the indexing process, and finally, they are informed by their understanding of the future readers of the text itself. A good index reflects all of this information, and performs this work for the end users, much as the power train in a car starts it when the driver merely turns a key. Software synthesizes the work of the living indexer with varying degrees of quality, depending on the software.
The indexer's awareness of a subject area means that they will know a variety of the terms used to refer to a given subject, as well as related concepts. This can be applied to indexing in either unique entries and in "see" and "see also" entries. A potential reader or researcher can determine at a glance whether a text has 1) enough of 2) the right information. Whether flipping through the back of a book in one's hands or using an electronic search engine, indexers can also help a researcher define their terms to either narrow or expand the search as appropriate. "See" and "see also" entries, often have an "a ha!" effect, wherein a researcher suddenly "realizes" that there are more fruitful search options available. The indexer is usually invisible in this process, as is evidenced by the rarity of hearing a researcher say, "Then the indexer showed me that I had been using the wrong terms."
Abstracting is the process of synthesizing the contents of an article in pre-set number of words. Abstracts can be any number of lengths, but most fall between forty and two hundred words. Abstracts are used in different ways. In some cases, they are the only portion of a text that is indexed for online searches. In other cases, they are being manually perused for indications of their value to a potential researcher.
Because abstracts are sometimes the only indexed portion of an article, and because many researchers will limit their electronic searches to terms in the abstract, a quality abstract will include as many of the keyword terms from the text as possible. To give an unlikely example, if an article on dogs only calls them "puppies", the wise abstractor will be sure to include the term "puppies", even though it is nonstandard, along with subject area appropriate terms. A quality abstract can spare researches the wasted time of reviewing works wherein an author might include several anecdotes about dog breeding in a work that is actually about teaching multiplication. A keyword search on "dogs" might show that dogs were mentioned seven times in such an article, making it appear relevant to a researcher and moving other works further down the results list. However, an abstract search would exclude this result, as it is not actually a work about dogs.
Whether reducing the number of unrelated search results, improving the overall quality of returns, or providing a brief synopsis of a larger work, quality abstracting saves researchers time and effort, and like indexing, can provide guideposts for how to limit or expand future searches. A quality abstract not only reduces search time for the present search, it can teach and train users for more efficient future searching.
Library classification is the first ordering system with which most users become acquainted. The relationship with classification has changed, but the claim that classification has been "almost forgotten by contemporary librarians" is untrue. Even casual readers will learn quickly where their favorite books are, even if they do actively realize that the rest of the books in the library are organized as carefully. Classification can help the researcher but it is particularly useful to the browser. By placing material about similar subject, by the same author, or in a similar format in close physical proximity, the end user is able to review a large number of related texts more quickly. Classification, in the physical plane, allows both the researcher and the browser the delight of a "find". Again, the cataloger like the indexer and abstracter is invisible. Readers feel the joy of discovery, never realizing that the entire library has been mapped and that they traverse on the carefully groomed trails made by catalogers with their best interests in mind.
Classification saves time whether one is browsing or researching, whether those are occurring in the stacks or electronically. Classification allows someone who is searching to exclude or identify at a glance that some of the returns for a search on dogs are in the fiction or poetry sections, and will therefore not provide information about breed specific illnesses or methods of grooming standard poodles. Classification allows a browser to go the section where poetry is shelved, and find new poets to read in mere moments, whereas books placed on the shelves randomly, or even alphabetically by author irrespective of contents, would make that a far more laborious task.
CONCLUSION
That these are electronic processes first often feels "obvious" to academics or researchers. However, most readers, whatever their use of electronic searches and results, still also browse stacks, prioritize the physical interaction with texts, and even exclusively electronic users benefit from the extant systems that were born out of the physical world and the culture that shaped it. Further, both in the US and globally, electronic sources are less ubiquitous than many who enjoy them realize. Thanuskodi found that most of the researchers at one university in the sciences (70%) and social sciences (85%) had not used the Internet before joining the university. Further, even within the U.S. the reception that electronic sources receive is heavily dependent on a variety of factors, many of which are still unknown. A positive reception, even among different groups of college students, is not guaranteed.
Abstracting, classification, and indexing, are all culturally embedded systems of organization that are physical manifestations of our cultural, social, and personal relationships to ideas. For the end user, these systems and the people behind them are usually invisible, even more so when they function well. These systems form maps upon which texts are laid, and with which people can choose a variety of routes through which to travel. Road maps reveal routes to their users which may be the fastest, the most scenic, the least expensive, or whatever other expectations a traveler might have. Abstracting, classification, and indexing, whether in the stacks or in the search engine, allow a researcher or browser to make their searching more efficient, in terms of both speed and accuracy, by deprioritizing the extraneous and highlighting the necessary. In fact, it could be said that whatever their processes, these efficiencies are their only goals.
References
Bland, R.N. and Stoffan, M.A. Returning classification to the catalog. Information Technology and Libraries, 27(3), 55-60.
Essay Forum. The Importance of Public Libraries to Students and Society. Online: https://essayforum.com/writing/public-libraries-function-humans-redundant-67598/
Machovec, G. and Strauch, K.. In the company of librarians. Searcher, 20(1), 28-33.
Mullvihill, A.. NFAIS: Studying academic user behavior. Information Today, 28(6).
Salisbury, L.. Is there a future for the traditional abstracting and indexing services? Agricultural Information Worldwide 3(2).
Thanuskodi, S.. Internet use by researchers: A study of Annamalai University. Library Philosophy and Practice, April.
Searching: indexing, abstracting, and classification
INTRODUCTION
In academic terms, success often means besting others or, failing that perhaps, the appearance of besting others. This microcosm of a larger culture that often mistakes contention for elucidation means it can become easy to spend most of our time arguing over small details and becoming entrenched in minutiae. That is not to say that contentions are not important! Small details can have sweeping effects! Though many outsiders tend to believe that the stakes in librarianship are small, those on the inside know better. However, librarians are people too, to embrace the cliché, and can be distracted from important foundational issues as much as any other people passionate about their work.
In the worlds of indexing, abstracting, and classification, a current distraction is the glittering surface of whether or not librarians are obsolete in these arenas. Though Salisbury and others dispense with the idea, it is a "contention" often used in headlines (including Salisbury's) and lay articles that leaves many with the impression that the question is asked and answered. Many "techies" believe that librarians are obsolete, or virtually so, and many laypeople casually agree. After all, there are no ends to the software that instantly catalog an entire electronic work, then you just search for the words you want and you are home free! The same layperson will then find themselves spitting nails having searched for their problem seven times, only to find that Facebook's and Tumblr's "help" pages lead to more dead links and unhelpful (and unrelated) suggestions than a listing of MySpace pages from 2001. If that layperson calls tech services, they may well reach someone who wonders what sort of person is unable to fix something so simple.
What is missing in these interactions are the smoothing qualities of librarianship, particularly indexing, abstracting, and classification, though I suspect that many people who would be credulous at the idea of abstracting major Web sites would be delighted to have those sites professionally abstracted with something other than sales blurbs praising the company. Perhaps most people get what they are looking for most of the time, with the aid of friends and forums alike. As much as one might enjoy the feeling of having done it oneself, how much more would one enjoy the feeling of having done it oneself the first time? This is a key element of indexing, abstracting, and classification, especially with electronic information, when they are done and done well, they are virtually invisible to average end user, who often assumes their own skills got them there. The increased emphasis on electronic sources works best when it is understood that the methods are changing, but the goals remain the same.But what are indexing, abstracting, and classification, and how to they make searching easier, i.e. more efficient?
INDEXING
Of the three concepts, it is probably the case that people in the United States become aware of indexing second, after classification. It is discussed early in grade school, and children are taught to use indexes as a means of doing research on a specific topic. Later, students learn that a good quality index, like a quality contents page, can give someone a good idea of what a book will contain and guide readers toward making choices between texts or prioritizing their research. But not even academic researchers seem to give much thought to how those indexes came to be, even as they move through the library stacks, flipping books open to the back and considering the book's value to their own work based entirely on the index, using mere seconds or minutes to choose the best texts to inform their work or teach their students, instead of the hours that would have to be invested if they needed to read each text to ascertain its contents and relevance.
Indexing, when done manually, is the process by which an informed reader iterates through a work and determines the key concepts of the text, represents them through an alphabetized system that refers back to their location in the text. The informed reader is informed by an awareness of the subject itself, thus indexers often specialize in legal, medical, humanities, engineering, and other fields. They are also made informed by their knowledge of the indexing process, and finally, they are informed by their understanding of the future readers of the text itself. A good index reflects all of this information, and performs this work for the end users, much as the power train in a car starts it when the driver merely turns a key. Software synthesizes the work of the living indexer with varying degrees of quality, depending on the software.
The indexer's awareness of a subject area means that they will know a variety of the terms used to refer to a given subject, as well as related concepts. This can be applied to indexing in either unique entries and in "see" and "see also" entries. A potential reader or researcher can determine at a glance whether a text has 1) enough of 2) the right information. Whether flipping through the back of a book in one's hands or using an electronic search engine, indexers can also help a researcher define their terms to either narrow or expand the search as appropriate. "See" and "see also" entries, often have an "a ha!" effect, wherein a researcher suddenly "realizes" that there are more fruitful search options available. The indexer is usually invisible in this process, as is evidenced by the rarity of hearing a researcher say, "Then the indexer showed me that I had been using the wrong terms."
ABSTRACTING
Abstracting is the process of synthesizing the contents of an article in pre-set number of words. Abstracts can be any number of lengths, but most fall between forty and two hundred words. Abstracts are used in different ways. In some cases, they are the only portion of a text that is indexed for online searches. In other cases, they are being manually perused for indications of their value to a potential researcher.
Because abstracts are sometimes the only indexed portion of an article, and because many researchers will limit their electronic searches to terms in the abstract, a quality abstract will include as many of the keyword terms from the text as possible. To give an unlikely example, if an article on dogs only calls them "puppies", the wise abstractor will be sure to include the term "puppies", even though it is nonstandard, along with subject area appropriate terms. A quality abstract can spare researches the wasted time of reviewing works wherein an author might include several anecdotes about dog breeding in a work that is actually about teaching multiplication. A keyword search on "dogs" might show that dogs were mentioned seven times in such an article, making it appear relevant to a researcher and moving other works further down the results list. However, an abstract search would exclude this result, as it is not actually a work about dogs.
Whether reducing the number of unrelated search results, improving the overall quality of returns, or providing a brief synopsis of a larger work, quality abstracting saves researchers time and effort, and like indexing, can provide guideposts for how to limit or expand future searches. A quality abstract not only reduces search time for the present search, it can teach and train users for more efficient future searching.
CLASSIFICATION
Library classification is the first ordering system with which most users become acquainted. The relationship with classification has changed, but the claim that classification has been "almost forgotten by contemporary librarians" is untrue. Even casual readers will learn quickly where their favorite books are, even if they do actively realize that the rest of the books in the library are organized as carefully. Classification can help the researcher but it is particularly useful to the browser. By placing material about similar subject, by the same author, or in a similar format in close physical proximity, the end user is able to review a large number of related texts more quickly. Classification, in the physical plane, allows both the researcher and the browser the delight of a "find". Again, the cataloger like the indexer and abstracter is invisible. Readers feel the joy of discovery, never realizing that the entire library has been mapped and that they traverse on the carefully groomed trails made by catalogers with their best interests in mind.
Classification saves time whether one is browsing or researching, whether those are occurring in the stacks or electronically. Classification allows someone who is searching to exclude or identify at a glance that some of the returns for a search on dogs are in the fiction or poetry sections, and will therefore not provide information about breed specific illnesses or methods of grooming standard poodles. Classification allows a browser to go the section where poetry is shelved, and find new poets to read in mere moments, whereas books placed on the shelves randomly, or even alphabetically by author irrespective of contents, would make that a far more laborious task.
CONCLUSION
That these are electronic processes first often feels "obvious" to academics or researchers. However, most readers, whatever their use of electronic searches and results, still also browse stacks, prioritize the physical interaction with texts, and even exclusively electronic users benefit from the extant systems that were born out of the physical world and the culture that shaped it. Further, both in the US and globally, electronic sources are less ubiquitous than many who enjoy them realize. Thanuskodi found that most of the researchers at one university in the sciences (70%) and social sciences (85%) had not used the Internet before joining the university. Further, even within the U.S. the reception that electronic sources receive is heavily dependent on a variety of factors, many of which are still unknown. A positive reception, even among different groups of college students, is not guaranteed.
Abstracting, classification, and indexing, are all culturally embedded systems of organization that are physical manifestations of our cultural, social, and personal relationships to ideas. For the end user, these systems and the people behind them are usually invisible, even more so when they function well. These systems form maps upon which texts are laid, and with which people can choose a variety of routes through which to travel. Road maps reveal routes to their users which may be the fastest, the most scenic, the least expensive, or whatever other expectations a traveler might have. Abstracting, classification, and indexing, whether in the stacks or in the search engine, allow a researcher or browser to make their searching more efficient, in terms of both speed and accuracy, by deprioritizing the extraneous and highlighting the necessary. In fact, it could be said that whatever their processes, these efficiencies are their only goals.
References
Bland, R.N. and Stoffan, M.A. Returning classification to the catalog. Information Technology and Libraries, 27(3), 55-60.
Essay Forum. The Importance of Public Libraries to Students and Society. Online: https://essayforum.com/writing/public-libraries-function-humans-redundant-67598/
Machovec, G. and Strauch, K.. In the company of librarians. Searcher, 20(1), 28-33.
Mullvihill, A.. NFAIS: Studying academic user behavior. Information Today, 28(6).
Salisbury, L.. Is there a future for the traditional abstracting and indexing services? Agricultural Information Worldwide 3(2).
Thanuskodi, S.. Internet use by researchers: A study of Annamalai University. Library Philosophy and Practice, April.