School of Information Management & Systems. Spring 1997.
M. Buckland.
Infosys 101:
Information Systems.
Assignment 5: Social aspects of naming. Due April 29
By naming we mean more than assigning a personal ("proper") name.
We including all forms of labelling, categorizing, classifying,
and assigning of descriptive labels.
Naming, and labelling do more than assign a neutral "objective"
identification. Naming tends also to describe
what is named. Naming puts into categories and "frames"
what is named. Names not only denote, but also have connotations,
i.e. overtones and undertones of meaning.
Naming reflects the perspective
adopted, consciously or unconsciously, by whoever does the naming
as is to be expected. For this reason
examination of how things have been named can provide insight
into the perspectives, attitudes, and values
of those who do the naming.
Subject headings in library catalogs and in bibliographies are
designed to be accurately and easily meaningful
to the population served. They are assigned deliberately, carefully,
and systematically, so they reflect the
mentality of their time and origin. Subject headings also tend
to be kept relatively stable for the sake of
consistency and economy (since revision is difficult and expensive)
and so they also tend to reflect the
mentality of past decades, not always reflecting changes in social
attitudes and in language.
A classic work on this topic is Sanford Berman's Prejudices
and Antipathies: A tract on the LC Subject
Headings concerning people. (1971 and an essentially unchanged
1993 edition). MOFF RESERVE Z695 U36
B45 and Z695 U36 B45 1993.
"LC" refers to the Library
of Congress, whose enormous list of subject headings is used,
largely unchanged, by most college and
university libraries.
1. Spend 40 minutes with Berman's book, reading the
"Introduction" and scanning the rest.
2. Pick any example(s) that interest you.
3. Find a copy of the Library of Congress Subject Headings
(LCSH), large fat red volumes kept near the
online catalog terminals in campus libraries. (Ask staff
if you don't see a copy. In MOFFITT
on the right on the shelves behind the reference desk.) Look up the
example(s) that interest you to see if
changes have been made.
4. Look in the MELVYL catalogs to see what subject headings
have been used. Use SET DB CAT for older
usage. The "last TEN years" database (Use SET DB TEN) provides
a convenient way seeing what
has changed since Berman's book. Try searching for titles
containing words that interest you (F TW
[word]), when you find any use DISPLAY LONG (or D SU) to see
what LC Subject Headings have
been assigned. Try BROWSE XSU [whatever] to find subject
headings starting exactly as you
specify. Use BROWSE SU [whatever] to find subject headings
containing what you specify.
Although MELVYL CATALOG subject headings normally conform
to LCSH, they contain numerous
non-standard and obsolete subject headings. The MAGS database
also uses LC Subject Headings,
rather freely adapted. D TI SU DP
is useful: Displaying
TItle, SUbject headings and Date of
Publication.
5. Write a brief summary of your example, what you found,
and any comments you want to make. (One or
two pages single-spaced or so.)
6. Hand in your summary and be prepared to talk about it briefly in class.
You can, if you wish, choose an example of your own not taken from
Berman or in looking on some other
source, e.g. The Readers Guide to Periodical Literature, but do #1
anyway). To be useful, examples should
relate to something socially sensitive where terminology has been changing.
LCSH has a complex structure of relationships between terms:
USE [instead], USE FOR, BT BROADER
TERM, NT NARROWER TERM, RT RELATED TERM. For details see introductory
material at the
beginning of Vol. 1. There are rules for composing complex headings.
(Revised 4/17/97)