i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

Last week, NYT featured Julius Eulberg, a German who loves collecting antiques, especially porcelain birds. This piece made me think of Kimra's chapter-- especially the part about retrieving the chair. Can you imagine having to fetch one of his 300 + birds? How would he describe it in order for you know which porcelain bird he was talking about?

In an attempt to get rid of some of his antique collection, Eulberg recently created a website to sell some of his items. Eulberg's objects are organized in three categories: 'Porcelain', 'Silver', and 'This & That.' 'This & That?' What is this and what is that?

Thankfully, there is some order to Eulberg's largest collection-- the 'Porcelain' collection. It is first organized by material type (porcelain), then by categories such as 'couple', 'single' and various porcelain companies. Though not perfectly organized, it appears he understands that his largest collection needed to be somewhat organized. How else will people search through it to find the rare parrot of their dreams?

The problematic 'This and That' category is an example of how one's labeling might not be useful to other people. Obviously(?), the things in "This & That" are neither silver or porcelain, but  the category is way to vague: what are these things? Based on this category, these things can be anything: a stuffed boar, a vintage broom, and etc. Perhaps in an attempt to save time,  Eulberg did not want to organize the items in 'This & That' into smaller, more descriptive categorizes. : ( Fortunately, 'This & That' contains only a handful of items. which can be viewed in one scroll. Can you imagine if the this category grew?  How would potential customers be able to search through 'This & That?'