Goal III: Knowledge Representation

Students are proficient in the theory and application of skills essential for knowledge representation in evolving technology environments, in any chosen area of specialization.

III.a. Students analyze, organize, and describe various formats of information objects.

• LIS 6026 – Assignment: ArchivesSpace Finding Aid. I utilized ArchivesSpace Sandbox online to describe part of my family’s records collection and created an accession record, resource record with multiple levels (collection and series levels), digital object, a subject, and an agent. I linked it all together and DACS informed my descriptions throughout the Sandbox tool. 
• LIS 6711 – Assignment: Classification Systems. I assigned a Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) and Library of Congress Call Number for a textbook (Glushko, R. J. (2013). The discipline of organizing: Informatics edition. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/login?url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5hhbzj), and also cited my rationale. I compared my DDC answer to the actual DDC and reasoned why my answer differed. This assignment taught me the importance of being less precise in description to more appropriately class the book. I found that I learn more thoroughly when I make mistakes and have to fix them myself so I will remember this lesson going forward.
• LIS 6711 – Assignment: Metadata Application Profile. I used my love of movies to transform motion pictures into a breakdown of 12 metadata elements. I defined each element, stated its source, determined whether the element was required or optional, repeatable, or non-repeatable, and gave my rationale for including the element. My sources included Dublin Core, the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), Union List of Artist Names (ULAN), Library of Congress Name Authority Headings, and Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA). 

III.b. Students identify and apply best practices in the use of different technologies for knowledge representation.

• LIS 6026 – Research Paper: How an Ethics of Care Approach to Archives Can Transform Community-Based Archives’ Non-Traditional Practices into Innovative Practices within Mainstream Archival Institutions. Building on tensions between preservation and use in the archive world, I looked at community-based archives and how they use the feminist ethics of care model to approach archival policies, procedures, and services through interconnected relationships. As these non-traditional archive methods challenge traditional modes of practice, they can and should be extended into mainstream archival institutions as archives incorporate Web 2.0 technologies and seek to serve and empower marginalized communities apart from the typical user populations
• LIS 6711 – Current Literature Review: Approaches to Image Indexing. For my final research paper in Organization of Knowledge, I researched and described the current field of image indexing and its future possibilities, with a focus on indexing in the art world. I began with my textbook’s thoughts on new directions in indexing as of 2013, and located eight additional recent articles from which to synthesize my paper. I concluded that it remains difficult to describe relationships between and within images when language differs among users. To discern these imaging relationships, automated approaches and expert indexers using controlled vocabularies are needed, as are crowdsourced social tagging systems with specific rules.