Meeting the Challenges

In an effort to find solutions to current challenges in records management, the Queensland State Archives (QSA) and the Queensland Government Chief Information Office (QGCIO) are leading a consultation process that will be open until Wednesday, 24 December 2014.

Read More

Marjorie M.K. Hlava’s Taxobook Published by Morgan Claypool

Access Innovations, Inc. is proud to announce the publication of The Taxobook, a three-volume series on taxonomies and thesauri, written by Marjorie M.K. Hlava, president of Access Innovations. The three volumes are part of a larger series, Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services, edited by Gary Marchionini, Dean of the School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and published by Morgan & Claypool Publishers.

Read More

Consistency with Standards

This interesting topic came from The Ancient World Online blog, in their post,”Reception of Antiquity in a Semantic Network: Digital Books, Images and Objects.” The aim of the project “Reception of Antiquity in a Semantic Network” within the Arachne database is the development and provision of web-based prints from the period between 1500 and 1830. The project encompasses reconstruction and online publication of about 1700 prints that appeared between 1500 and 1900, as well. A total of 2,300 engravings have been processed in this extensive digital indexing project, which spanned 4 1/2 years.

Read More

Raising a Glass to Rich and Complicated Words

As we anticipate the approaching new Gregorian year, those of us who are taxonomists are looking forward with renewed anticipation to the taxonomic challenges that certain kinds of words bring. Take “glass”, for example. “Glass” is one of those words that contain an abundance of possible meanings. Ironically, this poses the potential for ambiguity. What makes this particular situation even more ironic is that this ambiguity clouds the very clarity that the word often symbolizes. Ambiguous words are tricky to work with in constructing and developing taxonomies and thesauri. Moreover, they make the writing of effective indexing rules challenging. Taking care in the crafting of those rules becomes all the more important, because of the need for disambiguation.

Read More