Title: Measured Time: Imposing a Temporal Metric to Classificatory Structures
Abstract: Describes three units of time helpful for understanding and evaluating classificatory structures: long time (versions and states of classification schemes), short time (the act of indexing as repeated ritual or form), and micro-time (where stages of the interpretation process of indexing are separated out and inventoried). Concludes with a short discussion of how time and the impermanence of classification also conjures up an artistic conceptualization of indexing, and briefly uses that to question the seemingly dominant understanding of classification practice as outcome of scientific management and assembly line thought. 1: Time and the Ethic of Twentieth Century Classification Practice Classification, broadly, is the identification of concepts and the relationship that obtain between those concepts. In a strict sense we can add the requirements of bibliographic classification - that we have hierarchical a systematic order, and that the classes (those names for concepts) are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. When we place documents into classes, we have to first interpret and represent their subject matter. This basic activity happens in time, and as we will discuss below, it is important to consider time when considering the functionality of classification and its evaluation. Classification, as a professional practice, has inherited the assembly-line work ethic of early Twentieth Century scientific management (Day 2001). The ideal of this ethic is that effort is made to make sure the classmark is assigned appropriately, and only once. If it is assembled through a strict, logical, and repeatable method, the process results in a trustworthy, or to some, a scientifically permanent assertion of the class to which the document belonged. The key here is the assumption of permanence.
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 8
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