: THE IMPACT OF NETWORKED

KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS ON

CATALOGUING

THE FUNDAMENTAL

INTERCONNECTEDNESS

OF ALL THINGS

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@SimonXIX

E-resources Co-ordinator

Durham University Library

Welsh & Batley,

Practical cataloguing, p. 172.

“FRBR suggests that the

library catalogue should

do more than enable the

location of a particular

item. In essence, in

creating a 'FRBRized'

catalogue record, we are

describing not only the

thing we have in our hands,

but its relationship to other

things in the bibliographic

universe - not only to its

creator(s) and previous

editions, but, theoretically,

to any other thing that may

be of use to an end user.”

“FRBR describes the

entities in the

bibliographic

universe, their

relationships and

attributes.”

‘The School of Athens’

by Raphael

Wri

gh

t, G

lut:

ma

ste

rin

g

info

rma

tio

n t

hro

ug

h t

he

ag

es,

p. 7

. “A hierarchy is a

system of

nested

groups.”

‘Th

e F

all

of

Ma

n’ b

y

Luc

as

Cra

na

ch

th

e E

lde

r

“Linnaeus’s classification is

typical of a taxonomy in that the

relationships between living

things are depicted by means of

a hierarchical structure. This is a

structure in which successive

steps in division create smaller

and more specific classes. It is

usually represented visually as a

tree structure, with the tree

branching at each new level.

This sort of structure is probably

what is ordinarily thought of as a

system of classification.”

Broughton,

Essential classification, p. 13.

“…treat knowledge as if it were a unity which can

be subdivided into smaller and smaller units. At

the top of the tree is the whole universe,

which is divided

and subdivided

to arrive at

all the

different

entities,

events

and activities

represented in the subjects of books.”

Broughton, Essential classification, p. 32.

Wright, Glut: mastering information

through the ages, p. 70.

“…individuals function

as autonomous nodes,

negotiating their own

relationships, forging

ties, coalescing into

clusters. There is no

“top” in a network; each

node is equal and self-

directed. Democracy is

a kind of network; so is a

flock of birds, or the

World Wide Web.”

Wright, Glut: mastering information

through the ages, p. 7.

"Our biological existence, social world, economy, and

religious traditions tell a compelling story of

interrelatedness. As the great Argentinean author Jorge

Luis Borges put it, "everything touches everything."

Barabási, Linked, p. 5.

"Consider for example a network crucial for our ability to find

scientific information: the citation network. Each scientific

paper cites other papers, relevant to the discussed work. A

mathematics paper would cite other maths papers focusing

on similar problems or occasionally a biology or a physics

paper, illustrating the applications of the obtained results.

Therefore, all scientific publications are part of a web of

science in which nodes are research publications connected

by citations. These links are directed. Indeed, following the

references at the end of this book will allow you to find the

quotes papers. Yet none of these papers could send you to

this book, since they do not cite it. The citation network is a

very peculiar directed network in which the IN and OUT

components reflect the historical ordering of the papers and

the central component is very small if it exists at all." Barabási, Linked, p. 169.

“Network thinking is poised to invade all domains of human

activity and most fields of human inquiry. It is more than

another helpful perspective or tool. Networks are by their very

nature the fabric of most complex systems, and nodes and

links deeply infuse all strategies aimed at approaching our

interlocked universe.”

Ba

rab

ás

i, Link

ed

, p. 2

22

.

Institutional Repository Search

http://irs.mimas.ac.uk/demonstrator/

“[Consilience is] a “jumping

together” of knowledge by the

linking of facts and fact-based

theory across disciplines to create a

common groundwork of

explanation.”

Wilson, Consilience, p. 6.

“The map of the material world, including

human mental activity, can be thought a

sprinkling of charted terrain separated by

blank expanses that are of unknown extent

yet accessible to coherent inter-

disciplinary research…

If the consilience world view is correct, the

traverse of the gaps will be a Magellanic

voyage that eventually encircles the whole

of reality.”

Wilson, Consilience, p. 299.

“…obviously there is no

classification of the universe

that is not arbitrary and

speculative. The reason is quite

simple:

we do not know what the

universe is.”

Borges, ‘John Wilkins’ Analytical Language’ in

The total library: non-fiction 1922-1986, p. 231.

Bibliography Adams, D., 1988. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective

Agency. London: Pan Macmillan.

Barabási, A-L., 2003. Linked: how everything is

connected to everything else and what it means for

business, science, and everyday life. London: Penguin.

Borges, J. L., 1942. ‘John Wilkins’ Analytical Language’

in Borges, J. L., (E. Weinberg, ed.) 2001. The total library:

non-fiction 1922-1986. London: Penguin.

Bowman, J. H., 2003. Essential cataloguing. London:

Facet Publishing.

Broughton, V., 2004. Essential classification. London:

Facet Publishing.

Buchanan, M., 2002. Nexus: small worlds and the

groundbreaking science of networks. London: W. W.

Norton & Company.

D’Alembert, J., 1963. Preliminary discourse to the

Encyclopedia of Diderot. New York: The Bobbs-Merrill

Company Inc.

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., (B. Massumi, tr.) 1987. A

thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Honderich, T., ed., 2005. The Oxford companion to

philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Robinson, L., and Maguire, M., 2010. ‘The rhizome

and the tree: changing metaphors for information

organisation’. Journal of documentation, 66 (4), pp.

604-613.

Tillett, B. B., 2007. ‘FRBR and RDA: resource

description and access’ in Taylor, A. G., ed., 2007.

Understanding FRBR: what it is and how it will affect

our retrieval tools. London: Libraries Unlimited.

Welsh, A., and Batley, S., 2012. Practical cataloguing: AACR, RDA and MARC 21. London: Facet Publishing.

Wilson, E. O., 1998. Consilience: the unity of

knowledge. London: Little, Brown and Company.

Wittgenstein, L., 2001. Tractatus logico-philosophicus. Oxon: Routledge.

Wright, A., 2007. Glut: mastering information

through the ages. London: Cornell University Press.

Image credits ‘Yet another bean photo’ by Flickr user kern.justin.

‘remember to thank all the books you haven’t read over the past three years’ by Flickr user osiatynska.

‘The School of Athens’ from Wikimedia Commons.

‘Pear tree branches circles on the fig tree’ by Flickr user Mammaoca2008.

‘The Fall of Man’ from Wikimedia Commons.

Systema Naturae scan from Wikimedia Commons.

Jefferson’s library catalog scan from the Massachusetts Historical Society.

‘The Tree of Books’ by DeviantArt user vladstudio.

‘Alexandria Library’ by Flickr user Dallas75.

‘Rhizome seed’ from http://www.a-website.org/mnemosyne/no_signposts/pics/rhisome_seed.gif

Several images of networks by Flickr user gephi_org.

‘Web 2.0 Digitage 2012’ by Flickr user ocean.flynn.

‘Big bang’ by Flickr user entonceeees.