The American Journal of Semiotics

The American Journal of Semiotics was established in 1981 as the official journal of the Semiotic Society of America (Wikipedia, The American Journal of Semiotics).  The journal publishes essays, as well as reviews of works, dealing with semiotics.  It is an international journal, and is published quarterly.  The journal’s editorial board consists of professors from mostly American universities, including Purdue, Pennsylvania State University, Indiana University, and the University of California-Berkeley.

The journal considers itself multidisciplinary, as is evident in the nature of the field itself. Its goal is to explore the nature of communication and meaning.  Defined on the back of the title page of the journal, semiotics is the study of “signs and sign systems in order to describe, analyze, and interpret the full range of communication and culture experienced as discourse codes.” The discipline explores culture experienced as different codes of discourse, this may include works of consumer goods, art, events, and social norms, as well as texts.  The field of semiotics allows a student or researcher in anthropology to explore these different events and objects as cultural codes that work to communicating explicit and implicit messages and are part of cultural experience.

Articles in The American Journal of Semiotics range from topics on phenomenology, rhetoric, and visual art analyses, as well as articles written on theorists such as Lacan, Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, and Foucault.

The American Journal of Semiotics is available both online, through the Kent State Library, and in print at the Kent Main library up until 2000.

Website: http://semioticsocietyofamerica.org/the-american-journal-of-semiotics/

The surprising(?) fun of anthropology

This week's subject of study is anthropology, and as has been the case with most of our subject so far, what stood out to me was the surprising diversity of the field.  I had previously been guilty of believing that anthropology was only the study of old, mostly prehistoric, cultures--mostly I had thought of archaeology being the profession, or area of study, for an anthropologist.  As it turns out, as discussed by Jason Paling in his introductory video-lecture here, anthropology is hardly limited to any particular time or place, but is rather far more broad and inclusive.

This better understanding of anthropology as a field of study begins to open up many avenues for research, many of which seek to examine some of the more odd and fun aspects of both our own, and others', culture.  The blog Savage Minds caught my attention this week, as this blog applies the study of anthropology to some rather interesting and fun aspects of the culture around us. The blog describes its mission as being a blog dedicated to accessible, well-written and relevant discussions on sociocultural anthropology. The blog is authoritative enough for anyone interested in the field, as the contributors range from graduate students to professors.  Among the topics covered recently are, The semiotics of bubble tea, the mystification of the economy, and a description of media archaeology, as well as a few entries on the issue of describing what it is that anthropologists do.  I found the article on bubble tea to be particularly entertaining, and insightful into trends of modernism, post-modernism, and individualism that can be identified in even a simple commodified beverage.

Apart from blogs, my research using the Anthropology Plus database this week pulled up an article about studying folklore as a means for tracking changes in attitudes and values among different cultures. The article, entitled Folklore research and the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Series, written by Christine Goldberg for The Journal of American Folklore, reveals the intersection of  archaeology with mythology, literature and a culture's memory.  The article prompts discussion on exploring the role of folklore in different cultures and the way that different attitudes and beliefs are contained and transported over time in these tales.  This brings up further questions as to how these resources could be used for various different research projects involving cultures past and present.

A quick look at the sub-Reddit for anthropology, reveals many other interesting current discussions in the field.  Forum discussions include ways in which modern technology (specifically, lasers) are being implemented in archaeology, Amazon warrior names inscribed in Greek vases, and views from a Siberian hermit on why civilization is frightening.

If at all anything, all of this reveals that a reference librarian in anthropology will have their work cut our for them, but also that they will always be encountering something new.  Anthropology is a field that engages the imagination in opening up creative ways of viewing our culture along with others, and how to further investigate popular phenomenon in a larger historic and sociological context.




Paling, J. (2013) Lecture 1 - Introduction to Anthropology [video]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuwcqBOOEdE

An Economic Analysis of Democracy - Evaluation

Written by professor of American economics, Randall G. Holcombe in 1985, An Economic Analysis of Democracy gives students of economics and politics a view of the relationship between American democracy and the economy.  Professor Holcombe uses different theoretical models in order to analyze the current workings of a voter model system influenced by special interests in order to come up with insights in to forming an effective model for economic decision making based on majority rule.

The book is relatively recent enough to offer students a foundation of fairly recent economic theories that have been influential in the past several decades, as well as allowing for a student to reflect on how Holcombe’s theory might be revised in order to reflect more contemporary views and conditions. Most of all, this work would form a good grounding as to point the student in a direction for generating new ideas as to the inner connectivity of democratic principles and economic theory and policy making.

Including the index, the book is 270 pages and includes a ten page bibliography that offers readers further reading into the theories discussed in the book.  At the time of writing the book, Randall G. Holcombe had been teaching economics at Auburn University for almost ten years, in addition to having been a faculty member at Texas A&M University. He has been widely published in economic journals and has written around five other books on American economics.

An Economic Analysis of Democracy is part of the Political and Social Economy series out of Southern Illinois University Press. Other books in the series include:

• ·         Economic Thought and Social Change by J. Ron Stanfield
• ·         Origins of Economic Thought and Justice by Joseph J. Spengler
• ·         The Political Economy of the Urban Ghetto by Daniel R. Fusfeld and Timothy Bates
• ·         Toward a Social Economy by Howard R. B. Owen

Economics librarian - where to begin?

Economics is something of a brave new frontier for this aspiring librarian. I would say that I would feel very uncomfortable being a reference librarian in economics as it is something that I have never really thought about too much and involves a lot subjects that I am not particularly fond of.  How this problem could be bridged for me is probably much the same as any student who would be new to this subject. The resources for becoming familiar with economics are not profoundly different from any other subject area.  This was somewhat confirmed in the literature this week. 

In the article "Information Overload," Pauline Melgoza, et al. (2002) discuss the various information habits of social science and economic students attending Texas A&M University. Their interest was in figuring out the preferences of different kinds of library users in order to update their collections to reflect these preferences. It should probably not come as a great surprise that users were interested in accessibility, convenience, ease of use, and accuracy as key considerations, along with speed of retrieval (pp. 34).  From that, it should also come as little surprise that free Internet services reigned supreme as a tool for information resources and retrieval (pp. 35), this is, after all, the age of Google.  Unlike our historian group that we reviewed last week, the economists seem to have more trust in electronic journals, although, much like almost any other group, the study shows that users prefer print books to e-books (pp. 35-6).

In other words, in terms of being a reference guide to economics students, it seems that our general resources are not incredibly different from guiding students in any other discipline.  This is part of what makes being a librarian interesting is that, in theory, when you understand the lay of the land you should be able to help patrons orient themselves to library services and resources despite your own knowledge on the particular subject. Although, in order to truly excel in the field and be of a valuable service to your patrons, the sooner you begin to understand the literature of the discipline, the better.

One of the positive aspects about economics as a subject is that it is a subject with a rather broad appeal, since it is so elementary in other political science majors, as well as having a large impact on ever day life for everyone, academics or not.  In this regard, there are more mainstream, or popular, resources out there that discuss economics.  This can be in the form of popular periodicals, like the Wall Street Journal, or it can be in the form of television shows on news channels, or in the form of pod casts, such as econtalk.org that we explored this week.  These resources are great because they are highly accessible to anyone who has an interest in the material existence of contemporary culture and an examination of the political, historic, and economic factors that make it possible.  There is a large range of topics within economics, so that there is likely to be something that appeals to just about everyone. There is little ability for any topic to escape the gravity of the economy.

The Libguide that stood out to me the most this week was the one put together by UNT, available at http://unt.v1.libguides.com/content.php?pid=348363.  This Libguide is very user-friendly, and even offers PowerPoint presentations on using the library and electronic resources provided by the library. The Libguide offers a list of free Internet sites that serve as convenient places to begin research on economic topics, as well as a top 10 databases list.  The Libguide also offers different lists with recommended resources based on accomplishing different tasks, such as places to go to look up company profiles, costs of living, and government information.

Melgoza, P., Mennel, P. A., Gyeszly, S. D., (2002). "Information Overload." Collection Building. Volume 21 (1), 2002. Pages 32-42. DOI 10.1108/01604950210414716

Encyclopedia of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars

The Encyclopedia of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars: A Political, Social, and Military History, is a three volume set that covers the French Revolution and the rise and rule of Napoleon from 1792 to 1815.  This encyclopedia was published by ABC-CLIO, a publisher that focuses on history reference works for academic audiences, in 2006.  The encyclopedia is intended for students and general readers, and serves as a good resource for anyone looking for an extraordinarily broad resource on the French Revolution, or on continental Europe during this time period. This resource would serve as a great starting point for any student or reader who is only just getting familiar with this time period and needs a very broad and general overview.  It will not go into a great deal of detail, however, it will show very loosely how different events and persons are connected, and serve as a guide to the general layout of the French Revolution and its aftermath.

The description offered by a bookseller (http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-French-Revolutionary-Napoleonic-Wars/dp/1851096469) boasts that the encyclopedia contains insights from international experts, and so, offers readers diverse perspectives from authoritative sources.  The reviewer goes on to claim that the encyclopedia offers insight into the "full continent-wide impact of France's revolution from aristocracy, to democracy, to military autocracy."  Given the scope of the subjects covered in this three volume set (1,213 pages), a reader should remain a bit skeptical as to the depth in which these issues are treated.

This reference work features 900 entries, which are alphabetically arranged, a number of maps documenting the expansions and contractions of the Napoleonic empire, as well as battles, a chronology of important dates, a glossary of military and naval terminology, a collection of a few brief essays, and a small collection of primary resources.  The entries are on battles, commanders, weaponry, treatises, and other key figures and events.  Each of the entries contains see also references to guide the reader to related events, battles, commanders, and related issues, as well as a small bibliography, or list of further readings (typically about five sources per entry). The dates of resources cited appear to mostly be recent publications, with a majority of them being published since the 1970s and many in the 2000s, however, they do extend back as far as the 1800s as well.  The average entry length appeared to be around two columns (about a page and half), although some entries run for a couple pages.

The primary sources featured in the third volume could be an interesting value to students, although most of them are probably available on the Internet or other databases. These documents include:

• William Pitt's speech to the House of Commons, Feb 1793
• Treaty of Amiens
• First Treaty of Paris, May 30, 1814
• Second Treaty of Paris, Nov. 20, 1815
• Declaration of the Powers against Napoleon March 13, 1815

The encyclopedia includes a short biography of the editor, Gregory Fremont-Barnes.  Fremont-Barnes received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in modern history, he spent eight years lecturing on American and European history in Japan, and he has published a number of books on American and European history, as well as editing a five volume history of the American Revolutionary War.

Historian Information Sources

 In their article, Historians and Their Information Sources, Margaret Stieg Dalton and Laurie Charnigo (2004), found that historians are seldom overwhelmed by information overload.  This is surprising considering the abundance of electronic journals and databases with a proliferation of resources on an over-abundance of topics. Part of this reason might be the greater specialization seen in many academic fields that have left some historians feeling as though their particular field is under-represented in the available databases. Another problem that occurs is that particular libraries and universities do not have access to all available databases, and as a result, some historians are denied access to potentially useful resources (pp. 414-5).

Interesting, as well, is that the historians maintain a distrust toward e-journals in general and remain fixed on the use of printed sources as a more trustworthy information source (pp. 414).  Perceived problems with e-journals and databases included (pp. 412-4):

• Sources not having the needed information
• Sources not covering the dates needed
• Sources not offering full text
• Sources not having a worldly view, being mostly Anglo-oriented
• Inadequate indexing terminology
• Problems with sources in non-English languages and translations

 The historians surveyed expressed an opinion that e-journals were often more useful to undergraduate students, as opposed to true scholarship (pp. 414).

Early on in the article, the authors characterize history as being a kind of sense-making of a heap of facts (pp. 400), and as such, the historian is characterized as being interested in primary sources and historical objects, as well as being highly interdisciplinary.  With a high interest and focus on wading through these heaps of facts from a multifaceted world of knowledge and information, it is a shame that electronic resources are being under-appreciated in this discipline (at least, as this article shows); electronic databases have the potential of uniting disciplines almost seamlessly through the use of Knowledge Organization Systems, and ideally, should result in less travel expenses and leg work on the part of the scholar. Instead, the resources are viewed (perhaps rightfully so) as containing research that is not as rigorous or valuable as their physical counterparts, and historians are still waiting to see a greater maturation of e-resources.

Dalton, S. M., (2004). Historians and Their Information Sources. In College & Research Libraries.
Vol. 65. No. 5. pp. 400-425. http://crl.acrl.org/content/65/5/400.full.pdf+html

Royal Society 
The website royalsociety.org offers a unique perspective on the history of science from an interdisciplinary perspective.  I was most interested in the different research projects that the Royal Society is currently involved in. Among the projects are:

• Constructing scientific communities
  This is a look at how scientific communities entered into the popular cultures of the 19th and 21st centuries.  This project is interesting because of the rising interest that seems to be had in promoting STEM curriculums, television programs based on scientific discovery, the popularity of science fiction as entertainment, and the growing interest in Maker Spaces, with their focus on technology.
• Publishing the Philosophical Transactions: the social, cultural, and economic history of a learned journal 1665-2015
  As the title of the research project indicates, this project aims to illuminate researchers on the socio-economic historical development of very old, circulating scientific journal. This project really highlights the interdisciplinary nature of history.
• Origins of science as a visual pursuit
  Another project that widens the scope of historical study. This project examines the effect of art and artists on natural philosophers of the 17th century, and how their relationship effected the development of both the arts and the sciences.

Lib Guides
The lib guide that stood out the most to me, was the lib guide published by David C. Murray at Temple University, last updated 2014 (http://temple.v1.libguides.com/content.php?pid=1264&sid=5395).  This lib guide offers suggestions for print and electronic resources down both the left and right navigation areas that include resources that are of a high interest to history students. Each of the sections that are offered by this lib guide are very nicely divided and easy to follow. The section on databases is divided into three tiers, with the top tier offering the most comprehensive collections of articles.  Finally, Murray has separated primary and secondary resources along with definitions of each and guides on how to find each type of resources.

Information Literacy and the Cataloger

In the article, Learning in Hierarchies: An Empirical Test Using Library Catalogues, the author Thomas Hammond (2007) speaks to those uninitiated in Library Information Sciences about the very real differences in shelf listings that will be found when comparing a library organized under Library of Congress Classification System and the Dewey Decimal System.  These two largely used classification systems are governed by different rules in terms of grouping different subjects together, as well as what topics fall under what subjects, and as a result, a particular book will be grouped differently in each system. This means that a patron browsing the collection and starting at a particular book will be left with different options on either side of the target book under the two organizational systems (pp. 429).

Recently, I began an internship as a cataloger at the Kent State University Main Library. One of my responsibilities in this internship includes subject analysis. In subject analysis, the cataloger attempts to determine the “aboutness” of the article and then to translate that into different subject headings using the Library of Congress Subject Headings, as well as determining the classification number for the resource.  This classification number should be such that the item is located in a place on the shelf where it is beneficial to the user looking for that resource, who might be interested in discovering that resource.  As such, it is a general guideline that the classification number should correlate to the first subject heading assigned to the resource in order to better ensure that it is located alongside of other pertinent resources.  Ultimately, the spot on the shelf that the item ends up is at best an approximation that is attempted by the diligent cataloger.

Reducing complex texts into a single spot on a shelf can be a very mentally demanding task and there is no exact science that goes along with it. This process relies heavily upon institutional practices, decisions made to the item (or like items) in the past, decisions made by catalogers in other institutions, and on subjective judgments made by the cataloger.  Subject expertise may be a factor in ensuring that the item actually gets cataloged properly, as well as familiarity with the resource. However, it is obviously not possible for one cataloger to be an expert in all areas, or for them to have the time to read and digest every resource that needs cataloged.  As a result to these limitations, catalogers rely on incomplete information, such as abstracts, introductions, table of contents, bibliographies, and possibly second hand sources such as reviews or blurbs.

When the task is complete, then the item will be housed in one specific spot in the library. Sometimes that spot is not perfect. Sometimes the cataloger was not particularly happy with the spot, but perhaps it was the best that could be done.  Most of the time, however, the item’s location fits in with the general scheme of the library and should be located in a place that makes it visible for the potential reader to stumble upon, or to find other related resources housed next door.

In the end, this is why consistency with past practices is so important, as well as stressing the need for organizations to share their bibliographic records through networks like OCLC. This consistency helps to ensure that books are placed where they should be in order for them to be placed with books that are similar, especially in that particular collection. To try to ensure that this consistency occurs, classification numbers should be checked in the catalog to see that the resource fits in the given range.

 

As an illustration of this point, my most recent checkout from the Kent State University Library was a book called For the Love of the Father: A Psychoanalytic Study of Religious Terrorism by Ruth Stein.  This item came to my attention while looking at the subject heading for books on the subject of psychoanalysis, a topic that is typically housed around BF173, however, this particular book was classified in HV6431, which is where works on terrorism are located.  In other words, if I had merely gone to the shelf in order to browse books on psychoanalysis and had gone to BF173, then I would not have found this book.  This is not to say that there was any error made in cataloging this resource, I believe that this resource was cataloged right where it should have been; this example is merely to point out that a physical book can only occupy one shelf spot and because of this, and both cataloger and reference librarians need to be aware of this.

This point is further illustrated by taking a look at book lists on different libguides at libguides.com.  By browsing the libguides on the subject of Political Science, it is clear that books can be classified in a large number of different classification numbers and yet still be listed as resources relevant to a Political Science major.

Work cited

HAMMOND, Thomas H  (10/01/2007). "Learning in hierarchies: an empirical test using library catalogues.". Journal of theoretical politics (0951-6298), 19 (4), p. 425.

DOI: 10.1177/0951629807080776. ISSN: 0951-6298.

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

The Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (J-PART), is an international journal that is focused on evaluating and anticipating administration policy and procedure. J-PART began in 1991 and is available both in print and electronically as part of JSTOR, Business Source Complete, Political Science Complete, and other journal databases. The print journal is available at the Kent State University Library, Ohio University, and several other libraries in the Ohio Link network. J-PART is sponsored by the University of Kansas, Syracuse University, Southern California University, and Indiana University. Its editor-in-chief is from the University of Kansas, which is also the university responsible for publishing the journal. There is a long list of board editors, all of whom are affiliated with various universities, including Harvard, Princeton, and Berkeley. J-PART also credits itself with being affiliated with the Section on Public Administration Research, and the American Society for Public Administration.

According to a statement intended for contributors, the journal describes itself as an international and interdisciplinary quarterly which is devoted to building the body of knowledge relating to public administration through “empirical research and theoretical inquiry.” The articles take a look at actual public administration policy and examine it under the lens of administrative theory, in a way that is primarily interested in looking forward. Articles in the January 2000 issue, for example, are keenly interested in administration in the dawning new Millennium.

Titles taken from the index suggest that abstract topics typically covered in this journal examine bureaucracy, red tape, administrative reform, administrative organization, and the balance of power. More concrete ideas covered by articles include environmental issues, voting, health care, information technology, and budgeting all in relation to administration efficiency and strategy in the handling of these problems.

J-PART would be an appropriate resource for a student researching public administration theory, organization, reform, and policy. It is an authoritative journal that focuses on an interdisciplinary and international perspective, which would be appropriate for allowing students to link these ideas and theories with a broader world of issues connected to governmental activities and problems. The journal can also offer perspectives of how the constantly changing world directly pressures and causes changes to public administration practices and theories. It is widely available in both print and electronic form, and so it should be a very accessible resource for most college students, either through their own library or through inter-library loans.