Summary Reflection

In the beginning of this course, I shared that I would like to:

• have work to show my understanding of information, information organization systems and their design to potential employers;

• gain a better understanding of the concepts, principles, and lingo relating to types of information organization systems;

• become more confident in my knowledge and understanding of how to talk about information, how to organize information, and how to look at information;

• develop the skill or lens of an information scientist and professional where I focus less on the content of the information I’m seeing but more on the nature and form of it; and

• see information from a more abstract and “big picture” view, which I can carry into the rest of my courses in the MLIS program.

Reviewing the course materials, I think we were meant to gain a better understanding of:

• broad concepts of information resources, collections, organizing principles, and interactions;

• fundamental principles of classification, especially hierarchical and faceted classification;

• classification systems in real-world contexts, and the most common classification systems in our industry;

• principles of controlled vocabularies and the purpose of their use;

• principles of thesauri and the lexical relationship of resource description, especially equivalency, associative, and hierarchical relationships between terms;

• examples of controlled vocabularies in applied contexts, including existing thesauri and the concept of warrants;

• fundamental principles of content description and content schemas, especially how content description allows for searching, filtering, and sorting of resources;

• content standards in applied contexts and evaluative criteria for determining the suitability of a content schema for a collection of resources;

• the fundamental differences between content schema and data formats and how they work together;

• existing data formats and how they are used in various institutions and contexts;

• how classification, controlled vocabularies, content standards, and data formats are interlinked with other systems to create a cohesive organizing system with item records for a collection;

• how to identify systems at play in an existing institution and understand the process of record creation and how it supports user interactions;

• adjacent organizing systems that accompany classification, controlled vocabulary, content standard, and data format, such as unique identifiers; and

• alternative grading methods and the value of peer reviews and self-evaluation.

At the end of the course, I think I have absorbed the intended concepts of our course and achieved my personal goals set out at the beginning of this course. I also had a lot of fun focusing on zines for most of the assignments in this course. Through creating my own faceted classification system, I gained the skills to determine when it is appropriate to use hierarchical classification or faceted classification for organizing a collection and when another organizing system would be better suited. I also feel confident in my ability to identify when a faceted classification system does not follow the principles of homogeneity, mutual exclusivity, and joint exhaustivity, as demonstrated in my analysis of Tate Library’s Special Collection. In the process of creating a thesaurus for my personal zine collection, I gained a better understanding of the principles that inform the hierarchical, associative, and equivalence relationships between terms and how to be creative in using these relationships to communicate the perspective and values of the collection and its creator. The creation of a content schema for my personal zine collection, helped me solidify my understanding of content description and how classification and controlled vocabulary play a role in the process of content schema creation. As a result of completing the aforementioned assignments, I am now skilled in applying the concepts of classification, content standard, and controlled vocabulary as appropriate for a given collection of resources.

My analysis of Universal Decimal Classification, Anchor Archive’s Zine Subject Thesaurus, VRA Core, and XML allowed me to practice looking for documentation that facilitates understanding of organizing systems in context. I am now confident in my ability to identify and analyze the existing organizing systems used by any given institution. My ability to analyze and create an integrated organizing system demonstrates my proficiency in combining all the concepts I learned about classification controlled vocabulary, content standard, and data format.

Even though I struggled to keep up with the pace of the course at different points in the semester, I still managed to do a lot of the “extra stuff” that enriched my learning and contributed to a positive class culture. Some of the supplementary labour I did in this course included note-sharing, offering extra peer reviews, completing follow-up questions for in-class activities, seeking out feedback from the instructional team, applying course concepts to work and side projects, facilitating and leading peer groups during in-class activities, and helping fellow students better understand course concepts.

Despite the personal hardships I experienced this semester that affected my performance in this course, I am incredibly proud of the level of mastery I achieved. I think an indicator of my mastery of the course concepts is the consistently positive feedback I received in my peer reviews about the clarity of my writing and the ease of understanding my assignments facilitated. My perspective on information has shifted. In my work at the public library and my daily life, I now consistently see information organizing systems in action and seek to understand why certain choices have been made. There is not a concept we have covered in this course that I feel I do not have a fundamental grasp of, however I am particularly interested in diving deeper into the granular principles that inform the relationships between terms in a thesaurus. I am also interested in learning more about the various data formats that are currently used in our industry, especially BIBFRAME, YAML and JSON. Since I plan on pursuing a dedicated research project to redesign the organizing system for Queer Reads Library, I am excited to continue applying the concepts gained from this course to this side project.