Week 2

Categories and Entities

1. A ``bachelor'' is defined as ``a man who is not married''. Is this an unambiguous category? Can you give some counter examples?

        I think that using the definition "a man who is not married" makes bachelor an ambiguous category.  Within this category the terms widower and divorcee also fall.  Many would argue that the three terms, or categories, are very different.  Perhaps a more concrete definition would be " a man who has never been married."  This, of course, is still not perfect.  Is an eighteen year old high school student a bachelor?  And would we still call an eighty year old single man a bachelor?  

2. To what extent are categories based on social consensus?

    I believe that many categories are created by individual societies.  While one society may place an individual in the category of "terrorist," another may categorize the same person as "hero" or "martyr." While there are many categories that are fixed and for the most part agreed upon, such as "vegetable" or "mineral," others are fluid and change as societies change.  There is no one document created by one person that lists all categories and their contents.  Each category we recognize has been discussed and agreed upon by many people over long periods of time.  

 Cataloguing

1. On the Web, full-text search engines are very popular. Once most documents are on the Web, will we still need catalogs? Why or why not?

        Once most documents are on the web we will still need catalogs.  There is a strong need for control that is not addressed by Google searches.  If a user needs articles on the topic "active training" or "tomato cultivation," using  a search engine without controlled language and headings will fail to pull up items in other languages or items that use slightly different terminology.  Details about edition, publisher, and even title, are often omitted or vague when found on the Web.   The Authority Control piece of a catalog allows for consistency.  Bibliographical Control allows for uniformity in the way we describe items, whether they are books, files, films, etc.  In an age where users can find nearly endless amounts of information online, the catalog aids in weeding through information packages to find solutions for information needs.

2. How is AACR related to MARC?

        The AACR is a set of rules that govern how catalogs are created.  MARC is a system for making electronic catalog records.  When creating an online catalog one uses the rules of AACR to fill the fields of MARC.  Together MARC and AACR provide for uniform finding, gathering, and evaluating within library catalogs. Both make greater collaboration possible between libraries.