Naming and Reframing: A Taxonomy of Attacks on Knowledge Organization

Most knowledge organization practices have opinionated detractors. Some criticisms are informed and serious, but unsubstantiated assertions and fatuous dismissals are so commonplace that practitioners grow weary of the perpetual need to refute them. Many have had the experience of conducting and publishing research that contradicts a popular misguided claim, and then seeing this evidence have little effect on the continued repetition of the claim. This paper (which is part polemical essay) will attempt to contribute another tool for tackling this problem: a taxonomy of attacks on knowledge organization. Categorizing and devising names for the major strains of deprecation of knowledge organization, cataloging, and metadata will not defeat those arguments, but identifying and reframing them might strengthen the knowledge organization community’s resolve to take them on. Warning: there might be neologisms! 1.0 Introduction Ethical practice in knowledge organization extends to defending it against those seeking to undermine or devalue it. Criticizing specific practices or tools with the goal of providing better access is also part of ethical practice, but dismissals and declarations of irrelevance are attacks. Practitioners and proponents of knowledge organization encounter such attacks frequently. The type of “elevator speech” that we need to have at the ready are responses to things like “Why would an e-book need an index? ” or “There’s no point in cataloging free online resources! ” Many of us have experienced being so flummoxed at the sudden posing of such a challenge that we failed to give an adequate response, even though such arguments aren’t hard to make. I would argue that knowledge organization practicioners need to be prepared to take up the typical challenges that are lobbed at us—both ones posed out of genuine ignorance, and ones meant as attacks. While the principal strategy must be conducting research, my aim in this paper is to contribute a completely different tool for use in tackling the problem. Most attacks on knowledge organization are predictable and follow well-established patterns, and I have attempted to create a taxonomy that names and categorizes them. Because of their essential benefits and functionality, controlled vocabularies are supported and defended by those concerned with the ethics of knowledge organization. At the same time, we are possibly their most passionate critics. Works discussing the problems associated with naming, especially in practices and tools of subject analysis, are classics in our field (Berman 1971; Olson 2002). The practice of naming confers power to the namers over the named. This is most often a negative feature, and it can be a weapon yielded by an oppressor. It can also be a tool of self-defense. 1.1 Motivation/Inspiration Part of the motivation for devising this taxonomy came from my own experience of conducting research. In 2005, I co-authored a study with Arlene G. Taylor that has been widely cited. Along with many other studies, it showed that terms from controlled vocabularies contribute significantly to keyword searching results—we found that in library catalogs, the average percentage of hits that would be lost in the absence of subject headings was 35.9% (Gross and Taylor 2005, 219). But this seemed to have little to no effect on the endless repetition of the claim that subject headings aren’t needed now that users only do keyword searching. (In a telephone conversation with the author, Sandy Berman likened this propensity to ignore all of the data to climate change denialism.) Because of this, the 2015 follow-up study co-authored with Taylor and Daniel N. Joudrey (which finds that in a catalog with automated enriched metadata such as tables of contents and summaries, the average percentage of hits that would be lost without subject headings was 27%) includes a comprehensive, 20-page literature review on research comparing subject headings and keywords (Gross et al. 2015, 3-24). Compiling the evidence seemed like an important way to help knowledge organization practitioners (especially catalogers) take on an uninformed assertion that is widespread. This taxonomy was partly inspired by the same desire to provide knowledge organization practitioners with another tool to defend against such attacks, but it represents an attempt to approach the problem from a radically different angle. It takes inspiration from some contemporary feminist social critics and social justice activists, who have discussed and demonstrated the value of having a shared language to discuss the conflicts we face. Reflecting on the popularity of the term “mansplaining,” Rebecca Solnit says (Valenti 2014): I used to be ambivalent, worrying primarily about typecasting men with the term. Then in March a PhD candidate said to me, No, you need to look at how much we needed this word, how this word let us describe an experience every woman has but we didn't have language for. And that's something I'm really interested in: naming experience and how what has no name cannot be acknowledged or shared. Words are power. So if this word allowed us to talk about something that goes on all the time, then I'm really glad it exists and slightly amazed that not only have I contributed about a million published words to the conversation but maybe, indirectly, one new word. Employing a similar naming/defining impulse to provide women with “a guide to navigating the minefield of internetting while female,” feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian (2015) has devised a brief taxonomy of internet trolls. Fascinatingly, some of the trolling techniques she defines and categorizes are reminiscent of the argumentation styles that knowledge organization practitioners encounter. For example, she defines “Gish galloping,” as: . a device used to derail a conversation with a flood of falsehoods and tiny arguments that focus on nitpicking or minor unrelated details, each loaded with implied accusations. The gish galloper will often assert the same argument simply rephrased over and over again. Rather than expressing sincere concerns, these petty comments are designed to distract and overwhelm you by wasting your time with tangential or disingenuous arguments that sidetrack the core issues you are discussing. A crucial naming phenomenon that has gained prominence more recently, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement and current discussions about racism in the United States, is “white fragility. ” As one commentator explains it: It’s a term I had never heard before Saturday night. A friend uttered it in reference to how so many white people respond when challenged about racism, and I felt like someone had turned the lights on. It was one of those moments when you hear language that wraps around something you’ve experienced or witnessed, but found impossible to describe. What clarity. What relief. (Martin 2015) The limited, narrow goals of this taxonomy of attacks on knowledge organization cannot be compared to naming and reframing efforts at the center of struggles for social justice, but their potential to clarify problems and contribute to building a fighting confidence was an important influence on its creation. 2.0 Limitations Several caveats are needed. First, the attacks being categorized and named here are specifically rhetorical and ideological ones. The taxonomy doesn’t attempt to cover direct acts of destruction, such as the forced elimination of practices and tools or staffing cuts. Several of the attacks could be applied to all of library and information science, or even more broadly, but the focus here is just on knowledge organization. I’ve elected to continue to call it a taxonomy, even though in its current form, it isn’t a formal taxonomy with a hierarchical structure. I experimented with creating broader and narrower and related terms, but became convinced that if the taxonomy is to have any practical use, it needs to remain simple. I also tried to come up with neologisms for some of the attacks. Some of them were amusing but didn’t really work (Googlesthesia, hatesomony) and a few appear in the “Variants and subcategories,” but I felt that they would be too distracting if used in actual terms. Finally, there’s inevitably some bias. A great deal of this effort reflects my own perspectives and frustrations. I’ve attempted to base the taxonomy on input and feedback provided by a broad range of knowledge organization practitioners. Still, there’s no doubt that the perspective of an academic library cataloger is disproportionately represented. 3.0 Method Before attempting to conceptualize categories, I sought out library and information science literature that could be interpreted as challenging or debunking a popular belief about knowledge organization practices. Some of the resources that I reread or found in this process are included in the references. I solicited input from individuals, and on online forums. For example, here’s the query that I posted to the “Radical Cataloging” listserv (http://listserv.uga.edu/archives/radcat.html) on January 12, 2015: Question for my radcat friends! (This is for a writing project. I will share more about it in the future.) I'm looking for examples of (uninformed, wrong-headed) claims and assertions that are commonly made about metadata and knowledge organization. What arguments do you find yourself refuting again and again? What unsubstantiated assumptions and fatuous attacks are you tired of hearing? Email me . with examples, anecdotes, citations. From there, I drafted a list of categories, tinkered with the names, and lived with them for several months. When I encountered or read about what I considered an attack, I’d check to see if one of my categories covered it, and consider adding a new one if none did. 4.0 Taxonomy of Attacks on Knowledge Organization Embracing austerity Advocating parasitism Disregarding quality Imputing pedantry Trivializi