Jarmo Saarti: Knowledge Organization of Fiction: Fictional Literature Classification and Indexing
Channel: KISK
Date: 2023-11-25

Blok expertů: 16. 11. 2023

Fiction content analysis and retrieval are interesting specific topics for two major reasons: (1) the extensive use of fictional works and (2) the multimodality and interpretational nature of fiction. The primary challenge in the analysis of fictional content is that there is no single meaning to be analysed; the analysis is an ongoing process involving an interaction between the text produced by author, the reader and the society in which the interaction occurs. Furthermore, different audiences have specific needs to be taken into consideration. This lecture explores the topic of fiction knowledge organization, including both classification and indexing. It provides a broad and analytical overview of the literature as well as describing several experimental approaches and developmental projects for the analysis of fictional content. Traditional fiction indexing has been mainly based on the factual aspects of the work, this has then been expanded to handle different aspects of the fictional work. There have been attempts made to develop vocabularies for fiction indexing. All the major classification schemes use the genre and language/culture of fictional works when subdividing fictional works into subclasses. The evolution of shelf classification of fiction and the appearance of different types of digital tools have revolutionized the classification of fiction, making it possible to integrate both indexing and classification of fictional works.

Jarmo Saarti was the Library Director of the University of Kuopio and University of Eastern Finland (UEF). He is adjunct professor (docent) both in the University of Oulu, Finland and in the University of Tampere, Finland. He graduated from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland in 1986 (BA). After that, he worked in several libraries, both in the public and academic sectors. He started to work on his doctoral thesis (information studies) in 1996 and was awarded his PhD at the beginning of 2000 from the University of Oulu. He was awarded his second PhD (literature) at the end of the 2013 from the University of Jyväskylä. He has been the chair of the board of the National Repository Library in Finland and a member of the board of the National Library of Finland. He has been a member of the IFLA’s standing committee of the University Libraries and Other Research Libraries Section and member of the Standing Committee of the Section on Document Delivery and Resource Sharing. He was elected as the chair of the the Finnish Research Library Association (STKS) for the years 2014-2017 and as a board member for the Federation of the Finnish Learned Societies for the years 2017-2019. He has specialized in the knowledge organization of fiction and in the management of libraries. He has published about 300 professional and academic papers and he has written, co-written or edited about 50 books.