pedestrian saga

This is what happens when I become distracted while trying to study the conceptual design of languages of description for the organization of  information and resources.

First it was Allison Carlyle’s pleasantly accessible article on FRBR as a conceptual model that set me jonesin’ for Waking Life, Richard Linklater’s slacker philoso-fest. And pining for (big sigh) a successful model of Love, one that contains all the answers.

Of all of the things that a model can model, abstractions may be the most difficult. One reason is that the act of modeling, particularly the type of modeling that the creators of FRBR used, is often an attempt to make something that is abstract into something that is, at least in some senses, concrete. That is, it is an attempt to make the presence of an abstraction knowable by identifying the things that point to its existence.

To give an example outside of cataloging, imagine trying to model something like love. Love is an abstraction, but it is something we all know and can recognize. Exactly how do we do that?  To make a model of love that can be used in research or in some other kind of rationalized practice or process, we operationalize it. Operationalizing makes it possible to observe, to count, or to verify something like love. However, operationalizing something very abstract like love is not only difficult, it can cross the line into the comical. For instance, because we cannot see love, we have to identify things that are observable to indicate the presence or existence of love…[B]ut no matter how many of them we come up with, any model of love gives a rather sorry representation of the real thing.

(Allyson Carlyle, “Understanding FRBR as a Conceptual Model: FRBR and the Bibliographic Universe“)

(Kim Krizan on the abstraction of language, Waking Life)

Now it is the FRBR entity-relationship model itself, plus Patrick Wilson’s assessment of the most appropriate level for exerting bibliographical control, that has tangled with the delicious chewy center of a certain rhapsody in blue.

For all these reasons [i.e. texts are valued for more than the information they contain; statements often can be understood or appraised only in terms of their context], and more that might be adduced, it will not be advantageous to make our account of bibliographical control apply generally to units smaller than whole texts and copies of them…The problem of bibliographical control is not simply one of locating items of information, and not one to be solved by attempting to analyze writings into units of information.

(Patrick Wilson, Two Kinds of Power: An Essay on Bibliographical Control)

And if you’re saying good-bye
Please don’t you think me bitter
For recalling every rhyme
From the book, the page, the line, the word, the letter

(The White Stripes, “Wasting My Time“)

Yes, here in my home office, the bibliographic universe collided with the universe of emotions, and all hell broke loose:

I guess this model demonstrates that:

1. (to paraphrase my instructor) abrasions can occur when we try to force common solutions on different domains.
2. I’m really having trouble concentrating.

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