tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post3625881826304365402..comments2024-03-23T00:59:24.057-04:00Comments on Sapping Attention: Fresh set of eyesBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04856020368342677253noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post-27218673927672997312011-02-19T16:40:15.658-05:002011-02-19T16:40:15.658-05:00I'm guilty of mostly reading what I can unders...I'm guilty of mostly reading what I can understand, but I think a lot of contemporary phylogenetics uses these sorts of clustering based on genetic distance quite heavily. (I had a friend who did old-fashioned morphology in college, and seemed to get somewhat irritated about the whole thing.) Insofar as I'm using these algorithms in R, I'm just using the table scraps from the bioinformaticists.<br /><br />Also, of course, the whole culturomics project is very explicit about how much it thinks genomics has to contribute to textual scholarship. Their databases aren't set up right at the moment for this sort of classification, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's a major point of influx down the pike.Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04856020368342677253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post-55298911916630915062011-02-19T15:53:42.653-05:002011-02-19T15:53:42.653-05:00Ben: Again, this is great - the visuals work reall...Ben: Again, this is great - the visuals work really well for those without the technical expertise, and they're very suggestive of your "new eyes" hopes. <br /><br />I'd add one suggestion or query: have you been paying attention to discussions of methods and tools in <i>scientific</i> classificatory disciplines? My sense is that ongoing developments in evolutionary biology and its systematic brethren (cladistics, phylogenetics) might have a lot to offer, even if it's only another "set of eyes," this time on ways forward in the development of digital weaponry. <br /><br />When I was in a laboratory doing basic work on plant systematics, we sent DNA off for sequencing and then organized the code in <a href="http://www.genecodes.com/" rel="nofollow">Sequencher</a>. Are there any conversations going on between classifiers in the humanities and those in the natural sciences? Worth a look, perhaps...Hankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02841787256060612291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post-49504734832182266442011-02-18T13:54:12.784-05:002011-02-18T13:54:12.784-05:00Kevin: yeah, I really like the Hathi visualization...Kevin: yeah, I really like the Hathi visualization. It goes to highlight just how much interesting data there is in catalogs alone, if they are publicly accessible. (Which they usually aren't, unfortunately.)<br /><br />I'll try to clean up the language a bit, because I know I've been sloppy about classes and subclasses and all the rest. To add to your list, people should also know about LCCNs, Library of Congress Control Numbers, which are non-classifying codes to identify books, sort of like ISBNs.Benhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04856020368342677253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post-18911184137876463862011-02-18T13:46:12.945-05:002011-02-18T13:46:12.945-05:00Interesting work. While not a dendrogram, you mig...Interesting work. While not a dendrogram, you might also be interested in http://www.hathitrust.org/visualizations_callnumbers .<br /><br />Since you mention "Library of Congress headings", let me clarify that Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) and Library of Congress Classification (LCC) are two different things. LCSH is a semi-controlled vocabulary of English-language subject descriptors, with a hierarchy of terms implied through the use of dashes to separate terms from different levels in the hierarchy. These are only quasi-hierarchical. LCC, which is what you end up discussing, is a hierarchical classification system of letters and numbers that is the basis for call numbers at many libraries. The Library of Congress also provides English-language titles for the main classes (the letters) in LCC. Traditionally each item in a library collection could receive zero to many subject headings but exactly one call number.<br /><br />In your dendrograms, you show the LCC class letters before the colon and the titles after the colon.<br /><br />Just want to clarify for your readers in case others want to take this work further.Kevin Hawkinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07725552620057595725noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8929346053949579231.post-42628460765468457182011-02-14T14:33:21.116-05:002011-02-14T14:33:21.116-05:00Awesome stuff! I've seen published articles --...Awesome stuff! I've seen published articles -- nay, books -- nay, lots of books! -- that contained less information than this post.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com