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Rosenstock-Huessy argued that language originates – always and everywhere – from the need to respond to a world that addresses us and calls us by name. Thus in his view, unlike much contemporary theory which concerns itself with an autonomous system, language is understood as a human activity, a social phenomena or power brought into existence by preexisting social forces and involving the varied capabilities of the human mind and body. In this paper, Rosenstock-Huessy's philosophy of language is briefly presented and questioned from the perspective of Integrational Linguistics, a recent approach to language and semiology that stresses social relations and time in the making of meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article responds to Jonathan Tuttle's article “The Aphasia of Modern Subject Access” in which Roman Jakobson's semiology of “shared codes” consisting of preexisting signs is offered as the explanation for two redundant linguistic tools associated with cataloging: LCSH and LCC. The article criticizes Tuttle's terminology, his semiology, and his argument that selection and combination are both necessary for the operation of language but each are associated with only one of these tools. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the design of cataloging systems, with particular attention given to what the author describes as increasingly complex systems created by designers who regard human users as problems. An overview of French approaches to this problem from authors including Victor Scardigli, Joëlle Le Marec, and Roy Harris is provided, and the author's prediction that designers of new catalogs will blame users rather than themselves for any problems is examined. Discussion of the problems of observation altering behavior in library user studies is also offered.

The article explores the writings of librarian Carlo Revelli as they pertain to cataloging, with particular focus given to the books "Il Catalogo," "Citazione bibliografica," and "La biblioteca come teoria e come pratica: antologia degli scritti." Particular focus is given to the relation between the practices of citation, cataloging, bibliography, and catalog searching. The author notes that cataloging is not an autonomous practice, but that it is connected with a variety of other library activities and literary practices.

In this article I contrast the view of communication in Shannon and Weaver (1949) with Michel Meyer's rhetorical approach to communication. Meyer's critique of philosophy is founded on the recognition that every statement is an answer to a question arising from a particular problem. If something can be questioned, it can be debated, and how we debate any issue is a matter of rhetorical practices, all of which involve ethos, logos, and pathos. These concepts, familiar from Aristotelian rhetoric, have their counterparts in information science: sender, message, receiver. Unlike the ethos, logos, and pathos of rhetoric, the concepts of information science are rooted in a technical understanding of sender markedly different from the ethical ethos of classical antiquity, an ontologically based propositional understanding of message, and an abstract understanding of receiver as human or machine with a straightforward, statable, interpretable, and answerable question. Meyer's rhetorical approach to communication illuminates many aspects of information production and use, from spamming and computer viruses to user supplied metadata and reuse of metadata in different contexts. Of particular interest are the ethical implications of a rhetorical approach to Shannon and Weaver's “information source,” and the creation of metadata for (1) human users of IT and (2) machine interoperability (e.g., the Semantic Web). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Banush and LeBlanc (2007), the utilitarianism of Bentham was resurrected and offered as a "philosophical backdrop for dealing with competing library choices." This article discusses two serious failures in that article: the failure to situate utility in the current context (shared bibliographic databases, cooperative cataloging programs, automated data manipulation, and exchange) and the simplistic assumptions about library users and their diverse needs which allow the authors to reduce all metadata- related issues to a simple managerial task of triage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of quality in library catalogs and bibliographic databases often refer to "the perfect record." This paper examines the usage of that phrase in the library literature, finding that its predominant use is as a rhetorical strategy for reducing the complex and context-dependent issue of quality to an absurdity, thus permitting the author to ignore or dismiss all issues of quality. Five documents in which the phrase is not used in this fashion are examined and their value for understanding the inextricably intertwined values of quantity and quality are discussed. The author recommends rejecting both the rhetoric of "the perfect record" and satisfaction with "the imperfect record." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the presuppositions, goals, and implementations of policies for rapid cataloging in three large academic libraries in the United States. In the first model, The University of Chicago's W-Collection, there was no attempt to catalog materials; the order record alone is used and the items are shelved in a publicly accessible area by accession number. The second model, Princeton's ATA Procedure, made cataloging the initial activity upon receipt, the purpose of which was "to give the future librarians enough information to know if the item is already in the collection or not" and also to serve (with subject headings and classification) the library's users. Finally, Cornell's COR Procedure in which all information in the records is assumed to be temporary and therefore unimportant; the necessary information is expected to be acquired later from commercial sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A response to David Bade to letters to the editors about his article "Rapid Cataloging: Three Models for Addressing Timeliness as an Issue of Quality in Library Catalogs," in the June 6, 2007 issue is presented.

The article offers news briefs related to library cataloging. The Task Force on Cost/Value Assessment of Bibliographic Control presented a report at the meeting of the Heads of Technical Services in Large Research Libraries Interest Group in Washington, D.C. The conference Concepts in Context--Cologne Conference on Interoperability and Semantics in Knowledge Organization was held in Cologne, Germany, in 2010. Library cataloger David Bade won the award for best paper in volume 46 of the journal.