Distilling abstractions: Genre redefining essence versus context

Zhang, Lei; Olson, Hope A.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/89832 Copy

Description

Title

Distilling abstractions: Genre redefining essence versus context

Author(s)

• Zhang, Lei
• Olson, Hope A.

Issue Date

2015

Keyword(s)

• Philosophies of Information
• Information Science
• Librarianship
• Libraries

Date of Ingest

2016-04-07T15:10:22Z

Abstract

The construction of concepts achieved by the apparently incompatible ideas of essence and context is examined through genre. Essence is defined by essential characteristics: innate, immutable, independent of context. Unlike essences, contexts are fluid, changing with time and location. Genre has the stability of the essential characteristics that define essence and the fluidity of differing circumstances that define context, thus making it effective for the exploration of essence and context. Controlled vocabularies reveal diachronically and synchronically the stable/fluid ambivalence of genre classes. The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC1, DDC13, DDC23) exhibits stability (and modest fluidity) in the Divisions, the primary reflection of academic disciplines one hierarchical step below the main classes and the development of the standard subdivisions as a slow multiedition evolution. Genre serves as a lens for us to better understand essences, contexts, and concepts and their manifestations, classes. Rather than being incompatible opposites, essences and contexts complement each other in the definition of concepts. How these abstractions relate to classification is a question both theoretical and practical to our efforts to further knowledge organization.

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

ISSN

0024-2594

Type of Resource

text

Genre of Resource

Article

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/89832

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2015.0015

Copyright and License Information

Copyright (2014) Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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