University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Distilling abstractions: Genre redefining essence versus context

Zhang, Lei; Olson, Hope A.

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

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
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
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

Owning Collections

Library Trends 63 (3) Winter 2015: Exploring Philosophies of Information PRIMARY
Library Trends 63 (3) Winter 2015: Exploring Philosophies of Information. Edited by Ken Herold