Knowledge Organization – TLAM Week 11

Our class started with a discussion about upcoming Pow-Wow’s and one is coming up on April 23rs at MATC’s Red Stein Gym at 1 pm and 7 pm.  There is a $5 entrance fee and lots of activities, so everyone should attend that if possible.

Our topic this week focused on Knowledge Organization concerning tribal libraries and museums.  To give a base knowledge of this issue we read Ann Doyle’s “Naming and Reclaiming Indigenous Knowledge: Intersections of Landscape and Experience” (2006) and Holly Tomern’s “Classification, Bias and American Indian Materails” (2003) which I think gave our class a lot of background on why classification systems create a gap between our typical thoughts on organizing information and the Indigenous populations access to that information.

What really inspired us was that there are systems out there that can help bridge this gap.  The Brian Deer Classification System is a system that was created to tailor to the needs of tribal libraries and museums to better serve their users.  What was really interesting was our discussion on the FCP Library classification system which sort of melds both types of classification systems.  Using categories like Oral Traditions/Legends along with typical categories like History and Literature they’ve devised a system that best suites their users.

Our class then discussed issues about how history affects cataloging and how online cataloging has vastly changed how people find items using keyword searches.  And while there is some flexibility in the system to tailor to your needs there are concerns about ILL and other cataloging issues that librarians and museums have to be watchful of.  Most importantly though is that we feel there is an obligation to apply native world views and perspectives to reclaim and revitalize the culture when talking about tribal libraries and museums, and even those libraries outside of those systems.

Finally, our class discussed the various projects we’re working on with tribal libraries and museums around Wisconsin.  We all agreed that the relationships we’re building with these tribes and the University are relationships that will continue long into the future, and are really the most exciting part of the class so far.  Overall, everyone has a lot of enthusiasm about our group projects which is pretty inspiring to see.

-Kristen Erickson