is something perverse about classification itself. And there's a great quote that gets at this idea of perversity and knowledge organization from Thomas Jefferson. And he said that there was a peculiar satisfaction, which I think sounds like perverse pleasure, to organizing books according to subject, which derived from seeing at a glance the books which have been written on a subject, right? So he's talking about the very visuality of the shelves.
There's an aesthetic quality to what he's doing. And it seems to me to be suggestive of a desire for control and this pleasure in viewing the books that he's reduced to a subject category. And if we think about it, I do think that Thomas Jefferson's desire is all over the Library of Congress and also in our libraries that use that classification. Because his legacy is, I think, very strong.
[UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING]
You are listening to WREK Atlanta. And this is Lost in the Stacks, the Research Library Rock 'n' Roll Radio Show. I am not Charlie Bennett. You can really tell. I'm Marlee Givens in the studio with Fred Rascoe. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you're here for, we hope you dig it.
Yeah, I thought the soothing baritone of Charlie was a little different this week. Hey, Marlee. Today's show is called "Philosophy Shelved, Philosophy's Displacement in the Library." And that sounds like the title of a good library research article.
Well, that is a good guess. But in fact, it was written by a non-librarian.
OK, can I get a second guess?
Go for it.
Was it written by philosopher?
Bingo. It is in fact, the title of a dissertation written by one of our special guests, Kyle Tanaka, who is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Emory University.
And Kyle comes our way, thanks to our friend and frequent collaborator. And she's here today, Sofia Slutskaya, who attended Kyle's dissertation defense. And you know what she shares with Thomas Jefferson-- a peculiar satisfaction in categorizing books according to subject.
We will be speaking with Kyle and Sonya about what it all means, how libraries have traditionally defined and classified works of philosophy and some potential new approaches for the 21st century library.
And, by the way, for the benefit of our listeners, when we say Sofia and Sonya, that's the same person.
Right. Right. And in Russian-- and Sonya was born in Russia-- Sofia and Sonya are the same name. And thinking they are different is perhaps an example of how we in the West impose our norms on folks from other parts of the world, something we might explore in a bit with the help of our guests.
Our songs today are about the search for truth and authenticity, but not necessarily finding it, because things have just gone missing. It's hard for philosophers to find knowledge if libraries aren't making the knowledge findable. Philosophers don't have magic powers to draw knowledge out of thin air. Wouldn't it be great if they did, though?
It really would.
Let's imagine that with the first song today. This is "The Philosopher's Stone" by Robin Hitchcock, right here on Lost in the Stacks. [ROBIN HITCHCOCK, "THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE] One, two, three, four. I can't keep pace with you, give you--
You just heard "Philosopher's Stone" by Robin Hitchcock. This is Lost in the Stacks. And our show today is called "Philosophy Shelved, Philosophy's Displacement in the Library." Let's start by meeting our guests. I wonder, Kyle, would you like to introduce yourself first?
Sure. So my name is Kyle Tanaka. I'm a philosophy PhD candidate at Emory, in my seventh and long-awaited final year. I came here from New York after doing an MA at Stony Brook. And from there, I did a bachelor's at CSU Stanislaus in California.
And I feel like Sonya needs no introduction. But why don't you go ahead and tell us who you are.
So I am Sonya, Sofia, whatever. And I used to work here and visit often. And now I work at Emory. And I'm excited to be back.
And we are excited to have you back, Sonya. But we keep trying to get her to come every week, but so far, just some limited guest appearances.
Yeah. But I think Sonya is really good at finding topics for us to discuss. So today's topic is really, it's philosophy in libraries. So Kyle, I think I did introduce you as a philosopher. Is that what you would call yourself?
I would, yeah.
And what does it mean to be a philosopher?
That's one of those questions, I think, if you ask 20 people, you're going to get 20 different answers. So you know, historically, the term philosopher comes from philosophy. It comes from ancient Greece. It's literally means love of wisdom. And oftentimes, specifically in academic context, it usually means someone who studies the big topics of philosophy, like what exists, and what is knowledge, what is truth, how do we know, stuff like that.
I think of myself a little bit differently in a more recent context, in part because of the research that I did, which is to say that I think of the work that I do as investigating the causes and conditions under which things appear or happen and trying to broaden this conception of what philosophy means.
When you say appear or happen, what are you referring to there?
So I'm very much rooted in a philosophical tradition called phenomenology, which has to do with how we perceive the things that we perceive. So when something appears in front of me, like this microphone, how is it that I perceive it as a microphone? So it draws from this whole history of perceptions and experiences and ideas about what it is that this thing is and how I interact with it, and how I understand its purpose, and so on.
Do you feel like that shapes your outlook on life in general?
I would say so. There's a certain infectiousness to philosophy, I think. Like, once you start thinking about these deeper causes and connections and why things are the way they are, and why they seem one way when they might seem a different way at a different time, it's something that's sort of comes up in a variety of different contexts.
You know, I'll think about stuff while I'm doing dishes or doing chores around the house, or sometimes while I'm watching random films or playing video games or whatever. It can really show up in all kinds of different contexts, I think. MARLEE GIVENS: Yeah, but you have chosen to write a dissertation on something that we all know, I guess.
Right, philosophy and librarianship intersecting.
Yeah, so why libraries? SOFIA SLUTSKAYA:
Well, in a way, it relates to your earlier question. Because I was working at Woodruff Library at Emory at the time. And I had a fellow librarian ask me, well, what is philosophy? Like, what is it that philosophers do? Because as a librarian, they're responsible for supporting the research and ensuring that the library has the materials that it needs, and so on.
And I found myself having a difficult time answering because philosophy just encompasses so many different topics and methods and approaches. But in doing my own research, I noticed that there were particular patterns that you could find within the library in terms of what counted as philosophy. Like if you go to the B range, where most of the philosophical works are, certain kinds of works were consistently identified as philosophy.
And a lot of other kinds of philosophical work were to be found in literature, or law, or all sorts of places that you wouldn't necessarily expect them. And so that experience for me broached this question of what exactly-- how exactly was it decided that these works over here count as philosophy and those works do not?
So interrogating your ideas about what philosophy is--
Yes.
--let you to the library. And the library presents it like, hey, here it is. Here it appears before you. Here it happens before you in this call number section with this subject term. So how did you-- maybe it's not-- I was going to say, how did you shift from philosophy to library classification? But maybe it's all one and the same thing.
I think it is for me. Because for me, the project fits within this broader discussion. So this is very much going on within the humanities and academia in general about how to make academia and these different kinds of courses more inclusive and more accessible to different kinds and points of view. And the library was kind of one site at which I saw that happening. But I mean, there's all kinds of places that we encounter philosophy. Like you can watch films and TV shows.
And I remember binging a good part of Cheers a number of years ago. And one of the characters, Diane, references Kierkegaard and these other philosophers. And it was just like, this is a way of presenting what counts as philosophy. And there's a variety of different sites that you can examine for that. And for me, the question was, why is it, what these certain texts, these certain authors, these certain ideas, get presented as philosophy?
And how does that shape how we study it, how we think about it, how we learn it, how we research it, as well as who sort of belongs within the field.
Well, I think we need to get moving on a music set.
Oh, we are right at time. Right. Live radio strikes again.
I know. I know. Well, we will be back with more about philosophy in the library after a music set.
And we're going to file this set under BD161.H2. That might sound like a familiar call number set there, Kyle.
[TRANSLATOR, "EVERYWHERE THAT I'M NOT"]
[MEKONS, "WHERE YOU WERE"]
That was "Where Were You" by the Mekons, and before that, "Everywhere That I'm Not," by Translator. Those were songs about looking to find something that should be there but has gone missing.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is Lost in the Stacks. And today's show is called "Philosophy Shelved, Philosophy's Displacement in the Library." And we stole that title from one of our guests, philosopher Kyle Tanaka, who is here, and librarian Sofia Slutskaya from Emory. We're talking about Kyle's research on libraries. And the next question, Sonya, how did you actually-- you brought this idea to us. You said, hey, check out Kyle Tanaka's thesis. I think this would be an interesting episode. How did you come across it?
Did Kyle reach out to the catalogers at Emory? Or did you just like-- were you watching an episode of Cheers and heard them mention Kierkegaard and thought, ah, I need to get into the philosophy? How did you connect?
I actually don't remember. I think-- because Kyle worked for the library, and I think it was a meeting where we were together talking about Homosaurus or whatnot. And so we started working on projects together. And I asked Kyle about his research topic. And that's when he told me that it's actually about cataloging, and metadata, and describing things. And of course, I was very fascinated. But the reason why I am so fascinating is that it's usually the other way around.
We librarians look at all these other disciplines. And we organize them. And we take the perverse pleasure in putting them in little buckets or assigning terms to them. And it's not often when it's the other discipline examines the library. So I really wanted to find out how it looks from the other side. And then I went to Kyle's defense. And there are all these philosophers excited about libraries so much. And that was actually quite interesting and unusual.
So how did you convince them that library is a worthy topic for a philosopher?
It didn't actually take that much convincing. I sat down with my advisor, John Lysaker, probably in my third year at Emory. And that's right around, in my program, when you start to discuss dissertation ideas. And I said, well I could do this sort of traditional dissertation on topic X in philosopher Y's work. Or I could do this sort of unusual thing with the libraries. And he's like, do the thing with the libraries. It's different. It's interesting. It's exciting.
It gives you this opportunity to see-- to do something more than just abstract conceptual analysis, but to see the ways in which these concepts get reified, interpreted, and ultimately used in a specific context.
So I wonder if I could just take a little break to ask Sonya, how does library of Congress classify works of philosophy? And how does this really manifest itself? SOFIA SLUTSKAYA: I think you should have asked Kyle this question. He knows so much more about the Library of Congress classifying the works of philosophy. And he disagrees. So I'll just pass the buck there. All right.
Well, there's a few different ways that they do it. Primarily, it's either by topic or by historical period. And the topic bits have sort of mostly fallen by the wayside. And most of the philosophy you see today that gets classified as philosophy falls into the Bs, which is just the general section for philosophy. And it's organized into historical epochs. So you have ancient. You have medieval. And then it differs a little bit from the actual discipline of philosophy.
Because the most, quote, unquote, "modern stuff" in library classification is, I believe, from 1700, 1750, something like that, forward. Whereas in the discipline of philosophy, modern philosophy specifically goes from about the 1600s to late 1700s or so. So it gets a little-- there's a little bit of the message is lost in transmission there. But most of what you see is just historical period and geographical regions.
So most of the contemporary stuff is who wrote it, where did they come from, when did they write it?
And I take it that the problem is not simply a matter of defining, when does the modern period start? So what were some of the issues that you uncovered in your research?
So my question was what is gained and what is lost by organizing philosophy in this way? So by focusing on a historical period, there is something that you gain in terms of you can trace a particular lineage of an idea, how it's interpreted, how it's critiqued, how it's modified from one figure to the next. The problem that you tend to run into is a certain sort of, let's say, inertia or historical inertia, right?
So if you're looking at, for example, existentialism, this is a specifically early 20th century European school of thought, meaning they draw from other European thinkers. And they drew from other Europeans before them. And so the question in the context of, how do we make philosophy more diverse, is sort of difficult in that scenario. Because it's like well, I can't really do a whole heck of a lot because no one else engaged with anyone outside of Europe for a long, long, long time.
So for me, it was a question of, OK, well how do we change the organization? How do we change the classification? So rather than it being about a historical lineage, if we broaden it to say something like, OK, what people are writing about what is a good life, or how should I live, that allows us a certain leeway to include different kinds of texts and authors than simply focusing on historical periods would.
So just by setting up this system, this classification system, the library is supporting this inertia--
Yes.
--that you're talking about. So how do philosophers, and I guess you specifically, react to that insofar as like how you're going to-- well, this is only an hour-long program. But how do you fix it?
[LAUGHTER]
Well, let me give you three concrete steps. No. I don't think there's an easy way to fix it. The problem that you tend to run into is like, OK, so we're organizing it by historical period. There do seem to be some advantages to that. If we organized it by another principle or something along those lines, it just seems like we'd be substituting one principle for another. And not everyone's interested in whatever that other idea would be, something along those lines.
I think what's a more promising approach is thinking about the library as a site in which texts are pre-filtered and pre-gathered. So the whole point of classification, the whole point of subject headings and all the rest, is that you bring together a body of texts that allows those texts to speak meaningfully to one another in ways where you appreciate the texts or the ideas in a deeper way than if you simply took them out of their context.
So the question then becomes, how do we introduce different kinds of contexts? So how could we create, for example, something like curated playlists even of texts that would cut across these classifications and these headings and connect different kinds of texts that haven't been connected previously? That's the hope anyway.
Yeah. Well, I think we'll have a chance to talk about that a little bit more.
Yeah, and also, I think when we come back, I want to hear Sonya's take on that.
I definitely want to hear that. But calling back to the very start of the show, that clip that we heard was from a former guest on Lost in the Stacks, Melissa Adler. And I was just curious how you discovered her work and got her on your committee.
The honest answer is serendipity. So I had a friend who was much more up to date on recent releases than I tend to be. And he knew I was kind of working in this area. And he sent it my way and said, hey, I think this might be something you would be interested in. I took a look at it and was like, this has some interesting ideas in it. Seems to be discussing the same sorts of problems that I am. And from there, I mean, Emory does not have a library science or information science program.
So I really had no in or connection to help facilitate, hey, here is this person. They're working on this topic. But possibly luckily for me, this was still during the height of the pandemic. So everything was remote anyway. So I just sent her an email and was like, hey, this is my project. This is who I am, and would you be interested in being on my committee, and was able to just meet her on Zoom and go from there.
All right. Well, you are listening to Lost in the Stacks. And we will be talking about reimagining the cataloging and classification of philosophy on the left side of the hour.
Hi, I'm Mandy, the accordion-playing data librarian. And you are listening to Lost in the Stacks on WREK Atlanta. MARLEE GIVENS: Today's show is called "Philosophy Shelved, Philosophy's Displacement in the Library." And this is the title of a dissertation written by our guest, Kyle Tanaka. Kyle has also worked as a research fellow in Emory's Woodruff Library and written a blog post for them entitled, "Emory Libraries, Bias and You."
He addresses issues such as outdated, harmful language and inadequate metadata practices over time, saying, quote, "these issues and others affect what is called accessibility. In library speak, accessibility refers to the ease with which you can find what you're looking for in the library catalog. If the metadata works well, it helps a lot of people find a lot of relevant materials quickly. If it isn't, finding relevant materials becomes harder or nearly impossible.
The problem libraries are facing here at Emory and globally is that there is an accessibility disparity. It is simply more difficult and more time-consuming to find relevant materials if your work takes up non-traditional topics or methods." And I say, this is our call to action, librarians. We cannot continue to break one of the five laws of library science-- save the time of the reader. Something to ponder during our next music set.
And we can file this set under Z695.U48 B45.
[ITSUROH SHIMODA, "EVERYBODY ANYONE"]
[BROGUES, "BUT NOW I FIND"]
You just heard "But Now I Find" by the Brogues, and before that, "Everybody Anyone" by Itsuroh Shimoda, songs about trying to get past obstacles in your search.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
This is Lost in the Stacks. And today's show is called "Philosophy Shelved, Philosophy's Displacement in the Library." Our guests are Sofia Slutskaya, head of resource description at Emory Libraries, and Kyle Tanaka, who is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Emory University. Kyle's research concerns how practices, standards, and norms in academia affect accessibility, inclusivity, and innovation in education.
He is also a Public Humanities Mellon Fellow and is currently teaching a course on LGBTQ representation in libraries and archives.
So you're pretty busy.
A little bit.
Kyle, right, yeah. And you've had an opportunity over seven years to get busier and busier, it sounds like. Are you looking forward to it all ending? Wait, that's the wrong way to put it.
That's such an ominous way to put that.
Yeah, I just realized after I said it.
I'm looking forward to the next phase, whatever that might be. Let's put it that way.
OK. Well, when we were wrapping up the end of the last segment, you were talking about-- before we mentioned Melissa Adler, we were talking about how you were looking to the classification systems and how you found them lacking and there needs to be more. And so we actually have a cataloguer, Sonya, in the studio. So I want to know what you think when you hear researchers in the field look at the catalog and find it wanting.
What observations do you have about that, and other systems that you think about expanding the catalog?
Well, one of the reasons I'm so excited about Kyle's research is because I think we need more people from other fields to tell us how our systems should work. We've been using the same systems for so long. And don't get me wrong. There are practical reasons for why these systems are set up the way they're set up and why we use them the way we use them. However, the life is changing. There are computers. There are many, many more ways now than ever to organize things in multiple ways.
And, of course, we can't break the fact that if a physical item is on the shelf, it can only be on one shelf at a time, though if we have some magicians on the show next time, maybe we can find solutions there. But for now, we're stuck with that. However, the computers, our systems are electronic. Our users' experience our systems, not often from physical shelves but through electronic systems. So who said that the book can't be in multiple places in the same time?
Who said that we should only assign one code number? We can have multiple virtual browsers that would put a person in the place, depending on how and where they start their research. So as a cataloger, I'm hoping for more flexibility in the way I can use systems. So I have more flexibility to represent materials I am cataloging. And they say cataloging is an art. So I'm all for breaking a rule or two.
So as things get more and more digital, as that critical mass of digital materials as opposed to physical materials grows, you're for numerous systems classifying those digital. Because the Library of Congress was really built for paper print objects.
And it's not necessarily just that we have more digital objects to catalog. It's also that we are using the computer systems as organizational systems. So I can organize my physical materials and my virtual reality in a variety of ways.
So we're also just limited in our human resources for getting this accomplished. Where should we be focusing our work? Should we be focusing more on subject cataloging and tagging and beefing up the metadata? Or is classification something that we still need to fix?
I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, the labor question is always an issue of who's going to do this work? Are we going to have to go and label hundreds, thousands, hundreds of-- however many books, that sort of thing? I think there are some existing resources. Because part of what you do as a researcher is when the catalog fails you or just simply doesn't produce everything that you would like it to, you turn to other resources. You turn to colleagues.
You turn to-- at least in the humanities, footnote chasing is a very common thing. So it's like, oh, this one book or this article mentioned some random thing that seems kind of interesting. I'll go hunt that down and check that out. And some of that is already sort of showing up in certain contexts. You get it a little bit in Google Scholar. There's certain databases where you can see, oh, who cited this paper? It's not very extensive yet.
It would be interesting to see that be made a little bit more robust as a way of connecting these different kinds of ideas in a way that, let's say, circumvents or provides an alternative to the way that Library of Congress does it.
Can either of you point to any success stories that we have in remedying some of these issues, remedying the Western bias or the European bias or old practices?
I can talk a little bit-- so I'm teaching a course this semester, which was briefly mentioned, on LGBTQ representation in libraries and archives. And I think of the course itself in a certain kind of way as a different kind of classification or a subject heading. Because it's all about bringing together a set of texts that allow it to speak to a particular issue or question.
So that's one way, for me, that you can bring together these different texts that in the library would be scattered all over the place. Like if you were looking for those by classification or heading, you would not find all of these with any particular search. But by providing this kind of alternative, it allows these ideas to speak to each other and for the students to see how these ideas speak to each other in a different kind of context.
I mean, I think, in addition to courses, you could think about this in all different kinds of ways. You can think about it in terms of blog posts or curated lists of books, whether that's on digital sites, just tagging things on Twitter, whatever that happens to be. All of this is a form of curation. All of this is a form of classification. Because it's all about, hey, these ideas are really interesting when we put them in conversation with each other. So how can we do that?
In the class that you're teaching, are your students presenting you with new and novel ideas or outlooks for ways to classify or systems that could improve what we have?
They're in the process of doing that, yeah. So there's a couple assignments for the course that are specifically oriented around this. So one of the assignments which they just finished has to do with Homosaurus, which is an online vocabulary that has to do with LGBTQ questions, issues, themes. And it's much more robust than the language that Library of Congress provides.
So for this assignment, their task was to go out and see, can you find books on this particular topic from Homosaurus that don't necessarily show up very easily in Emory's libraries? In which case, potentially, what could happen is those Homosaurus tags could be applied to those items in Emory's catalog. And then they would be findable according to that additional information. They're also doing a curated exhibit that's still in the process.
There'll be a presentation in early April for Atlanta's Fulton County Library Systems, the Ponce De Leon branch, where they'll be gathering a set of titles, both physical and digital, on a theme of their choice. And this is another way that they can think about what it means to bring together these different kinds of resources.
Well, we would like to thank our guests, Kyle Tanaka, a PhD candidate in philosophy from Emory University, and Sofia Slutskaya, head of Resource Description at Emory Libraries. Thank you both so much for joining us today.
Of course. Thank you for having me.
Thank you.
And this is Lost in the Stacks. And it's time for some more music.
File this set under T15.G647.
Hey, I almost jumped the gun there.
I know.
[THE NASHVILLE TEENS, "FINDING MY WAY BACK HOME"]
[CRACK CLOUD, "PHILOSOPHER'S CALLING]
That was "Philosopher's Calling" by Crack Cloud. And we started our set with "Finding My Way Back Home" by the Nashville Teens, songs about finding truth and finding an authentic sense of belonging.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Today's show is called "Philosophy Shelved, Philosophy's Displacement in the Library."
Hey, before we go, Fred.
Yes.
I wanted to ask, have you ever gone looking for something and ended up finding it in an unexpected place?
At my house, I'm the designated finder, especially for my kids. And so they'll come to me and say, I can't find my whatever. And I'll say, did you check on the floor of your room? There's no way it would be up there. I'm not-- and then they go and check on the floor of the room. And that's exactly where it is. So it wasn't unexpected for me but definitely for Them
For them.
Kyle, you got an unexpected find?
My unexpected finds tend to be in used bookstores. I've stumbled across all kinds of titles and ideas that otherwise I never would have encountered, just by pure serendipity.
Oh, such a nice feeling. Marlee.
Sometimes we have to look for our cat to make sure she's not stuck somewhere before we leave the house. And she likes to-- we have found her in our box of cables and remote controls taking a nap. And we've also found her inside one of our drums, snoring.
Oh, not playing?
No, not just-- yeah, taking a nap. Yeah. What about you, Sonya?
Oh, I found my keys in the refrigerator once.
Well, with that, let's roll the credits.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MARLEE GIVENS: Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech Library, written and produced by Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens. Legal counsel and a big gift basket for the FCC were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia.
Special thanks to Kyle and Sonya for joining us on today's show. And thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening.
You can find us online at lostinthestacks.org and subscribe to our podcast pretty much anywhere you get your audio fix.
On the next Lost in the Stacks, Fred once again wades into the troubled seas of scholarly piracy. Argh.
Argh, matey. Time for our last song today. And we close with my favorite philosophy song of all time. A lot has been written about the 1960s teenage group called The Shaggs. If you're unfamiliar with The Shaggs, they are three sisters, who in 1968, recorded an album of original tunes despite having no idea really how to play music. Nevertheless, the record has no pretension or artifice. It is strikingly authentic.
Like philosophical inquiry can make it possible to judge standards of writing philosophy itself, listening to The Shaggs can make us question how we judge what we consider to be music. So let's close with "Philosophy of the World" by The Shaggs right here on Lost in the Stacks. Have a great weekend.
[THE SHAGGS, "PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD"]