Reading Response 4

Svenonius Chapter 5

I personally enjoyed the section on Accuracy and its discussion of how title pages are basically the best way of specifying entities if you were using books as an example of an entity. I especially liked Blackburn's quote saying "It is I believe one of the laws of bibliography that catalog titles should be copies of the title pages of books." Usually it's difficult for me to pick apart Svenonius' writing because her vocabulary is a lot broader than mine but at the same time I feel like she adds sentences/quotes like this to provide a helping hand and put things in more simpler terms. In my opinion when I'm searching through catalogs or online databases for books, the title is easily the best attribute to focus on when dealing with a certain topic/subject that interests you. I liked the idea of title pages being a magnet and collecting all the "iron fillings" that relate to it.

Jacob/Shaw Reading

Within this reading I found myself breaking down the section on categorization the most. I completely agree with Markmans statement that categorization is the fundamental cognitive mechanism that simplifies the individual's interaction with the environment. I believe that figuring out the differences and similarities in entities is something that is so crucial in creating new knowledge. Without placing things into their own categories you'd be doing a disjustice to the uniqueness in everything that surrounds us each and every day. It's basically like what Medin says when he states that "the only case in which categorization would not be useful is where all individuals are treated alike." As we all know, this is something that will not happen anytime soon in today's culture, therefore it is still important to continually categorize individuals and other forms of entities.