Ken Herold | California State University, Los Angeles (original) (raw)

Papers by Ken Herold

Library Trends, 2004

This book introduces key topics in the philosophy of information, written by the PI research netw... more This book introduces key topics in the philosophy of information, written by the PI research network of the Society for the Philosophy of Information. Beta version published 2012, first version published 2013.

We all have some experience with open source tools for interface design and configuration, from A... more We all have some experience with open source tools for interface design and configuration, from Apache to Lucene and up to full ILS systems. In the proprietary Voyager dev experience we saw the breakthrough to XSLT and open platform OPAC possibilities. Summon feels like a step backwards to config files and API fixes. I keep hearing from my team what cannot be displayed and how basic features like facet behaviors are out of our control. We can still dream and I present here (30 mins) an imagined dev-config-customize interface tool for Summon.

Permalinks, short for "permanent links", offers a stable link that is assigned to a spe... more Permalinks, short for "permanent links", offers a stable link that is assigned to a specific article by the database. Using the permalink makes getting back to the article much easier.

Ken Herold, Director, Library Information Systems, Hamilton College. Hamilton College has adapted... more Ken Herold, Director, Library Information Systems, Hamilton College. Hamilton College has adapted Michael Doran's ShelfLister 1.3 for use as a web service in its inventory process. The presentation will describe how we modified its code for use as a behind-the-scenes engine for a PHP-driven web front end. The end result is a web-based tool allowing our Circulation staff to directly control shelflist barcode file submissions (between 500 and 1000 barcodes long) with immediate webpage printouts of items out of place or missing, with their barcodes, item statuses, and LC call numbers.

Hamilton College combines data from Voyager ILL, Ariel Document Delivery, RAPID ILL, and ConnectN... more Hamilton College combines data from Voyager ILL, Ariel Document Delivery, RAPID ILL, and ConnectNY, a consortial union catalog using INN-Reach, into a single reporting section of requests and direct PDF delivery on the My account page in Tomcat Web Voyage. Not a how-to for others to emulate exactly, the demonstration illustrates the power of open architecture for personalized services in Voyager. We employ XSLT, PHP, and Perl using our own Apache 2 instance to integrate data from Oracle, MS Access, and web services.

Minds and Machines, 2013

ABSTRACT Bynum (Putting information first: Luciano Floridi and the philosophy of information. NY:... more ABSTRACT Bynum (Putting information first: Luciano Floridi and the philosophy of information. NY: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) identifies Floridi’s focus in the philosophy of information (PI) on entities both as data structures and as information objects. One suggestion for examining the association between the former and the latter stems from Floridi’s Herbert A. Simon Lecture in Computing and Philosophy given at Carnegie Mellon University in 2001, open problems in the PI: the transduction or transception, and how we gain knowledge about the world as a complex, living, information environment. This paper addresses PI across a model of interoperating levels: perception (P)—intuition (N)—computation (C)—information (I), as factored by cognitive continuity (1), temporality (2), and constitution (3). How might we begin to characterize our experience of an abstract information object across such a matrix? Chudnoff’s rationalist distinctions between perception and intuition serve as a first rung of the ladder. Turing’s brief references to the utility of intuition, in an allied, rationalist-Cartesian sense, provide the next step up to computation. Floridi provides the final link from computation to information.

Presentation on the advantages and disadvantages of using the Voyager Developer Zone within EL Co... more Presentation on the advantages and disadvantages of using the Voyager Developer Zone within EL Commons (www.exlibrisgroup.org) for the purpose of customizing the Tomcat-based OPAC in Version 7.0 and above. Finding documentation, sharing code, future web services. Tips ...

Libr. Trends, 2004

Luciano Floridi’s 1999 monograph, Philosophy and Computing: An Introduction, provided the impetus... more Luciano Floridi’s 1999 monograph, Philosophy and Computing: An Introduction, provided the impetus for the theme of this issue, more for what it did not say about librarianship and information studies (LIS) than otherwise. Following the pioneering works of Wilson, Nitecki, Buckland, and Capurro (plus many of the authors of this issue), researchers in LIS have increasingly turned to the efficacy of philosophical discourse in probing the more fundamental aspects of our theories, including those involving the information concept. A foundational approach to the nature of information, however, has not been realized, either in partial or accomplished steps, nor even as an agreed, theoretical research objective. It is puzzling that while librarianship, in the most expansive sense of all LIS-related professions, past and present, at its best sustains a climate of thought, both comprehensive and nonexclusive, information itself as the subject of study has defied our abilities to generalize an...

). Buddhists reject epistemological-ontological dualism: the conceptual and the non-conceptual ar... more ). Buddhists reject epistemological-ontological dualism: the conceptual and the non-conceptual are not distinct sources of knowledge. The act of cognition and the cognized object are momentary-together. Any category including information as a substance or as a relation is constructed and as such cannot capture a transcending reality. Information Ethics recognizes a minimalist mental and non-physical ontological commitment, without substance or relations, and a beneficent moral role for humanity. On this conventional level, the informational “entity” includes persons as well as non-persons. Practitioners explore this entity as a contingent construction, in particular under analysis, so as to better understand the products of conceptualization and to thus transform the mind in a virtuous direction. The ramifications of information as skillful means are that we appear as an information entity to others, as they do to us; information entities may appear to be persons, even if they are not; actual persons may be treated as non-personal information entities. Thus, the informational person is the ethical person in this system of onto-ethics. Liu (2004) identifies Leibniz as the most promising point of departure for a Western understanding of the model concept of information, one in which the information entity or object surpasses Cartesian dualism and the limitations of the axiomatic concept. Information in the model concept is an abstract particular, or trope, following Leibniz’ transitional understanding of the monad from an individual substance to a relational force. This holographic principle of the monad as “living mirror” joined in logic is analogous to the Neo-Confucian concept

Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology

Library Trends, 2004

Minds and Machines, 2013

Libr. Trends, 2004

Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology