Proceedings of the 2011 Great Lakes Connections Conference : Discourse & Illumination , May 20 - 21 , 2011 , School of Information Studies , University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee

In December 2010, the FCC completed an almost 4 yearlong rulemaking process related to socalled “Internet Neutrality.” During this process, more than 32,000 comments and related documents were filed with the FCC, arguing for or against net neutrality regulation. The debate over net neutrality is largely understood to be one of access providers vs. content providers. Those companies providing homes with access to the Internet want to be able to choose how to manage their networks, including the freedom to block access to sites or application providers whom they consider to be providing material that should be blocked. The most frequently used example of a type of ware to use is file sharing software. However, there are good reasons to believe that access providers will not limit themselves to software that appears to being used for illegal purposes. For example, in 2007, Verizon (now part of AT&T) blocked prochoice text messages sent by the advocacy group NARAL Pro-Choice America. Although Verizon quickly reversed that decision, it and other ISPs maintain that they have the right to manage any and all content that travels through their networks. At the same time, we know that access to LGBTQ information in public fora is controversial. Between 2000 – 2009, an average of three of the ten most frequently challenged library books in the US have been books with LGBTQ themes or information. There is no reason to believe there will be less pressure to limit or de-prioritize access to such information online. I plan to examine the following question: Did the FCC consider the information needs of the LGBTQ community in the new “Internet Neutrality” regulations? Initially, I searched the FCC net neutrality filings for the terms “gay,” and “LGBT.” These terms appeared a total of 60 times, suggesting at least some discussion of these issues. I plan to conduct close readings of the filings in which these terms appear, as well as the rule and Commissioner statements, in order to analyze the extent to which the information needs of the LGBTQ community were raised in the rulemaking process and final rule. I anticipate finding that LGBTQ issues were raised as part of larger digital divide discussions, and that the documents are joint filings submitted by groups of civil rights advocacy organizations. I also anticipate finding no explicit mention of these groups in the rule or commissioner statements. If that is the case, it means that LGBTQoriented content – including high-bandwidth content like videos from the It Gets Better project, designed to help prevent LGBTQ teen suicide – will be vulnerable to access limitations imposed by both broadband and wireless Internet access providers. I anticipate recommending changes to the FCC rules that will help ensure that LGBTQ content, and by implication, other politically controversial content, is not subject to this kind of corporate censorship. Proceedings of the 2011 Great Lakes Connections Conference—Works in Progress 2 Do Tags Really Provide More Semantic Concepts than LCSH Does? Jihee Beak School of Information Studies University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee [email protected] Abstract The purpose of this study is to investigate the patterns that appear in LCSH and tags in fiction genres. After identifying the patterns, this study examines whether tags truly provide more subjects or not through semantic equivalence controlling. In library practice, subject access to fiction by such authority controlled vocabularies and/or other cataloging standard tools is more restrictive than subject access by social tagging. On the other hand, socialThe purpose of this study is to investigate the patterns that appear in LCSH and tags in fiction genres. After identifying the patterns, this study examines whether tags truly provide more subjects or not through semantic equivalence controlling. In library practice, subject access to fiction by such authority controlled vocabularies and/or other cataloging standard tools is more restrictive than subject access by social tagging. On the other hand, social tagging is created by larger number of different users. Taggers are more likely to create tags after reading books. There is no guideline or manual to create tags. Many studies about social tagging have been identifying the characteristics of social tagging. The significant advantages of social tagging are; 1) to be user-friendly terms, 2) to provide larger number of terms, 3) to show latent subjects, and 4) to include non-subject related terms like personal information. As the attention about social tagging is greater, recently researchers concerned with whether social tagging can be combined with the library system. In terms of incorporating social tagging into the library system, social tagging has been criticized for its quality issues. Social tagging tends to be ambiguous, uncontrolled, and inconsistent. These natures of social tagging impede the implementation of social tagging in the library system. Nevertheless of social tagging’s quality issues, some libraries have already started to expand tagging services. In order to explore more plausible possibility of the implementation, recent studies focus on the comparison or linkage between controlled vocabularies and social tagging (Lu, Park, & Hu, 2010; Yi & Chan, 2009; Smith, 2007; Rolla, 2009; Heyman & Garcia-Molina, 2009). Most of these studies focus on tags created for academic resources or image resources rather than fiction. The problematic phenomenon in library system is that fiction has less subject access points than non-fiction like academic resources. Given that social tagging provides more subject access points than libraries do, the library environment may take advantage of social tagging to enhance the subject access to fiction. Therefore, the study about comparison between social tagging and controlled vocabularies for fiction is required. The data collection was done during April 2011. The study selected 120 fiction recommended by RUSA (Reference & User Services Association) from 2008-2011. The RUSA suggests 8 fiction genres: Adrenaline, Fantasy, Historical fiction, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Science fiction, and Women’s fiction. 15 fiction books were selected from each genre. By using books’ ISBNs, LCSH was collected from Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL). Given that the collection of Library of Congress (LC) is likely to have non-fiction rather than fiction, the study decided to collect the LCSH from a public library. LAPA provides MARC records. MARC records enabled the study to distinguish whether subject headings are from LC or locally devised topical subjects. LCSH of 6XX level was collected. The ISBNs of the selected fiction was also used to collect tags from LibraryThing website. LibraryThing website shows 30 popular tags in a main webpage of each book. The collected tags come from these popular tags rather than all tags assigned by users. In total, the 120 fiction books have 3,600 tags by users and 600 Library of Congress subject terms. This study consists of two parts: 1) explores the patterns of terms that appear in fiction from a social tagging website and LCSH, and 2) examine impact of semantic equivalent control to the number of overlapped terms between tags and LCSH. If individual tags are considered as access points, the patterns of tags will mean facets of information as metadata elements. Therefore, the study tries to contribute to suggest user-friendly metadata elements for fiction by identifying the patterns of tagging. Furthermore, the study investigates to what extent social tagging is overlapped with LCSH in fiction. While social tagging gets praised for a greater number of subject access points, it also incurs blame for being uncontrolled and inconsistent. It illustrates that there are many terms syntactically and semantically equivalent. Therefore, this study statistically shows whether there is significant difference in overlapped terms between before and after controlling terms by seman-