A revealing and surprising look at how classification systems can shape both worldviews and social interactions. What do a seventeenth-century mortality table (whose causes of death include "fainted in a bath," "frighted," and "itch"); the identification of South Africans during apartheid as European, Asian, colored, or black; and the separation of machine- from hand-washables have in common? All are examples of classification—the scaffolding of information infrastructures. In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. In a clear and lively style, they investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis. The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. Sorting Things Out has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work. The book is an important empirical source for understanding the building of information infrastructures.

Sorting by color, by shape, or by size--there are lots of ways to group similar things together! How do you sort the objects in your world? What can you create by sorting? Bright and colorful photos encourage young readers to think about how they can sort the objects around them.

A witty and thought-provoking collection of visual poems constructed from stacks of books. Delighting in the look and feel of books, conceptual artist Nina Katchadourian’s playful photographic series proves that books’ covers—or more specifically, their spines—can speak volumes. Over the past two decades, Katchadourian has perused libraries across the globe, selecting, stacking, and photographing groupings of two, three, four, or five books so that their titles can be read as sentences, creating whimsical narratives from the text found there. Thought-provoking, clever, and at times laugh-out-loud funny (one cluster of titles from the Akron Museum of Art’s research library consists of: Primitive Art /Just Imagine/Picasso/Raised by Wolves), Sorted Books is an enthralling collection of visual poems full of wry wit and bookish smarts. Praise for Sorted Books “Katchadourian’s project . . . takes on a weight beyond its initial novelty. It’s a love letter to books, book collecting and the act of reading.” —San Francisco Chronicle “As a longtime fan of [Katchadourian’s] long-running Sorted Books project I’m thrilled for the release of Sorted Books—a collection spanning nearly two decades of her witty and wise minimalist mediations on life by way of ingeniously arranged book spines. . . . In an era drowned in periodic death tolls for the future of the physical book, her project stands as a celebration of the spirit embedded in the magnificent materiality of the printed page.” —Brain Pickings “Katchadourian’s stacks possess an understated sophistication; they are true to the intimate nature of books and yet reveal their dramatic features and unexpected potential.” —Publishers Weekly

What if animals and plants knew maths, just like us? Would flowers bloom in patterns? Would raindrops fall in rhythm? Would birds balance evenly on branches? In Sorting through Spring, nature comes to life to help children grasp concepts of patterning, sorting, data management, and probability. Maths in Nature is a lovely four book series, which explores seasonal and natural beauty through maths concepts, which are made engaging with energetic and colourful paper collage illustrations, poetic language and thoughtful questions. Each book also includes nature notes at the end, which give more information about the animals and plants featured in the seasonal scenes. Colourful, cut- paper collage art uniquely evokes the natural world, while two levels of text - one a lyrical story, the other asking children to problem-solve - bring the reader to a full understanding of the maths concept being covered. The engaging "What if?" format of these informational picture books is sure to delight five- to seven-year-olds.

This Level 2 guided reader teaches how to classify objects by size and sort them into categories. Students will develop word recognition and reading skills while learning how to identify and sort objects by one of their key attributes, size.

Wordless illustrations of the weather, colors, and activities children enjoy in spring.