>But you're making a dangerous assumption
>here: expensive metadata is ipso facto more useful metadata. Just turn
a
>light on our existing metadata, and our users will follow!
Yes, and no. *Certain* expensive metadata is extremely important and
really underutilized. Granted, there's plenty of stuff in your standard
MARC record that's precisely useless (unless you're a music cataloger
trying to settle a bar bet), but subject analysis shouldn't get lumped
into that category.
"I need a book about X"
That's perhaps the ur patron request. And to meet that need, subject
analysis is one of the few ways in. Yes, the current *tools* for
browsing/grouping subject headings suck, but that's precisely my
complaint. We need to fix 'em.
And we also need subject headings. Try a nice broad search in Google
Book Search (tm) to see what retrieval looks like without them.
Ed Sperr
Digital Services Consultant
NELINET, Inc.
153 Cordaville Rd. Suite 200 Southborough, MA
(508) 597-1931 | (800) 635-4638 x1931
Received on Tue Jun 20 2006 - 16:13:22 EDT