FAST

Ed O'Neill, project manager of the FAST project, and my colleague has
asked me to post the following in response to an earlier post by
Jonathan Rochkind:

"I wanted to clarify, or at least give my views, Jonathan's comments
regarding FAST

1.      The primary justification for developing FAST was to have a
schema that is much simpler than LCSH so it could be used effectively by
non-catalogers and in non-library environments.  To a large extent, this
is achieved by fully establishing FAST headings so that
catalogers/indexers only have to select the appropriate headings from
FAST database and do not have to construct the heading as is necessary
is LCSH.  Since FAST headings are 'pre-constructed', I would argue that
this is a very important addition.

2.      While it is true that most LCSH headings can be mapped to FAST,
this is neither a simple or straightforward process.  The mapping
algorithms are complex and require extensive tables in addition to the
FAST authority file.  

3.      The point that FAST is "less expressive" is true in principle
but not necessarily true in practice.  When LCSH is assigned by skilled
catalogers and searched by skilled reference librarians, it is
excellent. However, in practice, the performance of LCSH and FAST is
very similar--not surprising considering they share a common vocabulary.
Many search engines simply treat subject headings as a source of
keywords and in these cases, the performance is equivalent.  Very few
search engines take full advantage of the LCSH structure and syntax.
There will be more discussion of this topic during the FAST program at
ALA (Sat, 1:30 New Orleans Marriott, Bissonet Room).  Systems that want
to support end-user tagging could conceivably use FAST (with its
cross-reference structure) as an aid to consistency in tag assignments
for concepts, place names, etc. 

4.      Jonathan asks "What are the things you'd want to do with LCSH
that you can't currently do very well?"   The quick answer is to
reliable use non-professionals indexers for material that would
otherwise either not be indexed at all or would be only be assigned
uncontrolled keywords."



> Eric Childress
> Consulting Project Manager
> OCLC Research {http://www.oclc.org/research}
> OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.
> 6565 Frantz Rd., Dublin, OH 43017 USA
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>