At 8:44 PM -0400 6/21/06, Tim Spalding wrote:
>It's interesting that nobody's mentioned tags here. I'm not a maniac
>about them, but I certainly see the advantage for some searches. A
>naive user expects to be able to enter "queer fiction" or "steampunk"
>and get relevant results. Neither LCSH or FAST will work there.
One of the issues is that users are really quite interested in
form/genre (as opposed to 'aboutness'), and catalogers have
traditionally not paid much attention to form/genre, viewing
'aboutness' as more important. Both of your examples are form/genre
terms (we're not interested in books _about_ "queer fiction" or
"steampunk", we're interested in books that _are_ queer fiction or
steampunk, that are exemplars---these are form/genre terms, not
'subject' terms as traditionally understood by catalogers). [I tend
to talk about combined 'form/genre' because both sorts of things are
about 'is-ness' instead of 'aboutness', and the distinction between
the two can often be blurry, although in this case both examples are
probably just 'genre'].
While LCSH (and therefore FAST), Dewey, LCC, etc. all include
form/genre terms, and there are additional form/genre terms from
other vocabularies in various MARC fields in a typical MARC record
(and more in some less typical records, sometimes supplied by
vendors, etc.)--the whole thing is very haphazard and unsystematic.
Form/genre is something that needs to be treated better in cataloging
practice in general, and I don't think uncontrolled vocabulary or
social tagging is a sufficient solution.
So there's no reason that "queer fiction" and "steampunk" _couldn't_
be part of a controlled vocabulary that included form/genre terms.
Although people might disagree about whether a particular work is or
is not those things, or anything else, certainly.
But another issue, presumably the one Tim meant to hilight, is just
that no controlled vocabulary will ever include all the
terms/concepts that any user might be interested in. Some concepts
might be too new, or might not have come to the attention of the
vocabulary designer, or might be of interest to too small a
population to be judged worthwhile to include, etc. Tagging/folk
classification/folksonomy might be one solution here, certainly.
Is the ideal solution a mix of many controlled vocabularies with
uncontrolled expert assigned keywords with uncontrolled user assigned
keywords? I don't know, the ideal solution to what problem? I think
that there are probably various uses of these types of
derived/assigned terms/concepts (whether for subject, form/genre, or
anything else), and that different solutions may work better for
different uses in different circumstances. Certainly nothing should
be dismissed out of hand, and everything we've got, we should be
figuring out how to use. But I think there are challenges to
presenting coherent, usable, simple but powerful interfaces to users
when you're starting with dozens of separate, overlapping, sometimes
duplicating, unsystematic vocabularies. Especially with providing
useful browsing/navigation/profiling/exploring interfaces.
--Jonathan
> But
>tags work great for this sort of thing, at least on my site. (I REALLY
>am not trying to promote it here.)
>
>It seems to me the ideal solution is a mix of LCSH, FAST, Dewey, tags
>and keywords (in all fields, probably including Onix data, like the
>flap copy, and eventually including the complete text of the book.
>
>Tim
>
>On 6/21/06, Laura Akerman <liblna_at_emory.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Karen,
>>
>> I've been looking at FAST a lot (for discussions with the SAC subcommittee
>>that's looking at it). FAST could be a "way station" on the road to a more
>>ideal subject vocabulary, but probably not the destination. I would think
>>that anything better but radically different would need to be something that
>>LCSH could be converted to - but probably wouldn't have backward
>>compatibility. FAST's chief virtue is that it is derived from LCSH, so it
>>can take advantage of the continuous maintenance of LCSH, but presents a
>>vocabulary that would be easier to apply in a lot of contexts (for example,
>>in Dublin Core which encodes geographic, temporal, form/genre and "subject"
>>aspects of a work in different fields).
>>
>> Laura
>>
>> K.G. Schneider wrote:
>>
>> What if you didn't need to completely throw away LCSH, but
>>could achieve these results? Laura asked what is out there,
>>so I'll [2] throw FAST [1] into the discussion. FAST will be
>>able to take a LCSH constructed heading and break it into
>>facets. You could dynamically create the FAST headings, or
>>store them in the record, which would allow you to build
>>things like that. It's not panacea since FAST headings are
>>based on LCSH terminology, but it does offer a bridge to
>>easier application and use while allowing for facet browsing
>>or 'term clouds'.
>>
>> I was actually thinking of FAST when I wrote my responses earlier but
>>didn't
>>want to limit the discussion to strictly pro/con FAST (just as this
>>discussion should not be pro/con LCSH).
>>
>>My critique of FAST is that we aren't hearing enough about it. One program
>>at Annual, a mysterious product page... like FRBR, it's interesting and
>>perhaps greatly important, but we need to see the hamburger under the
>>pickle. Or the baby in the blanket. Sorry, long day...
>>
>>Karen G. Schneider
>>kgs_at_bluehighways.com
>>
>>
>>
>>--
>> Laura Akerman
>> Technology and Metadata Librarian
>> Robert W. Woodruff Library, Room 128
>> Emory University
>> Atlanta, Ga. 30322
>> phone (404) 727-6888
>> fax 404-727-0053
Received on Thu Jun 22 2006 - 06:55:14 EDT