Or does it mean that the administrative data uses a more limited
vocabulary and therefore produces high hit counts, while descriptive
metadata is more diverse and diffuse?
Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Eric Lease Morgan
Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 6:31 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: [NGC4LIB] marc record tag cloud
For a good time I created a MARC record tag cloud:
http://tinyurl.com/ypqcyn
Tag clouds are graphic illustrations depicting the common elements in a
larger set of words. Using tag clouds you can see what words occur
frequently or not. Delicious uses tag clouds extensively. So does
LibraryThing. A person an also use tag clouds to navigate sets of
documents. Click on word. Get search results.
A service called Many Eyes by IBM allows anybody to create tag clouds
-- as well as other data visualizations. I did this with a set of 14,000
MARC records representing new books, and the result is illustrated at
the URL above. Based on what I saw, most of the content the MARC records
is administrative and does not lend itself discovery. (If we spend more
of our effort creating administrative data than discover data, then what
does that say about our values?)
I wonder what would happen if I removed the administrative data?
First off all, the data set size would probably diminish by 50%, and
second, the cloud would probably make more sense.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
University Libraries of Notre Dame
(574) 631-8604
Received on Tue Mar 13 2007 - 09:21:24 EDT