Yes, Jonathan, I'm sure FAST is a serious attempt at faceting. (I stand
corrected on my earlier claim that Casey's subject display isn't
faceted.) And one could say that as long as "philosophy" and "influence"
are present somewhere in the 650 fields, it doesn't matter whether
they're coordinated with Plato and Shelley. But I do think there's also
a kind of "aesthetic" element that comes in here: there's something
about seeing "influence" alone on a screen that bothers even the
developers of FAST--I can testify to that because I was at their meeting
in 2005 when they said so. Somehow Philosophy alone looks better than
Influence alone, I suppose because Philosophy seems coherent as a
subject on its own.
Also, if you decompose those subheadings, including Philosophy, subject
browse screens become pretty useless. People are going to be less
interested in clicking on Philosophy on the browse screen if they know
that in many cases the titles are not really works on philosophy but on
some person's philosophy. The case with Influence would be even worse.
I don't mind it much that Endeca and Casey's catalogs decompose the
headings in the "faceted" sidebar displays. That's probably necessary.
But part of the reason it doesn't bother me is that (at least) Endeca
doesn't abolish alphabetical subject displays. And I think Casey's
doesn't, either. Both kinds of searches are options.
--Ted Gemberling
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rochkind
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2007 3:39 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Yes but
I'm also interested in someone exploring what makes a controlled
vocabulary suited for the kind of facetted exploration we are talking
about. LCSH was not created with this in mind, it was created thinking
that users would 'interface' to it primarily through an alphabetic
listing of all existing pre-formed headings. Many of it's features can
be only understood with that context in mind (the "--" subdivisions and
the way they work, for instance. I'd like to figure out a way to put
the _hiearchical_ relationships in LCSH into an easy to use browse
interface, but the fact that there are at least two, if not three,
seperate hiearchical structures within LCSH, doesn't make this easy).
What features should a controlled vocabulary have to make it suitable
for a facet-style exploratory use? What are the different contexts a
controlled vocabulary can be used in? What features are helpful for
each? Do some come at the expense of others? How can you effectively use
LCSH in the kind of easy to use exploratory interface Casey talks about?
How would you design a controlled vocabulary from scratch for that
purpose? What reasonably efficient interventions can be made in LCSH to
improve it's use in easy to use interfaces? (And what sorts of easy to
use interfaces are possible?).
These are the questions we need to explore, with both intellectual
analysis, experimental projects, and empirical user-centered research.
The FAST project is to some extent an attempt to make LCSH more amenable
to this type of interface, but to my mind it's only the barest beginning
of what's possible. It's not backed by much empirical research. It loses
some information from LCSH that I'm not convinced you _need_ to lose (is
it possible to keep this information intact and even present it in an
easy to use manner?). And it's generally presented as a project to "make
subject cataloging easier for paraprofessionals", rather than "make
subject controlled vocabulary work better in easier to use interfaces."
It's the latter I'm interested in, not the former. I think a lot more
than FAST, and not neccesarily along the lines of FAST either, is
possible.
Jonathan
Casey Bisson wrote:
> Ted,
>
> This is an excellent example.
>
> I often ask people if they know what "bagged products" are, and the
> usual answer is "huh?" Then I offer this picture (link below) and
> watch as people immediately understand the term.
>
> http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/11538/
>
> I'm an advocate for kind of controlled vocabularies you describe here,
> but I've also seen how we can represent them in our systems in ways
> that help the user make better sense of them.
>
> Example: I often see "sociology of education" appear in our search
> stats, while the correct LCSH is "educational sociology." Clearly
> there's a huge number of users at my library that don't know the LCSH,
> but they still need good results. My solution (and it's old hat by
> now) was to display the aggregate subjects as a facet.
>
> http://plymouth.edu/library/opac/search/sociology+of+education
>
> And using your examples, the subject facets again reveal some very
> useful information:
>
> http://plymouth.edu/library/opac/search/eskimo
> http://plymouth.edu/library/opac/search/inuit
>
> The challenge I'm trying to meet is to provide sophisticated results
> without increased complexity. The subject facets reveal what the
> catalog knows (based on what librarians have acquired and the metadata
> they have) about the keywords the user searched. We know from previous
> studies that users modify their searches based on the results
> returned, and I've seen lightbulbs appear in users as the explore the
> facets.
>
> The result is that a user who didn't know the LCSH before starting a
> search learns it quickly.
>
> That is, sophisticated tools can make complex research easy.
>
> Now one of the things I'd like to see is tooltips for the LCSH facets
> that offer a deeper explanation of what they are (and are not).
>
> Notes:
> 1: the code serving the above links is over a year old and is
> embarrassing, but it's got the largest collection of relevant items.
> For a more interesting and up to date example of Scriblio (was WPopac)
> see http://beyondbrownpaper.plymouth.edu/browse/ .
> 2: my library's collection doesn't come close to serving the needs of
> somebody researching "Judaism and the difference between its concepts
> of Messiahship and those of Christianity," the first example in your
> original message.
>
> --Casey
>
>
> On May 8, 2007, at 3:15 PM, Ted P Gemberling wrote:
>
>> Here's another example that shows the important role of librarians as
>> information "experts." A lot of people today are under the impression
>> that "Inuit" and "Eskimo" are equivalent terms. Generally Inuit is
>> considered more appropriate to use. NLM's Medical Subject Headings
>> accept that equivalence and establish Inuit as the term. But if you
look
>> at the LCSH hierarchy, you find that Eskimo is actually a broader
term
>> than Inuit. Here's the scope note for Inuit:
>>
>> "Here are entered works limited to the indigenous Arctic peoples of
>> Greenland, Canada, and northern Alaska. Works discussing collectively
>> the Inuit peoples and the related Eskimo peoples of southern and
western
>> Alaska and adjacent regions of Siberia, or works for which the
>> individual group cannot be identified, are entered under ǂa Eskimos."
>>
>> Probably 70-80% of all Eskimos in the world are Inuits, but having
spent
>> one summer in Western Alaska, I'm aware there is another 20-30% who
are
>> Yupiks. The only term we have for both groups is Eskimos. This shows
the
>> close collaboration LCSH subject specialists have with people with
>> knowledge of subject areas. Just looking at the LCSH syndetic
structure
>> is informative for a researcher. Keywords cannot provide that
>> information without a lot more work on her part.
>
>
> Casey Bisson
> __________________________________________
>
> Information Architect
> Plymouth State University
> Plymouth, New Hampshire
> http://oz.plymouth.edu/~cbisson/
> ph: 603-535-2256
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Sr. Programmer/Analyst
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Wed May 09 2007 - 18:53:02 EDT