Bernhard,
Thanks for pointing out BSO and related work, interesting and relevant I think.
Re Dan's comment (...the real issue....the fact that the notation is nothing but a place to put the damn book...) I would like to chime in that I thought we were talking here about notation in a different way, that is, as a metaphorical way of organizing resources in virtual space so that discovery of knowledge and relationships could actually be facilitated by the notation (and its representation via the user interface).
Whether "discovery" means: (a) mere capture of the current state of the art, or may also result in (b) creation of new knowledge through novel collocations of existing resources or even "learning" by an automated system that assimilates user input, involves theoretical questions needing proper *research* I think. In any case, I did not think we were talking about where to put books on the shelf. That an existing physical library has and will have its own cultural bias should not be controversial. I thought we were talking about virtual organization, where questions of universality and of extensibility are in need of attention. Reshelving or resystematizing the physical library should not be a necessary consequence of making progress on this front, even though the next OPAC will be serving both physical and virtual collections.
Sorry if I am speaking out of turn or am off the mark somehow.
Grace Wiersma
Cataloging & Metadata Services
MIT Libraries
gwiersma_at_mit.edu
(617) 253-0643
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Bernhard Eversberg
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 11:06 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Aristotle, "Everything is Miscellaneous", and the lib's "educative function" [was: Prof. Burke's wish list]
Tim Spalding schrieb:
>
> Indeed, why not? I think the answer is to do it cooperatively and
> slowly, building it down layer by layer, ...
One might start looking at the outlines of existing schemes other
than those behemoths we've been talking about.
There's a not too dusty one called "Broad System of Ordering"
or BSO:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/fatks/bso/outline.htm
which also claims to be a "systematic overview of knowledge".
It uses digits too.
There's quite some theory going with it...
B.Eversberg
Received on Tue Jun 05 2007 - 10:27:08 EDT