I'm sorry to interrupt you, Brian, but I'm just getting word from our senior
classification correspondent.
An emergency meeting of the International league of philosophers has issued
the following statement:
"Some things are miscellaneous. Some things aren't. Beware of zebra
crossings."
Folksonomies need taxonomies to give them order, Taxonomies need
folksonomies to give them life; but for taxonomies to receive this life,
they must first be made ready.
The Library of Congress Subject Headings are rich in promise, but exist,
archeopterex-like, caught in transition between dictionary and thesaurus.
The future of bibliographic control can only be social, her authorities
moral. Tens of thousands of orphan subject headings cry out for adoption.
Hundreds of names, banished from name files, merely because they belong to
the feline, or fictitious.
"It is high time to tackle the subject headings" ¹. Will you make a
difference?
Simon
¹ Sidney L. Jackson, Requirements study for future catalogs (Chicago:
University of Chicago Library School, 1968)
quoted in Sanford Berman, Prejudices and Antipathies (Scarecrow Press, 1971)
Received on Thu Jun 07 2007 - 16:15:12 EDT