Re: Purposes of classification & Information imperialism

Diane,
That's interesting, because it somewhat implies a break between subject
access and author and title access. As you say, your Voyager
(LocatorPlus) catalog has better name and title authority control, but
the NLM Catalog has better subject access.

I do think that's one of the really foundational distinctions in library
systems, subjects vs. "names." There is something fundamentally
different about them and how they function in our systems. It's too bad
that you currently need to use two different databases to provide
optimal access to them, but perhaps it's not surprising, given their
different natures. In philosophical terms, subjects are universals, and
names are particulars.

Here's a little something I wrote about that matter:

"If we found out AIDS or some other subject was different from our
current understanding, we would probably change its name.  Let's say we
found out AIDS was genetically determined rather than acquired. Stranger
things have happened in history. We would not retain the name Acquired
Immune Deficiency Syndrome as the established form in that case. Whereas
a change in our understanding of the nature of a "human" (FRBR Group
Two) entity is not likely to make us change its name. It is not assumed
to convey its nature. If we found out that the State Department of
Health was in the business of poisoning people, we would joke about the
name but probably would not change it. That is because the agency is not
a general, recurring thing, like a disease that can happen over and over
to different people at different times, but a particular entity, a
particular group of people that has a name. That is also the difference
between the LC subject heading Poisoning and the name heading "Borgia,
Lucretia," set up for a person who was guilty of it.  Putting
"Poisoners" on as a broader term for her would be accurate but might
raise the question, why just this BT?"
        --Ted Gemberling

-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Diane Boehr
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 8:19 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Purposes of classification & Information
imperialism

Ted,

Right now, Voyager does a better job with authority control of names and
titles, leading you directly from a cross reference to the proper
heading.  In the NLM Catalog, you can search the authorities, but it's a
separate search.  Voyager is the only source for the holdings
information.  The following link describes the differences between the
two databases in more detial:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/locatorplus.html

I'm sure it would be possible to design a system that could do both, but
I don't see the vendors or library community heading in that direction.
There seems to be a lot of talk recently about decoupling discovery and
inventory.  The vision seems to be that we keep our current ILS for our
specific holdings information and then stick a more effective search
interface on top of that--perhaps one that searches more than just what
the library "owns."

Diane Boehr
-------------- Original message --------------
From: Ted P Gemberling <tgemberl_at_UAB.EDU>

> Diane,
> Thanks for explaining that. You wrote:
> "The NLM Catalog was specifically created because the Voyager ILS
could
> not take advantage of the MeSH tree structures in subject searching."
>
> So the NLM Catalog really does provide the sort of hierarchical
approach
> some of us are looking for. Given its inability to approach subjects
via
> those tree structures, what do you perceive as the value of Voyager?
Is
> there something it can do that the NLM Catalog can't do? Especially
> subject-retrieval-wise? Do you think it would be possible to create a
> system that could perform the work of both databases?
> --Ted Gemberling

> >