Karen Coyle schrieb:
> browsing means a kind of wandering, some movement among things. One kind
> of that movement can be the alphabetical movement through bibliographic
> headings (or "access points" as RDA is now calling them). This is what
> we are most familiar with, but I only find it useful in very limited
> circumstances.
No reason to discard it as a required feature of OPACs. As Thomas Mann
makes clear, pre-coordinated subject headings (a) are a necessary
concept and (b) need a browse index.
> I want to browse by other aspects: by "sameness" (from the
> most alike to the least like my starting point), by "references"
> (following citations that link texts), and by classification. These
> browses would be more meaningful to me and would help me find
> relationships between works that don't happen to be alphabetical.
>
Classification browsing also needs an alphanumeric index, or two:
one for the terms (to find a class) and one for the class numbers.
I understand that speakers of English are in less of a need for
alphabetical browsing. If your language is more inflected or
suffix-rich, then your attitude will be different. Then you also
find Google's lack of truncation more of a handicap.
B. Eversberg
Received on Mon Jul 23 2007 - 05:32:00 EDT