Our local medical library IT people have done something with this. The
reason they can do it is the presence of, not only MeSH, which is a lot
richer and more sane in it's metadata-about-metadata (relationships
between terms, lead-in terms etc) than LCSH, but a whole additional
tech/metadata infrastructure for supporting automatic classification
(I'm afraid I forget the name of this project at the moment).
But yeah, people are saying "But none of these techniques will work
out-of-the-box with our general library content." Of course they won't.
Additional research specifically targetting these technologies toward
our domain is neccessary--just like NLM put research into their domain
specifically. The point is that these technologies are really quite
advanced, and it's time for us to engage in research targetting them to
our domain. But we aren't putting any resources toward that.
Much of the library tech innovation that is happening is happening
because folks are doing it in their 'spare time'---because in fact it's
such simple technology that it's embaressing we aren't already adopting
it, and it's simple enough that many of us have time to delve into it
despite a lack of actual official prioritization and resource allocation
from above. Then once we have something, we show it to our institution,
and they say, oh great! But this kind of stuff is a level beyond that.
It actually _is_ sophisticated technology. Few of us actually have the
expertise to do stuff with it (Myself included; Alexander excluded). The
library sector has to actually put some resources into research, into
hiring people with the right expertise (or paying for existing staff to
acquire it), and allocating their time accordingly.
Shouldn't libraries be involved in innovation using sophisticated
technology, not just five years old technology that everyone else
already has and it's embaressing that we don't?
Maybe one reason we don't do that is because some people feel such
research threatens their jobs.
Jonathan
Karen Coyle wrote:
> Rinne, Nathan (ESC) wrote:
>
>>
>> I take it whatever people think though, no one is going to claim such
>> software will produce subject headings like...
>>
>
> According to NLM, they have an 'expert' system that suggests MeSH
> subject headings to their catalogers as a way to speed things up. I
> don't know if they have written about it (can't see anything on their
> pages). The person who spoke (at the LoC meeting on Future of Bib
> Control in June) said that the machine gives the same suggestion as a
> human about 60% of the time. But it's not just whether a machine can
> produce the same heading as a human, but also whether a machine can do
> some of the work to save a human's time. NLM says yes to the latter, and
> claims it has saved them $$$.
>
> kc
>
> --
> -----------------------------------
> Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
> kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
> ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
> fx.: 510-848-3913
> mo.: 510-435-8234
> ------------------------------------
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Fri Aug 31 2007 - 09:41:18 EDT