On 8/31/07, Rinne, Nathan (ESC) <RinneN_at_district279.org> wrote:
> I am puzzled why you would way that Edwin isn't even reading what you
> wrote. Could you be more specific about why you said that?
Well, this section ;
> Point us to these applications that can *currently* slurp in
> 250 pages of full text and return 5 to 7 reasonably good, controlled
> vocabulary subject headings (or topics or topic maps or well-formed RDF
> triples or what have you).
.. is a mish-mash of misconceptions and straw-man arguments. What
exactly is "5 to 7 reasonably good, controlled vocabulary subject
headings"? I'd like to know if a human could pass this test? Will
there ever be a set of requirements of which this person will say
'yay' to automatic classification?
Ed :
> > This is *not* a trivial task. To say
> > that it is misapprehends the entire scope of what we're talking about.
What - exactly - isn't trivial? Because some parts of this is trivial,
other parts hard, some parts impossible, and so on. You're painting a
whole field with the one big brush here.
> I take it whatever people think though, no one is going to claim such
> software will produce subject headings like...
[examples]
My question is (and it's a very serious one), what is that assumption
based on? Why wouldn't these systems create subject headings like
this? Why do people think they can't? Is it purely because no one have
shown you a specific example you can agree on? (Or at all, given the
current state of ILS)
...
> So we can really get good, intelligent controlled vocabulary subject
> headings from this stuff, huh? (obviously shorter and less detailed
> ones :), unlike those above)
Why is that obvious?
> For all different kinds of topics,
> subjects, disciplines? Without any human help in the process besides
> the initial programming?
Well, to paraphrase from my blog, this is not about no human
intervention, or even the eradication of the cataloging profession. In
fact, this is an area where human catalogers help utilize and tool the
systems would make the library more relevant to the human race than
any other automatic attempt. I'm just sayin'.
Alex
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Received on Thu Aug 30 2007 - 18:05:03 EDT