Nathan Rinne wrote:
> Jim, I think this comes back to my post asking how far apart you and
> Jonathan were in your views. Isn't there a possible time-saving
> element
> here that could be acknowledged? I.e., the computer - based on its
> particular abilities - might be able to spit out some pretty good
> guesses - which the cataloger would be able to check and verify? I'm
> really not eager to spawn whole new threads of what increasingly looks
> to me like "talking past each other", but I think your further
> thoughts here might be valuable and illuminating.
Absolutely. Anything that would save the expert's time would be valuable, even if it is a savings of 5%. As I wrote somewhere, 5% here, 8% there, 2% there, and so on all adds up to a tremendous time saving. The concern that I have is that many CS people seem to want to do away with the human element altogether as a "bug" in the system, while I want to make the human as efficient as possible.
In the case of determining which David Johnson to use, I am skeptical that 1) a computer could do it at all, and 2) that a computer could even save me time. A book published today may be authored by, or about a David Johnson from the 1600s. I think that the human still needs to be aware of them all. On the other hand, if David Johnson is writing about the latest developments in RDF, probably it is not the same as the fellow in the 1600s. So, there may be a time savings element involved in these things and I am willing to keep an open mind.
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Wed Sep 05 2007 - 01:33:34 EDT