James Weinheimer wrote:
>
> I've been labelled a dreamer, and this may be true, but so long as I am
> dreaming, I want to point out that we do have coworkers in this field: i.e.
> the book indexers, who analyse much father down than we do. *If* we could
> get other communities to use our (reworked) subjects, using URIs as it was
> suggested in the Working Group report and has been accepted by LC (they
> exist now at: http://lcsh.info/) why couldn't book indexers fit into this
> scheme as well?
>
>
The problem is that the LCSH as published is a partial vocabulary with
complex instructions on how to create a heading. We do not have a list
of actual headings, and we do not have a set of cross references that
link to headings -- the xrefs only link to the entries in the
instruction book. This makes it quite hard to algorithmically link the
xrefs to the actual headings in library catalogs.
The online list represents the Red Books, but doesn't seem to include
the detailed instructions. So a heading like:
Language policy -- Italy -- Venice -- History -- 16th century.
Is represented only by the term "Language policy"
(http://lcsh.info/sh85074564#concept) in the online list. Somewhere
there are other instructions about dividing by place, topic, and date.
The discussion in the working group report centered around the
difficulty of using the "Red Books" to actually create an LC subject
heading. I don't think this comes through in the report, but the
discussion (at which I was present) seemed to be leaning toward a more
uniform way of adding "facets" to the listed headings rather than having
separate rules for each heading. This would probably mean some real
re-thinking of the Red Books and perhaps including more complete or
nearly complete headings in the vocabulary list so that the instructions
could be simplified. It also would be nice if the results were more
intuitive. That same record I quote above has two headings that begin
"Venice (Italy)", two that begin with topics and are followed by "Italy
-- Venice". Although there is some deep logic behind it all, odds are
that most users looking at a record don't get that message.
I think that LC understands the problem, but a solution will be seen as
highly disruptive to current systems. That's too bad. The current use of
facets in some user interfaces is a mechanical re-ordering of the data
for users, but we need some real research into solutions that fix both
the creation problem and the user interface problem.
kc
--
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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
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Received on Wed Jun 25 2008 - 08:59:48 EDT