Re: Library Technologies and Library School (was Commercial Vendors and Open Source Software)

I wanted to emphasize again that while I personally don't care for the
interface of lcsh.info, my preferences are irrelevant because this is a time
of experimentation and anyway, when everything is encoded correctly, it can
be displayed in almost any way we want, and have multiple displays selected
by the user. Someone else may find this type of display the best they have
ever seen. That's fine. Everybody can be satisfied this way.

This type of display is becoming very popular however, take a look at:
http://www.bestiario.org/harvard/b10/ (thanks to Nathan Rinne) which, while
I prefer it to the lcsh.info browsing (at least I don't have to look at
words upside down!), I still find it overwhelming, but someone else may love
it. As Ross mentioned, it is important that this information is finally
available as URIs and that is uses SKOS.

Jim

James Weinheimer  j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
via Pietro Roselli, 4
00153 Rome, Italy
voice- 011 39 06 58330919 ext. 327
fax-011 39 06 58330992
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Stephens, Owen
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 11:50 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Library Technologies and Library School (was
Commercial Vendors and Open Source Software)

I think this is an important point - the way lcsh.info is structured
opens up some interesting possibilities (e.g. substituting all LCSH
terms in your catalogue with URIs; building a search engine that
'crawls' LCSH and presents a search interface based on this, etc.)

Are there any examples of people using lcsh.info out there to look at?

Owen

Owen Stephens
Assistant Director: e-Strategy and Information Resources
Imperial College London Library 
Imperial College London 
South Kensington 
London SW7 2AZ 

 
Tel: 020 7594 8829
Email: o.stephens_at_imperial.ac.uk
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries 
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Ross Singer
> Sent: 23 September 2008 14:18
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Library Technologies and Library 
> School (was Commercial Vendors and Open Source Software)
> 
> On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 5:04 PM, Weinheimer Jim 
> <j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu> wrote:
> > and while I personally don't care for the version at the 
> lcsh.info site (that's just my opinion), that is irrelevant.
> 
> Well, lcsh.info's purpose isn't for making the LC Subjects 
> Headings available in a web browseable interface.  It was 
> designed as a project to model LCSH in SKOS and make it 
> available as Linked Data.  So instead of using:
> 
> 650 	_0 |a Semantic Web.
> 
> You'd use:
> 
> http://lcsh.info/sh2002000569#concept
> 
> The former is useless in a web context.  Using the latter 
> (whether or not you believe SKOS is suitable for LCSH is 
> beside the point for
> this) ensures that two disparate resources are referring to 
> the same thing.
> 
> Bernhard Eversberg's interface is made for information 
> consumers to use, while Ed Summer's application exists for 
> information creators.
> 
> I think this offhand critique of design misses the point of 
> their completely different purposes.
> 
> -Ross.
>