This probably belongs better on the id.loc.gov list, but I hesitate to subscribe to something else....
But this may be the correct list anyway to get a more general opinion: Is there general agreement that the LCSH headings should definitely be in the form that a heading with lots of subheadings, e.g.:
Aeronautics, Military--Accidents--Italy, Northern--History
should have only one URI? http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh2007009179.
In reality, this heading is a a big, mixed up conglomeration of concepts and it could be argued that the heading above came together as it did only after a series of historical accidents. By this I mean that some cataloger in the past decided that "Accidents" can be a valid subdivision of a specific type of subject while e.g. "Architecture" cannot.
And, if the idea is to cooperate with other terminologies, wouldn't it be better to break this heading into its facets? Here, there are several facets (essentially one for each word) but at least each subdivision could get a different URI. The URIs would be collected and displayed as each community would want.
In this way, I don't think I am arguing for descriptors since libraries could continue with traditional LCSH strings. It's just that each subdivision would get a separate URI, and massive duplication could be avoided (e.g. Accidents as a subdivision would not have separate headings 1000 times, and History 100,000 times). So we could retain our practices and I think we could interact more easily with descriptors and other thesauri.
Do others have any thoughts on this? Now that people can take the LCSH, maybe somebody can try splitting them apart and see what happens.
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Mon May 18 2009 - 10:25:43 EDT