Karen Coyle wrote:
>
> You can find instances where they use both LCSH and BISAC. However, in
> every case that I've seen, they only use the 650 $a from LCSH, no
> other fields or subfields, and those truncated subject headings are
> virtually useless ("United States"). As you know, I'm still trying to
> ascertain how this came to be the case.
I suspect it's because it's still not very clear how to use the full
LCSH in a way that will be powerful but still appear simple and
straightforward for those who don't necessarily need the power (as
Google insists on in their interfaces).
WE still haven't figured out how to do it. No vendors that I know of
have seriously tried to provide a product that figures out how to use
the full power of LCSH in the online environment in a way that provides
a simple entrypoint for users. (General princple: simple things should
be easy to do, more complicated things can be more complicated to do.
The simple things should not be complicated for the user.) Few libraries
have even tried (lacking the resources).
Doing it probably requires use of authority files, which only VERY
recently became available (and still not the COMPLETE authority files)
via lcsh.info. Figuring out the right way to use the authority files
(which may or may not have the info you'd really want encoded in a
machine-retrievable way in them) is yet another load of work. Again, I
think Google just decided "too complicated to figure out, not worth it."
Until WE LIBRARIES who 'own' LCSH have figured out some 'best practices'
for displaying LCSH in the user environment in a way that is both easy
to understand and powerful -- and provided a freely available
infrastructure to make this as _easy as possible_ for everyone else
(lcsh.info is a big step in that direction, but not close to the end of
the road).... it is unrealistic to expect someone else, who does not
consider themselves the custodian of LCSH and doesn't understand it's
potential power (because we haven't figured out how to show it to
them!) to do this for us.
For an article about some of the problems and not-yet-figured-out-issues
of using LCSH in one particular kind of online context designed to make
things simple but still powerful, see:
http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/23
Jonathan
Received on Thu Sep 17 2009 - 11:10:58 EDT