Turn it into FAST instead?
I wish those working on FAST would write publically about what they're
doing, but I've been unable to persuade them to do so.
Ed Jones wrote:
> LCSH is a pre-coordinated system designed for the card catalog, generating discrete coherent quasi-hierarchical strings intended to be read from left to right. Even the MARC coding is primarily designed to arrange subject cards in proper order for filing in that card catalog. LCSH is our legacy data and necessarily has at least sentimental value to those of us who grew up amidst its intricacies, but I'm increasingly unsure what we can do with it now other than use it to produce an online card catalog. The more we try to squeeze it into the Procrustean Bed of an online database--for which it was never designed--the more we seem to distort it.
>
> Ed Jones
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Dan Matei
> Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 12:11 PM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Tim Berners-Lee on the Semantic Web
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Karen Coyle <lists_at_kcoyle.net>
> Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 10:24:19 -0800
>
>
>> Order is complicated in LCSH (as is everything else ;-)). In a given
>> heading, the order that the subfields are written in the MARC record
>> is the order that must be retained. In some cases, changing the order
>> actually changes the meaning of the heading. HOWEVER, the order does
>> not give you the facet type. So in some faceted systems, you have a
>> fixed number of facets and they are always in the same order:
>>
>> topic / place / time / genre (or something like that)
>>
>
> Some facets are not properties of the topic, but of the indexed resources.
>
> In the card catalogue time, it made sense (to me) to coordinate a topic with a genre (say). But now ? I would prefer
> (at browsing) to select a topic and then the system to offer me a faceted browsing on genres.
>
> For instance, not:
>
>
>> $aInternational Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture$n(1st
>> :$d1935 :$cParis, France)$vFiction.
>>
>
> but:
>
> International Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture$n(1st :$d1935 :$cParis, France)
>
> Fiction: n1
> History: n2
> etc.: n3
>
> Dan
>
>
Received on Tue Nov 03 2009 - 16:02:47 EST