Ed Jones wrote:
<snip>
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.
</snip>
This is absolutely true, LCSH strings do not work well in an online environment, but before we throw the baby out with the bathwater, perhaps we could play with it.
Another option would be to allow the users to sort as they want, as I mentioned in an earlier post https://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=NGC4LIB;EZFuFw;20090918055024-0400. I wrote there that someone who does a search for e.g. 'France politics" should get an idea of what has been cataloged with those concepts, so that should include political aspects of all kinds of topics. These varying displays look bizarre to me as a cataloger because they are all mixed up, but when I have shown them to my students, none of them thinks they are strange at all:
Political aspects France Communication
Political aspects France Constitutional law
Political aspects France Corporate governance
Political aspects France Communicable diseases History 19th century
Political aspects France Dance History 20th century.
Each user could determine and manipulate the order for their own purposes, and I think all the coding exists for these kinds of functionalities right now. Allowing for a more updated system such as this obviates the requirement for a strict order, makes training and record creation much easier, thereby lowering costs.
James L. Weinheimer j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
Rome, Italy
Received on Wed Nov 04 2009 - 02:55:48 EST