On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 11:14 AM, Miksa, Shawne <SMiksa_at_unt.edu> wrote:
> Once again, let me play my broken record---there is demonstrated by many
> professional librarians a sad lack of understanding of the purpose of
> knowledge classification systems--how to build/construct numbers for
> representing the intellectual content of a resource in order to show how
> that content is related to other resources in the collection (i.e., fits
> into the collection). How would the user know how to read the numbers if the
> librarian doesn't even understand it?
>
This is a difficult question to answer.
If users and librarians "misunderstand" a system in the same way, then they
will converge on the same meanings for the headings/classification codes,
etc. If the errors are such that misclassified items will be located "close
enough" to the physical or virtual location where the user would browse,
recall may be unaffected but precision be lower. However, in a hierarchical
system it seems highly likely that such misunderstandings will result in
entailments to which neither user not indexer would assent.
The Michigan study in the late 90s (
http://en.scientificcommons.org/26458214) does not shed much light on the
issue; it's one of the things that needs to be looked at in The Year of
Cataloging Research.
Simon
Received on Wed Nov 11 2009 - 15:23:35 EST