Re: Copernicus, Cataloging, and the Chairs on the Titanic, Part 1 [Long Post]

Hi,

Patrick Etienne wrote:
 > My contention is that "cataloging" of the future, must needs be one-to-many,
 > and non-hierarchical. We need something that can account for the (perhaps 
even > psychological) ways in which people view both the world and content
 > differently. That is to say, we need tagging systems.

This is just what we're doing on Open Library. In addition to "exploding" the 
hierarchical LCSH into their constituent parts, Open Library editors are also 
able to enter subjects (aka tags) in one of 4 categories: general, people, 
places, and times.

There is a great deal of variety and inconsistency revealed by building a 
browseable subject heading system, which you can play around in from here:

http://openlibrary.org/subjects

We're just going to sit back and watch what happens to the subjects used on Open 
Library. The subjects we show are absolutely built on the hard work of 
catalogers over the years, but we're hoping there's deep potential to account 
for different perceptions and descriptions of the literary world in Open Library.

As it develops, we'd like to build upon the interconnectedness embodied by the 
subject headings (cluster analysis etc), and also improve methods for extracting 
that information from Open Library for re-use.

Regards,
George

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George Oates
Director, Open Library