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

George,

I like the idea of allowing user contributions to catalogs very much. It's past time for us to do that. I do have a couple of questions, though. How much do you know about the contributors to OpenLibrary? Do they tend to be librarians, or do they come from other backgrounds? It would be interesting to compare tagging by librarians and non-librarians. Have you considered allowing users to add free-text abstracts rather than short tags?

Thanks,
Steve Paling

=====================================
Stephen Paling
Assistant Professor
School of Library and Information Studies
4251 Helen C. White Hall
600 N. Park St.
Madison, WI 53706-1403
Phone: (608) 263-2944
Fax: (608) 263-4849
paling_at_wisc.edu

----- Original Message -----
From: George Oates <glo_at_ARCHIVE.ORG>
Date: Tuesday, June 29, 2010 7:26 pm
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Copernicus, Cataloging, and the Chairs on the Titanic, Part 1 [Long Post]
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU

> 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
> 
> ---
> George Oates
> Director, Open Library