Hi all,
Just wanted to make sure someone mentioned that a catalog record can
have many subject headings, as Patrick requested clarification on this
point.
Anna
On 6/29/2010 8:16 PM, Patrick Etienne wrote:
> NGC4LIB Community -
>
> I'm another lurker on the list and will also take up Eric's challenge.
>
> I'm a technologist, not a librarian, but I do spend a significant amount of
> time thinking about information architecture and user interfaces. Lately, a
> lot of my time has been spent evaluating a wide variety of discovery tools.
> While I can't comment specifically on traditional catalogs, I feel I can say
> something meaningful about the search processes various library audiences
> (undergrads, grads, profs, faculty, library staff, john q. public, etc) go
> through in their quest for knowledge or information.
>
> It is meaningful to think about searching within two different contexts:
> *) Searches where there is a specific document (article, book, media file)
> in question.
> *) Searches where there is no specific document in question, rather an
> exploration of available information.
>
> Does it makes sense to use a search axis such as author, title or subject?
> My question to this would be, by what metric do we judge the effectiveness
> of such an axis? I can think of no better than, does searching on this axis
> both significantly and dependably narrow the field to relevant results?
> (This may be a bit basic, but from previous conversation it seems, if not
> necessary, at least appropriate).
>
> For the first search context, author and title do well. There are a limited
> number of authors by any one given name, and each would have a manageable
> amount of works. In short, there's very little *ambiguity* within a search
> involving an author's name or the name of one of his works. Each of these
> has an exact "right answer" (leniency given for things such as international
> spellings of an authors name, use of a middle name, or using or not a
> title's subtitle, etc). To this, we could add another axis that has an exact
> right answer. For example, who the publisher of the document was, or when
> the document was published (again, the idea of multiple editions of a
> document may blur this line, but even that could be accounted for).
>
> For the second search context (that of exploration), the author context is
> much less likely to be beneficial (unless of course the exploration in
> question is of a given person, the author). The title search axis would
> provide very little benefit, if any at all. Here as well, other axes such as
> publisher, date published, or edition relate to specifics and would not be
> helpful in an exploration type query.
>
> So far, I've written nothing that I would imagine anyone would disagree or
> have any problems with. In essence, up to this point I'm just making sure
> we're all on the same page. There are however, significant pieces I've left
> out from the above evaluation (this is where the discussion gets
> interesting).
>
> It's certainly the case that sometimes people will have a specific document
> in mind but do not know specifics such as the author, title, or publisher
> (or ISBN). Not knowing these kinds of identifiers which significantly narrow
> down the scope of inquiry makes for a broad search indeed. With these
> conditions, I'd have to say that there's no significant difference between a
> specific document search and an exploratory search. *I believe the real key
> is how these kinds of exploratory searches are performed.* There is a lot of
> focus on "Subject" as a search axis in the library world. My understanding
> is that there is a standard by which "subject headings" are assigned to
> specific documents and that this is where results based off subject axis
> queries originate. I also believe that documents are cataloged under a
> particular subject heading, but not more than one (I could be wrong about
> this. Part of the reason for my post is to better understand the library
> world). The trouble that arises is (from my understanding) that subject is
> by no means an unambiguous axis on which to search, and that there is
> significant effort put forth in the library world toward disambiguating
> subjects within a one-to-one hierarchical methodology. (Now what in the
> world does he mean by that?). I'm glad you asked! Again, I'm not a librarian
> by trade, so I may have some details mixed up. Please do offer guidance or
> correction for where I may have veered off.
>
> I think it comes down to subject headings. If, for each document there is
> one-and-only-one subject heading, and if subject headings are arranged in
> hierarchies, then my understanding is on par. My argument would be that the
> more electronic content/media proliferates, the less viable this
> 1:1/hierarchical model becomes in representing both digital materials and
> perhaps more importantly, the perception with which library audiences
> understand classification of these materials. Why is this so? First, the
> more electronic content/media we have, the more exposed the general public
> will be to the classifications or metadata we use to "catalog" this content
> (because the demand for autonomous rather than assisted search rises).
> Second, the more ambiguous the search axis (subject vs. author), the more
> the individual's perception of the world (or content) colors or shapes
> his/her search terms. When information query gets to the point of something
> so ambiguous that two very intelligent people will both expect to find a
> particular document based off of two single but very different search terms,
> the one-and-only-one relational model of subject to document breaks down.
> Following this, I don't think it's difficult to understand that hierarchies
> of subject headings would also break down. If two people couldn't agree on
> one term, how much less a hierarchy of terms.
>
> For those that are still with me, I appreciate it. I've not tried to be
> exhaustive, but indeed thorough.
>
> Here's what you've likely been waiting for. 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.
>
> *Gasp...
> [silence]
> Tagging!? Heretic! Burn him!
>
> Rather than specific subjects headings, I believe we need authoritative
> groups that can provide the knowledge and experience necessary to assemble
> intelligent tags for particular resources (similar to LCSH, MeSH, or CSH,
> but smaller, more numerous, and more flexible). At the same time, I believe
> we also need non-authoritative groups that can provide intelligent tags for
> those resources. These authoritative tagging bodies could be anything from
> joey blogg's review of Frank Herbert's Dune from Amazon (a body of low
> authority), to a body of Harvard Law professors (a body of high authority)
> tagging resources which relate to their field. Individuals could then
> perform searches based on tags-collections formed by some chosen level of
> authority. Again, I'm not saying this would be easy to do. I am saying that
> I believe it's the way that (at the moment) it looks as though we have to
> move. The real questions are: 1) can we agree on a standard for representing
> tags associated with a document, 2) can we agree on a method of interchange
> for tag collections, 3) can application programmers provide ways to include,
> exclude (or possibly even prioritize) different tag collections.
>
> And just to make sure it's clear, I'm not saying that traditional cataloging
> is dead. If it was, we'd have a vacuum, for there's nothing currently (that
> I'm aware of) to take its place. I am saying that the system I've
> illustrated above is a way we are likely to be moving in the future, away
> from the monolithic, inflexible bodies governing traditional
> 1:1/hierarchical methodologies to the distributed, flexible bodies governing
> smaller 1:M/non-hierarchical tag-based systems.
>
> ---
>
> Hopefully this post will get some gears turning and inspire some thought.
>
> - Patrick E.
>
--
Anna Headley
Swarthmore College Library
610.690.5781
aheadle1_at_swarthmore.edu
Received on Tue Jul 06 2010 - 10:22:57 EDT