Re: Interoperability - subject classification/terminology

From: David Goodman <dgoodman_at_PHOENIX.PRINCETON.EDU>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 13:34:54 -0500

I'd amend it slightly, and I hope Tim would agree:
let the humans worry about access, and impact, and making sure
appropriate specialists--AI people, librarians, and others-- continue
working on getting the computers to do
yet better indexing.


On Wed, 12 Mar 2003, Tim Brody wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Guy Aron" <guyaron_at_YAHOO.COM.AU>
>
> > ... I would still
> > like clarification as to whether the original poster
> > was being asked to contribute LC classification
> > numbers or LC headings.
>
> I think the thread started with a concern that choosing LC headings when
> submitting an article to an e-print (E-Prints.org?) archive is burdensome.
>
> From my limited experience catagorisation serves two purposes:
> 1) Allowing the location of items within a physical system (e.g. library
> shelves)
> 2) Locating items on a common theme/subject, as a means of discovery
>
> 1) is replaced by URIs (URLs, DOIs, etc) in the online age. For the research
> literature citations (and citation analysis) should cover 2), supplemented
> with free-text searches.
>
> As the Web has grown it has gone from classification (Yahoo directory), to
> boolean-search (Altavista), to graph-based search (Google). Each of these
> steps has come about because of a factor increase in the information to
> search across, a process that requires decreasing human effort, and as the
> classification schemes themselves become so large as to be meaningless.
>
> I suspect the same will be true of the research literature.
>
> So the moral of my story is: let the computers worry about indexing, and let
> the humans worry about access and impact.
>
> All the best,
> Tim.
>


Dr. David Goodman

Princeton University Library
and
Palmer School of Library and Information Science, LIU

dgoodman_at_princeton.edu
Received on Wed Mar 12 2003 - 18:34:54 GMT