[1034] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Subject Headings for Gopher Virtual Library
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (KMARVIN%WCU.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.ed)
Mon Aug 24 09:34:45 1992
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 1992 08:28:53 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
From: KMARVIN%WCU.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
The Library of Congress Subject Headings are not systematically hierarchical.
There are numerous places where heading B has been defined as narrower than A
and broader than C, but you would not find all headings accounted for in any
such concept. It is all quite sporadic and reactive to perceived needs in
literature that needs to be cataloged.
A more fruitful approach might be the LC subject headings as standard verbal
expressions of the LC classification -- which classification I suggest only
because the LCSH book (and hopefully some online version of it) has them
associated. This would probably not be the best classification to use ideally,
but it has the surest mapping to a standard vocabulary.
I have to be skeptical of the whole enterprise, however, in that it flies in
the face of the general trend of information science for over 100 years. The
hierarchical representation of all knowledge is a very old idea which was more-
or-less taken for granted by most early classification schemes. S.R.
Ranganathan's Colon Classification was very influential in that, while
retaining the hierarchical idea nominally, it demonstrated that knowledge has
"facets" (such as space and time) which pervade many areas of the hierarchy in
such a simple way that they make one question the value of the hierarchy
itself. The great benefit of computers to information science is due chiefly
to its enabling us to abandon such all-embracing hierarchies in favor of
concepts like post-co-ordinate indexing -- a radically different approach which
is taken by practically all the CD ROM data bases, for instance.
So, as much as one might be fascinated by the idea of a hierarchical
classification, I am afraid that such a fascination hasn't much currency in
information science, except in the third world.
Submitted for: Paul Emmons
Music Librarian
West Chester University
West Chester, PA 19383
PEMMONS@WCU
