recent discussion of WWW cataloging?

[Heinrich C. Kuhn]

Sorry for the late answer: There were some problems
with my mailing software. I hope they are gone
by now ... :

> There are of course countertrends, e.g. clearinghouses for more limited
> subject oriented guides (e.g. http://www.lib.umich.edu/chhome.html),
> but it seems to me we're seeing a definite shift away from independent
> evaluative guides and towards automated or self-evaluative web
> indexes.

I doubt, whether *that* shift to robots will last for a very long time.
The categories you have to choose from when submitting a page
to robots are rarely very fine-ciselled. Therefore I fear they will
overflow very soon. And there are things a robot won't yet do:
-   You will search the robot's indexes in English (normally). But
    so you won't find pages written in other languages than
    English if you are looking for a certain term.
-  Synonyms and quasi-synonymic terms are indexed seperately:
    You have to search for *all* possible terms in the robot's
    indexes.
-   Robots do no hierachical indexing: So you have to search manually 
    for all possible more specific and less specific terms that might
    fit for the topic you are interested in.

   As the material on the web increases the drawbacks of the present
robots increase. I hope that the (near) future will see a combination
of the following:
1.)   Better robots which can do some hierarchical indexing and some
       day even mapping of terms in different languages. (There has 
       been a project in Germany to do the multilingual mapping for
       a "normal" library OPAC already ...)
2.)  Increased indexing by the authors of WebDocs using the  controlled
      vocabulary of their field of interest (like e.g. MeSH or 
      Biosis concept codes and biosystematic codes). These 
      index-terms would then be recognizable to the improved robots.
3.)  Increased manual cataloguing of WebDocs of greater interest by
      libraries.
4.)  An even increasing number of lists of specific resources in 
      certain subjects (like there are good and very specific 
     "bibliografies raisonees" in the realm of printed material).
5.)  Other things we don't yet know about.

That's my hope at least.

Heinrich C. Kuhn
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