Bottom Line on Electronic Libraries -Reply

[Alain Vaillancourt]

> 
> >      It's time you set up your local community/area/regional/
> > metropolitan digital library - for Jack and Jill AND Little
> > Joey.
> 
> Didn't yahoo already do that? Don't forget yaholligans.
> 
> --Thom
>

Not really, Yahoo is more like those beginnings of classification 
systems that sprung up in mid-19th century during the first attempts 
to organize the vast new amounts steam press printed wood-base 
books.  Eventually, The Dewey system and the Cutter system 
(transmogrified into LC) prevailed over the others and , with the 
help of that other newfangled technology, the 3 by 5 card, managed to 
organize those vast new masses of information.  Sears subject 
headings and LC subject headings eventually helped out also.

Yahoo is just at the beginnings of a series of new tools to organise 
Web information.  Possibly, there will be other services in the future 
offering alternate classifications (I wish one would offer a 
perfectly dichotomic hierarchy, that would really be an alternative!)
in ways that exploit more fully the Web's capacities.  The web's 
graphic capacities are nearly ignored by Yahoo to give but one 
example.  Nowhere do we get the chance to even SEE the intricate 
branching tree created by the Yahoo hierarchies.  Ideally, of course, 
we should be able to see this tree and be able to click on the 
relavant branches and fruits to get to relevant points, but that is 
more complex.

Au revoir!

Alain Vaillancourt