Cyberstacks Project

[Wilfred [Bill] Drew]

Gerry McKiernan wrote:
> 
>                 Participatory Development of a WWW Database
>                               Agriculture (S)
> 
>      In an effort to incorporate the most relevant agriculturally-
>      related Web Reference resources within the CyberStacks(sm)
>      collection, we have established this a site to obtain user
>      preferences for those categories that are of greatest collective
>      interest.
> 
>      We invite users to select from categories and subcategories of
>      topics found within the hypertext outline of the Library of
>      Congress classification schedule for Agriculture (S) below.

I admire the intent of the Cyberstacks project but believe that the LC
claasification scheme is not appropriate for organizing internet
resources. LC was invented to organize things on shelves not to organize
items in the cloud that is cyberspace.  LC requires the pigeon holing of
resources into one little hole.  THAT IS WHAT I HATE ABOT LC OR EVEN
DEWEY!!  Most resources, especially in agriculture, need more that one
subject class to adequately describe them.  I am not a cataloger so I
don't really know what a possible solution might be.  Maybe a controlled
vocabulary with allowing as many subject headings be assigned as
necessary.  Also make such heading truly hierarchical so that a resource
about dairy farming is also included under the subject heading of
agriculture.  That is not the present case with LC. 



--
Wilfred Drew (Call me "Bill") Serials/Reference/Systems Librarian
SUNY College of Ag. & Tech.;   P.O. Box 902;  Morrisville, NY 13408-0902
Internet: DREWWE at SNYMORVA.CS.SNYMOR.EDU
Phone: (315)684-6055 or 684-6060 Fax: (315)684-6115 
Homepage: http://www.snymor.edu/~drewwe/
Not Just Cows Homepage: http://www.snymor.edu/~drewwe/njc/
LibraryLinks: http://www.snymor.edu/pages/library/
--