Re> Classifying Web Sites

[Eric Lease Morgan]

> Some time ago Eric Lease Morgan posted:
> > 
> > > http://www.identify.com/
> > 
> > This service seems to base itself on the concept of a controlled
> > vocabulary and structured data. "Gee what a novel idea!"  :-)  

Peter Kumaschow <peterk at opennet.net.au> said:

> I'm not suggesting that we classify all the private and personal
> home pages or pages like the Lesbian Barbie home page
> (what's the LCC for that?!), maybe only sites that publish 
> "quality" information need be classified and the rest can be
> left to search engines like Yahoo etc etc.

Based on my experience, when some librarian says "We should catalog the 
Internet", then invariably other librarians say, "There are too many things and 
too many things of poor quality." I agree, and I believe Peter Kumaschaw agrees 
as well.

To elaborate my point, I advocate the application of thesaurus terms (a 
controlled vocabulary) to collections of Internet resources brought together by 
librarians for their individual institutions/clientele. The thesaurus terms 
could from any one or a number of already created thesauri existing in our 
libraries for things like MEDLINE, AGRICOLA, INSPEC, Library of Congress, 
Sears, Engineering Index, Art Index, Biologcial Abstracts, etc. Alternatively 
we could create new thesauri since the existing ones are slow to change.

Since these collections are intended for our represpective communities, these 
collections will only include "quality" Internet resources.

Lastly, the only way this sort of thing could be managed is with a database 
program. This database program could generate two types of reports. The first 
would be HTML files for placing on our Webs. The second type of report could be 
MARC records to be uploaded to OCLC or shared with libraries through some other 
means. Furthermore, these same records could be inserted into our OPACS.


-- 
Eric Lease Morgan
NCSU Libraries
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/staff/morgan/