[WEB4LIB] Re: Table of contents database

[Judy Myers]

Two responses to the posting below:

1) Are there other projects like this?

The most significant related project that I know of was the Subject Access
Project, conducted at the Syracuse University School of Information
Studies, reported in Atherton, Pauline, "Books are For Use, final report of
the subject access project to the Council on Library Resources," 1978. This
report was published as Syracuse Univ. School of Inf. Studies number
IST-10. There are also articles about this project. It entered tables of
contents and indexes, and covered books in the general collection. The
major finding was that they considered the data entry to be cost-effective
and the retrieval by these terms was much more effective than with typical
catalog searches. Before then, and even today, people are maybe too hung up
on controlled vocabulary. I think controlled vocabularies are great, but
the Citation Indexes and Biological Abstracts are useful tools without them.

2) A concern:

Maybe your reference books are different from ours, but in our library the
reference collection would be perhaps the least suitable for access by
table of contents -- and particularly if you didn't scan and enter the
index. So many of the reference tools arrange the content alphabetically,
they don't have much of a table of contents (it says something like
"Entries A-Z," and in effect the text serves as the index. On the other
hand, many reference tools have many more subject terms in their prefatory
matter than we include in the OPAC; this data would seem useful to me.

Judy E. Myers                              jm at uh.edu
Assistant to the Dean of Libraries         713/743-9805 (voice)
University of Houston Libraries            713/743-9811 (fax)
Houston, TX 77204-2091

-----original posting follows--------
 
>> At 01:36 PM 2/22/99 -0800, Hanan Cohen wrote:
>> >Our library is engaged in quit an ambitious project. We are scanning the
>> >table of contents of ALL our reference books, OCR them and put it in a
>> >database. The objective of this project is for our patrons to be able to
>> >find books not only by their title or classification but also by words
>> >that appear in their content.
>> >
>> >We are a small town library with about 8,000 reference books.
>> >
>> >I would like to know if there are other projects like this and would
>> >like to share thoughts and experience.
>> >
>> >Thanks
>> >-- 
>> >Hanan Cohen
>> >
>> >Kiryat Gat Central Library
>> >Kibbutz Tamuz - Beit Shemesh http://www.tamuz.org.il
>> >***Love and Peace***
>> >
>> >
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> Isabel L. Danforth  Technology Librarian, Wethersfield Public Library
>> danforth at tiac.net       http://www.wethersfieldlibrary.org
>> 		    Coordinator of Librarians' Online Support Team
>> 		        http://admin.gnacademy.org:8001/~lost/ 
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> 
>
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