[WEB4LIB] RE: Candidates for _Beyond Bookmarks: Schemes for Organ

[Robert J. Tiess]

"Minkel, Walter (Cahners -NYC)" wrote:
> Yeah, I know that Web sites are being assigned call numbers
> in many library catalogs, but is it necessary if keywording & assigning
> subject headings is done carefully?

That's one of the major problems--metadata is not being
created carefully (or at all) for what may well be the
majority of sites on the web, and where there is no
metadata the search then extends to the full text of a
web page, where topical context is almost always lost.

The New Athenaeum (http://members.spree.com/athenaeum)
uses Dewey for cataloging purposes, and the decision to
do so was partly based on the content of this site,
which is to catalog Internet resources by libraries.

Western and other preexisting classification schemes
were not necessarily designed to assimilate the
multinational diversity of modern data, and I believe
that steps toward a Universal Classification System
(UCS) are necessary.  The trick is, of course, how to
get there and getting everyone to agree on taxonomies
and methodologies.

My own work these past few years in this area has been
on assessing contemporary classification schemes,
particularly "web guides" like Yahoo! and the Open
Directory Project, where categories are established
as needed and resources are regularly recombined in
new areas as the classification structure evolves.

The more I reconsider it, such a UCS must be learnable
by everyone in and beyond the library community, so
that it can be widely, swiftly and easily implemented.
The prevailing "universality" I've reached is through
a basic object-oriented model that exists not only for
printed materials but for data of any type or medium.
It's very challenging to create, and perhaps something
short of impossible to have such a creation appease
everyone's cataloging concerns.  In the future I will
describe more of this at my website, but for now it
remains "in development."  I should also add this
system is ultimately to be designed to be forward- and
reverse-compatible with all classification systems,
performing as a metaclassification system, or else it
couldn't really be "universal."

Whatever scheme ultimately prevails, I'm grateful to
all those who have taken the time to bring about a
more intelligible Internet.  It benefits all of us.

Robert Tiess
rjtiess at warwick.net
http://members.tripod.com/~rtiess