tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3338174527262061848.post7925006791882745512..comments2023-09-29T08:51:56.163-07:00Comments on Coyle's InFormation: Social aspects of subject headingsKaren Coylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02519757456533839003noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3338174527262061848.post-25911330469526296942014-01-01T18:03:04.811-08:002014-01-01T18:03:04.811-08:00Harry, most information in the field of medicine c...Harry, most information in the field of medicine comes out in journal articles, which libraries do not index individually. In fact, it would be very interesting to get a picture of the difference (subject-wise) between book publishing and article publishing. My guess is that most of current scientific content is found in articles, and that books will tend to be in the history-sociology-literature areas. Karen Coylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02519757456533839003noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3338174527262061848.post-32802010293013040412014-01-01T17:26:09.064-08:002014-01-01T17:26:09.064-08:00For me, it is a surprise there are 192968 items of...For me, it is a surprise there are 192968 items of "History and criticism" and not medicine items in this top-tier list.Harry Lawenhttp://data.lawin.orgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3338174527262061848.post-92084357053651169262010-04-29T09:42:59.496-07:002010-04-29T09:42:59.496-07:00Quoting Jonathan: MANY of those examples are -- if...Quoting Jonathan: <i>MANY of those examples are -- if they are from at all modern cataloging after the 6xx subfields actually existed -- $z rather than $x. They're form/genre subdivisions, which go in $z.</i><br /><br />That should be $v for form/genre subdivisions. $z is used for geographic subdivisions.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3338174527262061848.post-77529453593558659102010-04-27T07:03:43.980-07:002010-04-27T07:03:43.980-07:00Sorry, I wasn't clear. There is a strong desir...Sorry, I wasn't clear. There is a strong desire to be "--"-free - no dash-dash. So the 'bring together' was to bring together the two subfields into one string, and mainly for greater readability. Similarly, the subfields with reversed terms ("Authors, German" becomes "German Authors") were changed to natural order. To the non-librarian eye it appears that it is much easier to read these uninterrupted phrases. <br /><br />I wasn't involved in this decision so I don't know if other changes of this nature were made. However, I think it is telling that folks who could well be better representative of our users that we ourselves are find LCSH basically unreadable. I suspect that many "catalog 2.0" users have no idea that the facets are actually parts of subject headings, because they never gave subject headings more than a simple glance -- and then gave up on them as too complex to read. So, if we could code data rather than write displays, a subject like:<br /><br />Architecture, Modern -- 20th century -- United States -- Bibliography<br /><br />could possible be presented to users as:<br /><br />Bibliography of 20th century American architecture<br /><br />while individual facets could also be available for those functions where faceting is useful.Karen Coylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02519757456533839003noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3338174527262061848.post-70347192700346266812010-04-26T18:29:28.216-07:002010-04-26T18:29:28.216-07:00Interesting. To me, that seems like almost the OPP...Interesting. To me, that seems like almost the OPPOSITE of what FAST intends to do. FAST tries to take LCSH and break it down into facets. You've taken what were already facets, and precoordinated them into single multi-facet strings! From "X -- Social Aspects Of" to "Social Aspects of X". <br /><br />The interesting thing about it is why you did it "To bring these together" -- meaning that OL is still stuck in the same place as all of us, "bringing things together" by the alphbatetical listing of pre-coordinated strings! They've made a different decision about what things to bring together (All "social aspects of" together, instead of all things regarding "X" together) is all.Jonathan Rochkindhttp://bibwild.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3338174527262061848.post-91199824170418213522010-04-26T15:34:05.266-07:002010-04-26T15:34:05.266-07:00Jonathan, yes, some of the subjects come out of &q...Jonathan, yes, some of the subjects come out of "genre" subfields. That one is tricky: when we had a separate "genre" index in the UC catalog, it was almost never used -- I don't think users generally understood it. They tend to think of "Dictionaries" as a subject, like "I want an English-Spanish dictionary." At the same time, there are genres that are confusing -- e.g. books of fiction v. books about fiction. I'm thinking that the "about" v. "is a" is something that needs to be addressed in a faceted display, where users can see and understand the context.<br /><br />The Social Aspects of... headings, I have just learned, were originally "Something -- Social aspects" and got turned around in OL as a way to keep them together. (Similar to some of the combination of subheadings that was done in FAST, but I currently cannot find that documentation on OCLC's site.) It might be good to develop some kind of "best practices" for taking apart LC subject headings when one doesn't want to use the "--" form. FAST is a beginning if there can be some community input on development. FAST seems to have retained many of the "--" forms ("Care of the sick--Social aspects"), for reasons that I do not understand (unless they anticipate using headings in an alphabetic sort order). In any case, I think there's potential, but am not quite sure how to move on it.Karen Coylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02519757456533839003noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3338174527262061848.post-31037333285247181172010-04-26T11:54:38.720-07:002010-04-26T11:54:38.720-07:00I'm also curious how many of those "Socia...I'm also curious how many of those "Social Aspects of X" headings have an LC authority file with an established relationship to "X" as a broader term. <br /><br />If it's not actually in the LC authorities, this would still be a fine candidate for easy machine adding of relationships from "Social Aspects of [any X]" to "X". <br /><br />As we start to actually have good interfaces which can display hieararchical relationship in a reasonable way (not quite there yet), we'll probably be looking for candidates like this for automated relationship establishment.Jonathan Rochkindhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05438603607671783114noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3338174527262061848.post-84556068350305237812010-04-26T11:51:54.357-07:002010-04-26T11:51:54.357-07:00MANY of those examples are -- if they are from at ...MANY of those examples are -- if they are from at all modern cataloging after the 6xx subfields actually existed -- $z rather than $x. They're form/genre subdivisions, which go in $z. <br /><br />I seem to recall that someone somewhere in the cataloging world is proposing taking those OUT of $z, and just putting them in 655$a where they belong. I forget if this had anything to do with RDA or what.Jonathan Rochkindhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05438603607671783114noreply@blogger.com