SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Re: SIGIA-L: you can't control me!
Re: SIGIA-L: you can't control me!
From: Laura Norvig (lauran_at_etr.org)
Date: Tue Jan 08 2002 - 18:59:11 EST
I think many have commented in the past on how different web
nomenclature is from library science on this topic, and I believe
this leads to some of the confusion.
>taxonomies, thesauri, keywords, metadata, controlled vocabularies....
Web developers tend to use the word "taxonomy" to refer to both
hierarchical (or sometimes even a faceted) classification schemes
such as Yahoo's and to thesauri. Librarians have not, historically,
used the word "taxonomy" at all.
> how do they relate? how do they differ? how do they interrelate?
keywords and indexing terms are types of metadata. Keywords are often
used in a completely uncontrolled way, indexing terms are used in
conjunction with a thesaurus (which is based on a controlled
vocabulary). The benefit in a web environment is when the programming
can actually redirect non-controlled terms in a search to the proper
terms by "consulting" the thesaurus. Without this feature there is no
point in using a controlled vocabulary, unless you are going to make
the vocabulary available to users, and even if you do they won't use
it much.
No, I take that back. Controlled vocab can be very useful for pulling
up "related items" or topic-specific items on a database-driven site.
enjoying this discussion but stopping now for fear of hopelessly
confusing myself and others ...
--
Laura Norvig, MLIS
"Intelligent Human Agent"
lauran_at_etr.org
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