Fiction->Mysteries->Historical Mysteries is an example of genres, not subject
headings. There is a subtle difference--the difference between "what is this
type" and "what is this about". LCSH does have a very structured hierarchy,
but it was not intended for the kind of shelf browsing you seem to be
interested in. Different taxonomies have different purposes, and it is quite
difficult to repurpose a taxonomy or translate between taxonomies intended for
different purposes. It will never work as well as a dedicated taxonomy.
That's one reason that genres never worked well in LCSH. LCGFT was created to
remove genres from LCSH. I think it might be useful to go further and split
LCGFT into separate taxonomies for forms and for genres.
BISAC was created for yet another purpose. It is a combination of broad
subjects (where LCSH focuses on very specific subjects) and fiction genres
(where LCGFT includes both fiction and non-fiction genres plus forms). It
works well in a specific setting--a bookstore type environment for casual
browsing of both fiction and non-fiction materials. I'm not sure it is
possible to translate LCSH into BISAC, at least not very well. You could
probably do all right for the non-fiction categories, but LCSH really doesn't
have fiction genres.
Our library did create a taxonomy for our libguides and our database list. The
taxonomy is basically a cut-down version of LCSH, focusing on the subjects of
greatest interest to the university, falling generally along the lines of
departments and degrees. It works well for our purposes. But it does not
include fiction genres, because specific genres are not an important category
of study for the university. (Certain programs do study fictional material,
such as film studies, but the subject terms we use are adequate for these
interests.) Our taxonomy is designed for a specific audience--the faculty and
students of our university--and works well within that environment. If you are
looking for a combined non-fiction subject plus fiction genre hierarchy, I
think it will be rather difficult to translate or cut down LCSH the way we have.
I would suggest that, before you begin working, you make some decisions about
the scope and nature of the project. What is the intended audience for this
taxonomy? What is the purpose of the taxonomy? Will it include fiction
genres? Non-fiction genres? Forms? Subjects? How broad will the categories
be? How deeply layered will the hierarchy be? After answering these (and
other) questions, you can do a better analysis of whether it will be possible
to translate LCSH into what you seek.
Steve McDonald
[email protected]
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
> Mark Watkins
> Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2016 8:05 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: [CODE4LIB] LCSH, Bisac, facets, hierarchy?
>
> I'm interested to use the LCSH data contained in the Harvard Open Metadata
> project to provide some hierarchical browsing (e.g. Fiction -> Mysteries ->
> Historical Mysteries on top of a book database.
>
> I'm a library sciences newbie, but it seems like LCSH doesn't really provide a
> formal hierarchy of genre/topic, just a giant controlled vocabulary. Bisac
> seems to provide the "expected" hierarchy.
>
> Is anyone aware of any approaches (or better yet code!) that translates lcsh
> to something like BISAC categories (either BISAC specifically or some other
> hierarchy/ontology)? General web searching didn't find anything obvious.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Mark
