Richard et al., I wanted to clarify something about my question "Does anyone have an opinion about the value, in the networked information world, of the hierarchical LC subject format I described ("Steel Industry--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.")"?
We do buy in to the idea of using LCSH as an authority for subject terms, for the reasons that Richard stated. What to me is questionable is the insistence on the pre-coordinated format in all of its arcane requirements. Recently, for example, I was asked by the cataloguer to correct some subject headings in our database because a) the heading was missing the period at the end, b) the second word of a two word phrase was inappropriately capitalized (Steel Industry should have been Steel industry), c) one of the two hyphens was missing, d) "Pittsburgh, PA" should have been written "Pittsburgh, Pa." (with the dot at the end!). For internal use (within the museum) these formatting subtleties are entirely irrelevant since our collections management system is blind to case and punctuation. It doesn't matter whether you query for PA or Pa., you will get the same results either way. It also does not matter to the database whether the terms are "properly" strung together or listed separately. What I would like to know is, are there good arguments for maintaining this kind of consistency in the internet environment? If there is, it would be easier to bear the extra effort it takes to conform; if not, it seems like a waste of time and resources, with no real payoff in the end. If we did away with the pre-coordinated, hyper-formatted version of LCSH, and went to a format of single terms, we would still likely use the LCSH as a vocabulary control, to maintain consistency in the use of subject terms. We do understand how critical that would be. If we were ever to pursue a social tagging strategy, I would imagine that the tags would be stored either somewhere "between" the catalogue itself and the public interface, as I think Jennifer Trant said earlier in this thread, or, in another field in the catalogue itself, designated for this purpose, so as not to overlap the social (relatively uncontrolled) vocabulary with the cataloguer's (LCSH etc. controlled) vocabulary. Richard Urban wrote: The problem that I see in these discussions is that those not steeped in the cataloging tradition don't often see the LCSH as a larger social system of collaboratively creating a common set of terms. There are, no doubt, challenges with using LCSH that derive from what LCSH is. (And I'm going out on a limb here. LCSH isn't covered in my cataloging class until next week....corrections welcome) LCSH subject headings aren't just made up willy nilly, they're based on the concept of "literary warrant" or that the terms used are actually represented in the body of materials being described. For bibliographic texts there's a leading organization and a large group of users, following a common format that debate the addition/deletion and change of terms based on the bibliographic materials they see. I'm not exactly sure how visual materials feed into this process, but the bulk of LCSH is likely to be based on texts, rather than images. It often looks like madness, but there is method to it. The question seems to suggest whether we can/should develop a "visual literary warrant" for describing the "ofness" and "aboutness" of the materials we're describing. Things like Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO) are an important step towards that goal because they provide guidance and some liberal constraints on what kinds of controlled vocabularies are used for subject description. LCSH is not a magic bullet, but an appropriate controlled vocabulary is going to offer some advantages over "keywords".
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