Martha Yee wrote:
4.3.2.1 FAST is an example of a project that breaks up LCSH strings into individual facets, thereby losing the information about the relationship among various subject facets that is implicit in the LCSH precoordinated string of facets. Admittedly, the information about the relationships is somewhat ambiguous at times, but users need more information, not less. Instead of breaking up the strings and losing information, it would be more useful to explicitly encode more of the relationships (such as 'effect of A on B' or 'participation of X group in Y activity'). (That is, if we are going to talk about spending the considerable amount of money and time it would take to restructure LCSH; who was going to pay for this again?...)
Yes, this one really bothers me. A resource about physicians from China and also about veterinarians from Vietnam would get these LCSH headings: Physicians--China Veterinarians--Vietnam In FAST, you get: Physicians Veterinarians China Vietnam Can a user figure out the context from the FAST headings? Maybe if the title is explicit, or a summary note is present, or there is a table of contents. Keyword searching will work just as well on both the LCSH strings and the FAST terms, so to exactly what benefit is it to lose the inherent semantic meaning of the precoordinated string other than perhaps to save some cataloging time or enable a less highly trained level of staff assign the terms? Now admitted, as Martha wrote, the precoordinated strings are not perfect, since Physicians--China can mean physicians IN China and/or physicians from China (i.e. Chinese physicians). I agree with Martha that it would be better to develop a way to explicitly code the relationship, e.g. something like: 650 _0 $a Physicians $i in $z China. --Adam Schiff ************************************** * Adam L. Schiff * * Principal Cataloger * * University of Washington Libraries * * Box 352900 * * Seattle, WA 98195-2900 * * (206) 543-8409 * * (206) 685-8782 fax * * [EMAIL PROTECTED] * **************************************
