Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree
Reinhard Doelz <doelz@urz.unibas.ch> Mon, 30 November 1992 10:21 UTC
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From: Reinhard Doelz <doelz@urz.unibas.ch>
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To: "(Tony Barry)" <tony@info.anu.edu.au>
Cc: Anders Gillner <awg@sunet.se>, eurogopher <eurogopher@ebone.net>,
gvl <gvl@unt.edu>, iafa <iafa@cc.mcgill.ca>, jkrey <jkrey@isi.edu>,
Ton Verschuren <Ton.Verschuren@surfnet.nl>
Subject: Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree
Tony, If you don't know my name, I try to maintain a biology subject tree in Europe. I am carefully following the discussion on the list. Looking at the CC: list of your mail, I am convinced that there's a bigger audience in this mail than on the usual postings. Let me share my view on your proposal for classification of subject trees. You write > It is not cheap in staff time to determine a classification code in a large > collection. We will be talking large collections. The Veronica service has > already turned up 1.1 million items in gopher space. I wouldn't call VERONICA to be a classified service. Yet, be careful with the ambition that librarians do it all, and the customers need to follow. The current fact is that the 'real' subject heavy gophers are maintained by scientists, volunteers, to make a service available to their people. These scientists' expectations differ from what the librarians use to provide. >The classification scheme needs to be one which is supported, trained staff >are available to do the classification and clients know it. I think this >favours the Library of Congress Classification, Dewey or UDC. As this >campus uses Library of Congress that is the way we have decided to go for >our gopher organisation. This can be seen at - >Name=The Electronic Library >Type=1 >Port=70 >Path=1/library/elibrary >Host=info.anu.edu.au Despite the fact that the path is already wrong again (this only at November 30th, directly after having received your mail) I got there and searched biology. No biology there. Tried 'science'. Found --> 1. Q223 BIOFTP EMBnet Switzerland/ 2. QA Mathematics and computing/ 3. QC The Physics Information network PINET <TEL> 4. QC793 CERN World Wide Web Service <TEL> 5. QH Natural History (General)/ >All classifications have faults particularly with new material like >computer science. With gopher you can get round these faults by - Well it seems to me that there is a huge misconception going on. The librarians might know what Q223 means, I certainly don't. Neither would I expect my customers to know this. If schemas get more complex, I also would find 'Q' for Science to be rather broad, whereas the apparent 223 subclassification lacks a certain intuitonal aspect. The example in my view quite desperately shows that librarians talk a different tongue. Additionally, there's always the sense between the lines that we should avoid to have the librarians splitted from the information providers. If all negotiations end in the adoption of the librarian's view, I feel this to be insatisfactory. In Gopherspace we currently have more than 20 biology-oriented gophers, including more than 10000 items. To view the complexity, try Name=Biology subject tree in Gopher Type=1 Port=70 Path=1/ Host=gopher.embnet.unibas.ch There will be a menu showing 3. Information Servers in biology (Gopher based)/ and there you'll find currently 24 gophers that I know of worldwide being engaged in Biology. If you can classify this, fine. However, have a look at the top menu option 2. Gophers in Biology: Tree listing / and look at the diversity of the trees of these gophers. Some are of plain informal character, some are WAISed, some are sophisticated file servers. Let your librarians have a look at it. It would be interesting to note what they would do. Also, be realistic on which information to classify. Because of the difficulty to maintain links (see your own gopher), it is out of scope to have subitems classified at the oarticular gophers at a central place. This ultimately results in the need to classify a GOPHER entry point, and not the tree behind it. You certainly can put individual links into the schema, but once the local giys cjhange their offerings, you're done. I am afraid that we cannot meet this challenge staff-wise. If you are, then, limited to registering (and classifying) gopher by entry point, we need to average a gopher's content wrt classification. There's where I start to see problems coming up. I'd like to know whether a more obvious classification scheme is around in librarian's world than Q223 ... Regards Reinhard +----------------------------------+-------------------------------------+ | Dr. Reinhard Doelz | RFC doelz@urz.unibas.ch | | Biocomputing | DECNET 20579::48130::doelz | |Biozentrum der Universitaet | X25 022846211142036::doelz | | Klingelbergstrasse 70 | FAX x41 61 261- 6760 or 267- 2078 | CH 4056 Basel | TEL x41 61 267- 2076 or 2247 | +------------- bioftp.unibas.ch is the SWISS EMBnet node ----------------+ -----------------------------------------
- Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree Anders Gillner
- Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree Tim Berners-Lee
- Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree Tony Barry
- Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree Tony Barry
- Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree Reinhard Doelz
- Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree Peter Deutsch
- Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree Anders Gillner
- Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree Billy Barron, VAX/Unix Systems Manager
- Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree Billy Barron, VAX/Unix Systems Manager
- Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree Billy Barron, VAX/Unix Systems Manager
- Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree Tony Barry
- Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree Tony Barry
- Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree Jill.Foster
- Update on the Gopher subject list proposal Ton Verschuren
- Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree Alan Emtage
- Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree Anders Gillner
- Re: proposal for subjects in subject tree Alan Emtage