Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Dewey Decimal System & XMLtree

Author:Lawrence Lee
Posted:7/19/1999; 8:14:22 PM
Topic:Dewey Decimal System & XMLtree
Msg #:8580 (In response to 8578)
Prev/Next:8579 / 8581

Details on the Library of Congress Cataloging system:

<http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/catdir.html>

The Dewey Decimal Classication Homepage:

<http://www.oclc.org/oclc/fp/>

scope1: information vs. meaning (Conference in Vienna this September)

Wired (May 1996): Seek and Ye Shall Find (Maybe)

"But the difficulty of the task quickly becomes apparent when we look at attempts to solve similar problems. The most obvious place to turn - library science - turns out to be of almost no help. For one thing, even librarians admit that the schemes used today are antiquated and inadequate: the phrase "classification in crisis" has become a cliché in the library community. The most common systems in the US - the Dewey Decimal System and Library of Congress Classification - were developed during the close of the 19th century. Unsurprisingly, they are poor at classifying knowledge in "newly" established fields like genetics or electrical engineering. More important, library classification is bound by restrictions that the digital world is not. While a physical book can be shelved in only one place, a digital document can be placed in several categories at the cost of only a few bytes."

There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:51:27 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.