Re: FAST and GRIS

Karl Fast <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.infodesign.facetedclassification
Message-ID <[email protected]>
> the FAST project looks more like a fashioned maquillage that an
> effective reform.

True.

However, I suspect this is the better road since library standards
like LCSH, MARC, AACR2 and so on are some of the deepest
infrastructure we have in modern library systems.

And changing infrastucture is hellishly difficult. Not just from a
technical perspective, but also from a political and cultural
perspective. The biggest obstacle to overcoming the inadequacies of
these standards is their pervasiveness coupled with the low-level
role they play in library systems.

It's like TBL said about the Web when asked which was the most
important technology: HTML, HTTP, or URLs (URIs, actually). TBL, to
the reporters great shock, said URIs. No hesitation.

When asked Why? he said that document formats come and go, that
transport protocols change all the time, but infrastructure is
forever, and URIs are an addressing mechanism and addressing is
the deepest level of infrastructure on the Web. Hence URIs are here
to stay for a looooong time.

Stuff like LCSH is, to my mind, a form of addressing. Wholesale
reform will be bloody difficult IMHO.


--karl

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