Re: [EP-underground] Re: Interoperability - subject classification/terminology (fwd)

There are some problems to google searches for certain things, however.

One of which that the smartest the google can get (currently) is does
it contain word "X" but many words have multiple meanings, or have different
subject area-specific meanings. One good example is that "wave" means something
utterly different to 
 * physics - energy wave, raditation etc.
 * oceanography - waves on the ocean
 * combat tactics - attack waves
Probably more. This is, I believe, the primary argument for subject 
classification, and also, possibly, the ability to browse or get updates
on items in your field of interest.

The interesting question is do we expect/need OAI harvesters that can
harvest just history, or just art? And if so to what granularity?

On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 09:36:45 +0000, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> 
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2003 15:06:26 +0000
> From: Steve Hitchcock <[email protected]>
> To: Pauline Simpson <[email protected]>, [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Interoperability - subject classification/terminology
> 
> At 13:31 15/01/03 +0000, Pauline Simpson wrote:
> 
> >Following on from the OAI Geneva meeting  - to open the discussion  please see
> >http://tardis.eprints.org/discussion/
> 
> Pauline, A thought-provoking page that helpfully outlines all the 
> issues. A few points below, but first we need to make a distinction between 
> works where the full text is not available digitally, and those where it 
> is. So the question whether there is a need for classification boils down 
> to: Yes for the former, and (mostly) No for the latter.
> 
> By (mostly) I mean let's make it optional. That means, in the case of 
> institutional repositories of research papers (the latter category), don't 
> burden the repository with the need to maintain categorization as a core 
> task. Leave that to services. If it's worth doing, then people will find 
> the resources to do it, but it must not compromise the task of 
> repositories, which is to make the texts available.
> 
> If full texts are available, we have the chance to automate search and 
> indexing, say full-text indexing or citation indexing. This is vastly more 
> powerful and cost-effective, but we have to recognise it is not the same 
> thing as classification. Full text indexing can begin to tell us what a 
> text is *about*, rather than simply where it is located, the classical 
> purpose of classification. Through knowing what a text is about, we can 
> make connections with other works in ways that are much more flexible than 
> is offered by classification.
> 
> You ask: Can we rely on web search engines like Google to search deeply or 
> accurately enough?
> 
> At the moment, simply, yes. It's not the fault of Google that it can't 
> index most of the journal literature.
> 
> Where I think classification may continue to have a role is in interface 
> design - you give examples. Classification can inform browsing. This brings 
> us back to services. Services will produce interfaces. In principle, 
> repositories do not need to produce user (as opposed to author or 
> management) interfaces, although in practice there will be few 
> institutional repositories that will be able to resist doing so, for good 
> reasons, but again, they don't have to, and it should be optional and minimal.
> 
> When you ask if the 'push' scenario should replace harvesting, that's 
> interesting because it is counter to the framework OAI has put in place. 
> That is, to reduce the burden on data providers at the expense of service 
> providers, recognising that we have to make the entry threshold for authors 
> and repositories as low as possible. That can make it difficult for service 
> providers, see Liu et al.
> http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april01/liu/04liu.html
> but overall it probably remains the best approach, especially if 
> repositories concentrate on optimising the submitted metadata within the 
> OAI framework.
> 
> Steve Hitchcock
> Open Citation (OpCit) Project <http://opcit.eprints.org/>
> IAM Research Group, Department of Electronics and Computer Science
> University of Southampton SO17 1BJ,  UK
> Email: [email protected]
> Tel:  +44 (0)23 8059 3256     Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865
> 
> 
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