RE: Example of coordination with DDC

Jakob and Nabonita
I forgot to mention that I was pleasantly surprised that you guys
have more understanding about the need for supporting complex
notation than most of 'classification experts' I met.
I did not think that anybody was in favour of any specific
classification - I only wanted to argue against over-simplification
based on the easiest case.

I think we all agree that it would be pity if SKOS would not
at least attempt to offer some possibility for exchange of
analytico-synthetic classifications as this is missing
in MARC21 classification format and it is not certain how quckly
this is going to be done in UNIMARC.
I would personally like very much to see UDC distributed as SKOS
data.
To be more practical here I think the minimum would be the
possibility to separate and search for parts of pre-composed numbers.
I will use UDC examples to illustrate two typical situations as minimal
requirements

case 1:
notation 75"19"(410)(0.034.2)
Painting--20th century--U.K.--digital document

main number--time(aux)--place(aux)--form(aux)

case 2:
notation 37:005.962-057.117
Education--Staff (management HR)--persons in casual employments

main number [relation] main number -- persons (aux)

Each part of these notation has the same meaning irespective
its position in the expression and type of combination.

>That's a problem. My colleage Ulrike Reiner is working on a way to
>automatically split DDC numbers. After two years she has reached a
>pretty good level and I think that this will be solved in about 1-2
>years - but it's very complex indeed.

Well this sounds better than what Liu achieved in 1996. But I don't
believe in this approach. This is successfully done for UDC in 1998 as a
PhD project with very little wider application.
I'd rather agree with Goedert (classification in general) and Steve
Pollitt (with respect to DDC), Gopinath & Prasad (on CC) who suggested that in order
to support IR (faceted interface in particular) classification should
be properly coded for machine processing. This gives open hands in creating
good faceted interfaces [see references at the end]

Editor in chief of Dewey J. Mitchell mentioned in one of her papers
that Dewey considered this to be done in their database. I think they
actually coded facets when re-designing the db in 2004.

>> a) in a limited way using four symbols and consistent principle of
>> order: (relation), :: (relation fixed order), [] (subsumes], /
>> (extension) b) in a complex and detailed way using common auxiliaries
>> of phase relationships (-042) - it contains dozen different
>> relationships and their subgroupings c) in a very sophisticated way
>> by applying Perrault's symbols for relationsahips (from Perrault's
>> "Towards the theory of UDC")
>Wow! So how are we going to express this in SKOS?

Yep. The problem is that one has to code relational symbol while the
sequence from left to right also matters.
Anyway, this is the problem with coding of syntax of any pre-ccordinated
indexing language. My opinion is that this level of sophistication is very
rarely needed in IR - I mentioned it only as a response to Nabonita's comment.
If relational symbol is somehow tagged/indicated than it solves a great part
of the problem - and if anyone needs this level of sophistication UDC has the way
of expressing it.
Reasonable simplification I thin SKOS should be concerned with is  to split
the precomposed number to its segments to allow for post-coordinate search.
This is still better than nothing.
In UNIMARC Classification format we have suggested subfield tag for each type of tables
in the field of classification heading and control field $4 for relationship type.
But this does not help in SKOS

aida

references

LIU, S.  (1990) "Online classification notation: proposal for a flexible
faceted notation system", International Classification, 17 (1) 1990, 14-20.

LIU, S.  (1996) "Decomposing DDC synthesized numbers", 62nd IFLA General
Conference Beijing, China, August 25-31, 1996. http://ifla.org/IV/ifla62/62-sonl.htm.

GÖDERT, W.  (1991a) "Facet classification in online retrieval",
#International Classification, 18 (2) 1991, 98-105.

GOPINATH, M. A.; PRASAD, A. R. D.  (1994) "A knowledge representation model for
analytico-synthetic classification", Knowledge organization and quality management
: proceedings of the Third International ISKO Conference, 20-24 June 1994, Copenhagen,
Denmark. Edited by H. Albrechtsen, S. Oernager. Frankfurt/Main : Indeks Verlag, 1994.
(Advances in knowledge organization 4), 320-327.

POLLITT, S.  (1997) "Interactive information retrieval based on faceted
classification using views", Knowledge organization for information
retrieval : proceedings of the Sixth International Study Conference
on Classification Research, London, 16-18 June 1997. The Hague :
FID, 1997. (FID 716), 51-56.

POLLITT, S.  (1998) "The application of Dewey Classification in a
view-based searching OPAC", Structures and relations in knowledge
organization : proceedings of the Fifth International ISKO Conference,
Lille, 25-29 August 1998. Edited by W. Mustafa Elhadi, J. Maniez, S. Pollitt.
#Würzburg : Ergon Verlag, 1998. (Advances in knowledge organization 6), 176-183.

Received on Wednesday, 2 August 2006 19:26:57 UTC