Re: pre-coordination

To me the usefulness of LCSH headings have always been that they could be
applied as subject filters.  Trying to generate paraphrasing from them
circumvents what catalogers were really trying to do before computers could
easily tackle a SELECT/WHERE or a FACET or FILTER clause.  Now that we have
those capabilities and more, then LCSH headings are now useful as compounded
subject filters that can be applied INDIVIDUALLY against concepts and NOT
taken as a WHOLE (that's why we have indexing, folks. To speed up searches,
semantically or not) :

Show me "things" or "books" or "items"

where a subject heading of

"Weasels"
and
"United States"
and
"Nineteenth Century"
and
"History"

have been applied to them =

FILTERED RESULTS

Design and Construction, btw, should not be treated as a WHOLE, but
INDIVIDUALLY.  Our way in Freebase:

Design (Topic View):
http://www.freebase.com/view/en/design<http://www.freebase.com/view/m/07ndyy7>
 and
Design (Our visual inspection): http://www.freebase.com/inspect/en/design

Construction (Topic View):
http://www.freebase.com/view/en/construction <--scroll
to bottom to see Explore/Inspect, JSON, or even RDF

and we don't even stop there...

http://www.freebase.com/view/book/book_subject

http://www.freebase.com/view/user/tsegaran/random/taxonomy_subject

Jeff Prucher with Freebase has engaged a few folks at LoC to inquire about
best ways to absorb LCSH into Freebase, which will mean that in form and
fashion, LCSH can be mapped to our graph such as above examples.

Good times are coming indeed...if we can just get a few of you academics out
of the classrooms and onto the playing fields to see the bigger picture.

Thad Guidry
Freebase Community Expert
http://www.freebase.com/view/en/thad_guidry


On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 7:55 PM, Simon Spero <ses@unc.edu> wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 2:46 PM, Ray Denenberg, Library of Congress <
> rden@loc.gov> wrote:
>
>> Quote:  'wouldn't the result be loads of syntactically "valid"
>> but nonsensical combinations?'
>>
>
> The more difficult question is; what meaning, if any,  do pre-combined*
> LCSH heading strings have.   If Drabenstott (1998) is correct, then the
> interpretation of the order of subdivisions, as applied by catalogers, and
> as understood by patrons and reference librarians, does not match the
> official interpretation.
>
> Under the official interpretation, a sentential paraphrase is generated by
> treating the compound as being right headed, and reading off the modifiers
> from  right to left - for example "Weasels -- United States -- Nineteenth
> Century -- History" roughly corresponds to  "History of Nineteenth Century
> US Weasels".
>
> Even without the problems of user and cataloger understanding, any account
> of the semantics of subdivided headings must explain the entailed
> relationships between the pre-combined heading and its components.   The
> heading used as an example in the previous post bears closer examination.
>
> [Note that subject headings refer to what documents are about - see e.g.
> Svenonius (2000, p.130) ]
>
>  (1) Sailboats -- Design and construction -- New Zealand
>
>
> has the canonical form.
>
> (1a) Sailboats -- New Zealand -- Design and construction
>
>
> Since the subdivisions are orthogonal, both headings denote the set of
> documents *about* "The design and construction of Sailboats in New
> Zealand".
>
> Since these documents are about the *design and construction* of
> (Sailboats) in  (New Zealand), they must necessarily also be about  the the
> design and construction of *something, somewhere. *
> *
> *
>
> (2) Design and construction.
>
>
> Since everything about (1) must  also about (2), we can infer (from the
> definition of *BT* )
>
> (3) Sailboats -- New Zealand -- Design and construction  *BT*  Design and
> construction
>
>
> Since these documents are about (Sailboats) located in *New Zealand * (in
> particular, their design and construction), they must necessarily in some
> way also be about
>
> (4) New Zealand
>
>
> Which entails
>
> (5) Sailboats -- New Zealand -- Design and construction  *BT  *New Zealand
>
> Being about the activity design and construction of (Sailboats) in New
> Zealand, the documents must be about the activity of  design and
> construction of (something) in New Zealand:
>
> (6) New Zealand -- Design and construction
>
>
> Entailing
>
> (7) Sailboats -- New Zealand -- Design and construction  *BT* New Zealand
> -- Design and construction
>
>
> Note also that
>
> (8) New Zealand -- Design and construction *BT *New Zealand
>
> and
>
> (9) New Zealand -- Design and construction *BT *Design and construction
>
> We also have
>
> (10 ) Sailboats -- New Zealand -- Design and construction   *BT *Sailboats
> -- Design and construction
>
> (11) Sailboats -- Design and construction *BT *Sailboats
> (12) Sailboats -- Design and construction *BT *Design and construction
>
> etc.
>
> These BT relationships form a semi-lattice whose GLB is the most specific
> subject.
>
> Note that  the ontological entities  described by documents about
> "Sailboats" and "Sailboats -- New Zealand"  are [Sailboats] but documents
> about "Sailboats -- New Zealand -- Design and construction"  describe a
> [Process].
>
> The geographic subdivision does not change the class of entity, but the
> topical subdivision does.
>
> Form/Genre subdivisions confuse matters further, since they refer to the
> ontological class of the document itself. Of course, without subdivison
> markers ($v or $x), it's impossible to tell from the string form whether a
> subdivision that might be a Form/Genre is serving that role, rather than
> being a topical modifier.
>
> Simon
>
>
> Drabenstott, Karen Markey (1998). Understanding subject headings in
> library catalogs.
>
> Tech. rep. University of Michigan. url:
> http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/57992.
>
>
> Svenonius, Elaine (2000). The Intellectual Foundation of Information
> Organization. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. url:
> http://www.netlibrary.com/AccessProduct.aspx?ProductId=39954.
>
>