Re: Meta Tag - proposal (suggestions ???)

Robert Hazeltine <rhazltin@zeppo.nepean.uws.edu.au> wrote:

> [ Re: using Dewey Decimal system to classify Web pages ]
> 
> This suggestion is a bit off the mark, for a number of reasons.  I work 
> in a library and appreciate that what you propose, Jon would solve a lot 
> of problems. Attempts in the past to get some agreement of what 
> should be used for indexing and searching have not been very successful, 
> mainly I suspect because the requirement has been vague and unwieldy and 
> tried to encompass too much.
> 
> There is a group of librarians in the US somewhere (I can't recall off hand) 
> who have put together a list of meta data called the _Dublin Core_.  It's 
> just too complicated for ordinary, non librarians to handle, and even 
> they need a reality check as they seem to want to re-invent  marc.
> 
> On the other hand I do not think it too much for a HTML author to 
> identify and index/keyword his/her document - pretty much the same as 
> printed material.  Keep it simple so that authors who only need to learn 
> simple HTML can management to have their documents located more easily on 
> the WWW.


Here's a thought: how about using the Usenet newsgroup hierarchy
as a classification scheme?  I.e., "if this Web page were a Usenet
article, in which newsgroup(s) would it belong?"

The Usenet hierarchy is fairly well-organized, and likely to be more 
familiar to the average Web author/user than the Dewey system would be.  

The newsgroup hierarchy is also a better classification scheme for
much of the stuff that's on the Web.  For example, it would be much easier
to locate Tom Christiansen's "Perl Data Structures Cookbook" [1]
if it were classified under "comp.lang.perl" than if it were under
"Computers and Data Processing" (or whatever the Dewey category is)
along with the host of other "Computers and Data Processing"-related
material that's out there now.



--Joe English

  jenglish@crl.com

[1] http://mox.perl.com/perl/pdsc/index.html

Received on Thursday, 16 November 1995 13:44:02 UTC