RE: Some remaining questions about the use case document

At 01:27 PM 5/8/2003 -0700, Bass, Mick wrote:
>- How do users interact with the vocabulary (i.e. how do they select their 
>desired term(s) from the N00,000+ that are in the vocabulary)? In 
>particular UI/selection/suggestion/search techniques.

I've never done this personally, but my understanding is that it's
usually done "asynchronously" with the data entry or cataloging for
the item in hand -- i.e. you have a copy of the thesaurus in print or
CD or on the Web with its very own UI and you consult it when you
need a term. Most catalogers are intimately familiar with these
vocabularies and often with the domain they come from so it isn't
considered a huge burden for them.

>- How are the vocabularies maintained?  i.e. with 100,000 entries what 
>processes are used to identify which terms need to be 
>reviewed/updated/merged/deprecated etc. and what metadata do such 
>processes generate?  If SIMILE is to offer facilities for vocabulary 
>maintenance, what function points are likely to be required?

Again, hearsay that I can verify if necessary. By teams of experts.
Manually. Very, very slowly. With lots of process and QC and trust
systems for who's allowed to add/remove/change entries. They often
have official editors and reviewer, kind of like a dictionary or
encyclopedia.

>- How are the vocabularies today shared across systems (i.e. what transfer 
>formats are used)?

For the big, official ones (e.g. MESH and LCSH) they can be acquired
in digital formats for local loading but I have no idea if they're encoded in
XML or what... I can find out if you need to know that.

MacKenzie/

Received on Friday, 9 May 2003 07:07:35 UTC