--On Tuesday, November 9, 2004 9:42 PM -0800 Tim Bray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Nov 9, 2004, at 9:10 PM, Walter Underwood wrote:
>
>> So, a decent solution ought to have (some of these optional):
>>
>> an ID for the taxonomy
>> an ID for the category within that
>> a name for the category ("Safety")
>> a display string for the category ("Maritime > Safety")
>
> I wonder why you need both a name and an ID; if you conflate those two,
> you have more or less PaceCategoryRevised. -Tim
The simple category names are not unique because of common subheadings.
"Safety" is the name of both "Maritime > Safety" and "Highways > Safety".
So you need some other node ID to distinguish them.
This is a real example from the National Transportation Library
at the US Dept. of Transportation. We added full a topic path
display option because the simple names were insufficient.
I think that LC Subject Headings (LCSH) uses LC Classification (LCC)
as the category IDs, but I'd have to double check that.
In library jargon, "classification" gives a unique hierarchial location
for each document, because it is used for shelf position, while
"subject headings" allow discovery under multiple categories.
A subject heading might have multiple parents, while classification
cannot.
wunder
--
Walter Underwood
Principal Architect, Verity
