Yeah, that's a really good point, makes sense.
But if we don't have any accessible means of mapping from LCC to LCSH...
then it's not an option. So do nothing, or do something else?
Hmm, what if you displayed the LCC headings in the shelf browse, _and_
included them in the index as searchable, to meet the "if you display
it, the user should be able to search it" rule. But of course you don't
stop indexing LCSH either -- LCC is a bad 'entry vocabulary', we don't
expect anyone to use it 'naturally' -- but if they see it on the shelf
browse and then want to use it to perform searches, at least they can.
It would certainly be better if we had one vocabulary we could use for
all things that serves all purposes, but it's just not the current
environment. Even if you did have an accessible means of mapping from
LCC to LCSH (I don't think anyone other than maybe OCLC does; and I am
not sure if even OCLC shares it with members in a flexible machine
readable way, unless maybe the Terminologies Service does), even if you
did have that... I wonder, if LCC works better hieararchically for a
shelf browse label, if you might still want to show both LCC and LCSH as
labels in a shelf browse.
Quoting Jonathan Rochkind <[email protected]>:
Ah, but we're not talking about "entry vocabulary", we're talking
about labelling shelf ranges.
At my job at UC we had a rule: if you display it, the user should be
able to search it and get those same results. If you display one set
of strings as a shelf label, and a different set of strings are
required for retrieval, that's going to be confusing. Ideally users
should be able to search within the classification scheme, or to
navigate around, but we don't have that ability. The point of my blog
post is that we have separate systems and it can't be clear to users
how they interact. (I'm not even sure they do interact cleanly.) The
only way users can make sense of things is by extrapolating from what
we display to them. I worry that seeing inside LCC, while being given
only LCSH to search on, isn't going to be clear. While LCSH loses a
lot of the structure of LCC, at least users are seeing what they would
need to search on in the catalog to get those same results.
kc
But I agree that the headings for LCC will be less user friendly than
LCSH. If there was a way to get LCC-to-LCSH mappings in an easily
usable way without paying tens of thousands of dollars, that would be
clever. (I'm not sure there's a way to get them even if you DO pay
millions of dollars).
So I was suggesting using the LCC headings themselves as a more
feasible alternate plan, is all. I agree it would be insufficient if
we needed an "entry vocabulary". But just for labelling shelf ranges
on display, I think it's probably not worse than nothing.
Of course, that's up to the implementer, what's better than nothing.
Quoting Jonathan Rochkind <[email protected]>:
For #2, you can provide a useful topical/subject type heading via
much simpler and more feasible solutions than mapping to LCSH. For
#2, you don't need a map to LCSH, you need the LCC schedules with
descriptions of what each range of LCC call numbers is for, in
machine-readable form.
I would give the opposite advice. LCC will have fewer pre-composed
headings than LCSH at id.loc.gov, and the terminology associated
with the numbers in digital LCC will be less user-centric than the
LCSH subject headings. cf my most recent blog post:
http://kcoyle.blogspot.com/2011/10/relativ-index.html
There isn't any entry vocabulary for users other than LCSH -- which
isn't really entry vocabulary to LCC and is definitely NOT entry
vocabulary to DDC.
kc
Thanks everybody!
this is useful for a couple of purposes
1) sometimes we have records that have call numbers, but no
subject headings.
this would be useful to provide those.
2) i'm thinking of providing a 'subject heading' label to our
shelf browser --
so users see, in addition to the callnumber -- what the call
number means.
thanks again!
rick
On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 2:33 PM, Jonathan
Rochkind<[email protected]> wrote:
Anyone know if the OCLC Terminology Service provides such a
mapping? The
Terminology Service may be free if you are already an OCLC
cataloging
member.
At one point I think I saw an absolutely free open access machine
readable
mapping somewhere, that was made at some point in the past and no
longer
updated... but I cant' remember where I saw that even.
LC's Classification Web provides a mapping from LC
classifications to
LC subject headings. There is a manual web interface, used
mainly by
catalogers, which requires a subscription:
http://classificationweb.net/
I don't know if it has any kind of API.
Keith
On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 2:11 PM, Enrico Silterra<[email protected]>
wrote:
is there any way to go from a LC call number,
like DF853 to http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85057107
via some sort of api? opensearch?
thanks,
rick
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Voice: 607-255-6851 Fax: 607-255-6110 E-mail:
[email protected]
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