Quoting Richard Light <[email protected]>:
>> OCLC took apart LCSH and called it FAST, although I believe they used
>> the actual headings in bibliographic records, not the entries in LCSH
>> (which are patterns for creating headings). [1]
>
> From the web site, FAST appears to have been somewhat neglected since
> about 2003. Is that a correct assumption?
I do not know if they've been keeping FAST up to date -- OCLC research
projects tend to fall into black holes. If you are interested in using
it you should contact someone on the project.
>
> When you say LCSH headings are "patterns for creating headings", do you
> mean that the published 393,160 terms are just examples of practice,
> rather than being an authoritative set in their own right? If so, it
> seems odd to give each of them a persistent URL.
Oh, this is hard to explain. Basically, you can extend the terms
listed there using a set of rules (that aren't included on that web
site). Extensions tend to be in the nature of places and times, but
can be other things as well. So if your heading is in the form of a
person's name, there are certain topical subheadings that you can add
("Criticism" "Homes and haunts" "Biography"); for geographical names,
you can add "History" or "Travel." The main guide for this [1] is over
500 pages long, and the original LCSH was in two very large volumes;
it included the topical headings (which are the basis for LCSH
online), the rules (for all types of headings, such as persons,
places, events), and the various controlled lists that make up the
facets that you can add.
To make it even worse (could it be worse?), because the headings have
been grown over time, there are known (to some) inconsistencies.
What this means is that if you take the 393,+ terms from LCSH, they
will match SOME subject headings in bibliographic records completely,
and will provide a left-anchored match for other headings, and will
NOT match some headings where it was valid to insert an intervening
subheading based on the rules. (The actual number of individual
subject headings in library records is in the many millions, probably
at least 100 million).
Aren't you glad you asked?!
[1] Chan, Lois Mai. Library of Congress Subject Headings: Principles
and Application. 4th ed. Library and information science text series.
Westport, Conn: Libraries Unlimited, 2005. isbn: 1591581567. (there
may be a 5th ed.)
>
> Are the OL subject headings available for download?
Only as part of the entire data dump, but I'll ask if they can be made
available on their own.
I don't see them on
> the standard downloads page. Come to that, they don't appear to be
> offered as an option when users add or update tags in a book record.
> Surely you should be encouraging consistency by offering existing terms
> as a suggestion?
That would be good, yes. I think there is some reluctance to lock
users into the library headings, but I really doubt if any normal user
would key in something that would pull up "Cookery, Turkish". It would
even be interesting to find out how many entries there are (of each
type). All good and interesting areas to explore. Thanks.
kc
>
>> The reason I say that subfield x is an except is that subfield x is an
>> exception is because it often makes little sense outside of the
>> context of the main heading:
>>
>> Cooking, American -- Southern style
>>
>> The subfield x's tend to be adjectives associated with the main heading.
>
> I see: thanks.
>
> Richard
>
>> Quoting Richard Light <[email protected]>:
>>
>>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Having loaded the latest LCSH dump into my home-made "triple store", I
>>> was wondering about deconstructing the headings into their component
>>> parts, and making something like a SKOS ontology or Topic Map from them.
>>> Thus, for example, "Arts--Awards--United States" might become:
>>>
>>> <lcshConcept>
>>> <id>sh2002000283</id>
>>> <lang>en</lang>
>>> <heading>
>>> <value>Arts</value>
>>> </heading>
>>> <heading>
>>> <value>Awards</value>
>>> </heading>
>>> <heading>
>>> <value>United States</value>
>>> </heading>
>>> </lcshConcept>
>>>
>>> and "Compromise (Islamic law)":
>>>
>>> <lcshConcept>
>>> <id>sh85029458</id>
>>> <lang>en</lang>
>>> <heading>
>>> <value>Compromise</value>
>>> <scope>Islamic law</scope>
>>> </heading>
>>> </lcshConcept>
>>>
>>> Is this a reasonable interpretation of the semantics of "--" and "(...)"
>>> in LCSH? And hasn't someone else already done this sort of exercise -
>>> surely they must have? (My thinking is that LCSH headings are sort of a
>>> post-coordinate system, and the pre-coordinated components of headings
>>> might prove to be interesting and useful on their own account - not
>>> least for indexing Open Library materials.)
>>>
>>> Richard
>>> --
>>> Richard Light
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Ol-discuss mailing list
>>> [email protected]
>>> http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-discuss
>>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to
>>> [email protected]
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> Richard Light
> _______________________________________________
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>
--
Karen Coyle
[email protected] http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
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