[Pmwiki-users] Subject heading? (Was Categories instead of hierarchies?)

[chr@home.se]

On 27 Oct 2004, John Rankin wrote:

> On Wednesday, 27 October 2004 11:34 AM, chr at home.se wrote:
> >On 26 Oct 2004, John Rankin wrote:
> >
> >> I still think I like [[!XYZ]], for a subject heading,
> >
> >WTH is a 'subject heading'?
> >
> 
> Subject Headings - Terms, names, or phrases that are assigned to a
> publication (book, journal article, video, etc.) and used to describe
> the contents of that publication. They form a standardized set of terms
> that are consistently used to group materials together.

Oh, those...

> See for example
> http://www.hencc.kctcs.net/library/LCSH.htm

I found some nice terminology for use to use here:
* BT -- (Broader Terms)		in our case: BC -- Broader Categories
* NT -- (Narrower Terms)	in our case: NC -- Narrower Categories
* RT -- (Related Terms)		in our case: RC -- Related Categories


> http://www.lib.iastate.edu/commons/resources/lcsh/

Interesting, especially the distinction between 'keywords' and 'subject
headings', where the latter is a "controlled vocabulary".


> http://www.bisg.org/publications/bisac_subj_faq.html

Also interesting, for instance this section:

!!!How many subject headings can I use per title?

The Committee recommends from one to three headings depending on the
complexity of the title. 
...

There are at least three philosophical approaches to assigning headings.  
Some users prefer to apply the most specific code possible within each
major subject area, blocking any terms that are hierarchically broader.  
For example, if "HISTORY / Military / World War I" has been chosen,
"HISTORY / Military / General" would not be used by those that follow this
philosophy.

A second approach would be to apply the World War I term, plus "HISTORY / 
Military / General" and perhaps "HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century". 

A third philosophy is to apply a code that represents a best-selling 
category of materials in the hopes the new title will ride the coattails 
of the best-selling category. This is not recommended if that category is 
not appropriate for the work in question.


[Christian: Funny how the third "philosophical" approach is purely 
commercial]

> I note that one convention for showing a hierarchy of 
> subject headings appears to be with a '/' as in:
> 
> Heading - the English language description attached to each code, i.e.
> the subject heading itself. The heading description is constructed in
> two, three, or four parts, with each part (or level) separated by a
> forward slash (/).
...
> So (sigh) perhaps we need to reconsider [[/Category]].

Well, the first link you gave seems to use ',' for separation, and 
the second uses '--', e.g.

	afro-americans--social life and customs

I only have a brief experience with subject headings, but I had the
impression that these classification shemes usually are very hiearchical?
I mean this in the sense that there is a difference between belonging to
"MILITARY / xyz"  and "HISTORY / Military".

For this case, wouldn't the corresponding category pages have to be called
	Category
	|-- MILITARY
	|-- MILITARY--xyz
	|-- HISTORY
	'-- HISTORY--Medieval

/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderstr?m, +46-8-768 39 44               http://www.md.kth.se/~chr