[Sigia-l] Marcia Bates on Web-era information retrieval

[tstephens at trusecure.com]

> sorry, forgot to use the irony tag.
> 
> faceted classification is hard work
> http://www.eleganthack.com/archives/002780.html

It's been a long day.  Re-reading that...the irony was hitting me in the
face. 

> Something we have not discussed about FC is whether it is 
> easier, harder or about the same for an end-user to 
> comprehend. There are a bunch of factors
> in that, I'm sure like type of search, type of content-body 
> etc, but I'd love to hear anecdotes if anyone has 'em.
> 
> Do people grok FC? Do people even think about classification 
> systems enough
> to form a mental model when in information retrieval mode?

I've had numerous "discussions" with various parties about faceting over the
years.  And surprisingly, it's against it. (simply due to lack of resources
to build, maintain, etc.  A team of one will only get you so far).

But the ideas that they had were interesting.  A faceted system on Press
Releases, that you can browse by Product Type, Exec, Quote, Partner,
Security Term, etc...  Real neat idea.  Faceted resource area (ala' Yahoo!)
Generally real tough implementation.  Especially in corporate sites. 

Resource-type sites seem made for it.  Or even sites that contain several
sub-sites and/or project areas.

Tony

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