[Sigia-l] (no subject)

[Gene Smith]

> From: "Christopher Fahey [askrom]" <askROM at graphpaper.com>
> It has always seemed to me that "faceted classification" is just a fancy
> way of saying "put your content into a database and use lots of metadata
> fields".

I don't think that's quite right.  My mental model of a *simple* faceted
system is a database table where the metadata fields for each record are
actually look-up fields from which you can pick just one term (rather than,
say, open metadata fields where you could enter anything you want).  For
practical purposes, some metadata fields should be left open, such as
date/time fields, or fields that contain scalar values like price or number
of pages in a book.  If I'm wrong about this, though, I'd really appreciate
a correction.

I've always had the intuition that faceted classification works really well
for homogeneous and well-described domains (e.g. wine), but wouldn't work so
well for domains with broad and diverse content (e.g. think of developing a
faceted classification system for the programs and services of the US
government).  In that last example, the LIS folks might say it's possible
(maybe it's already been done), but an IA/UX person would probably ask first
if it's useful for their target users.  I think that's a key difference
between the information-centered approach that Bates outlines and a
user-centered approach.  But that's a quibble more than anything
else--overall I thought her article was excellent.

Cheers,

Gene



-------------------------------
gene at atomiq.org
http://www.atomiq.org