[Sigia-l] Faceted approach applied to content

[Karl Fast]

> I personally find the term facet to be confusing.  I prefer the
> terms attributes and attribute values.  These terms are used in both
> the database world and the artificial intelligence world, to
> describe a very similar functionality, sometimes the exact same
> functionality.

I think the term facet is confusing for several reasons.

First, there isn't much vocabularly control in the field of
vocabulary control. Term usage is often inconsistent and
contradictory.

This is why we wrote the glosso-thesaurus for CV's (Fred did all the
heavy lifting on this).

  Controlled Vocabularies: A Glosso-Thesaurus
  http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/controlled_vocabularies_a_glossothesaurus.php

A second reason is that facets are a tricky concept. They look easy
at first but if you've actually tried building a faceted thesaurus
you'll know how difficult it is. Conceptually slippery.

The last reason that I think facets are confusing is related to your
comments about similarity to terms in fields like AI. Yes, facets
are similar, but they have a distinct theoretical background. From
this stem important but subtle distinctions, and they take time to
understand at a deep level.

I think it's because we are ingrained with concepts from computer
science more than information science. When introduced to facets
it's hard to shift your thinking. The natural tendency is to say
"oh, facets are almost like this thing that I already now." But it's
the subtle differences that trip you up.

For those who have a programming background, think about how you
moved from procedural programming to OOP. The OOP paradigm reframes
the problem in a new way. It takes time before you can examine the
problem and think of the solution in terms of classes and methods
instead of functions. Facets are similar.

I know I'm still working to shift my thinking into the faceted way.


--karl