[Sigia-l] Faceted approach applied to content

[Donna M. Fritzsche]

I totally disagree with your take on this, but dont have time to 
visit it today. The short story is to consider communication and 
communication with others who are not ingrained in this field.  I 
think that I understand the subtlies enough  to know that  while the 
term facet is probably a more precise term because of these reasons 
you alude to, I think the term more generally serves to obscure and 
to intimidate those who are not have not encountered it previously.
Some other time, Ill have to return to this discussion.
Donna

At 10:18 PM -0600 11/16/03, Karl Fast wrote:
>  > 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
>
>
>
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