[Sigia-l] precoordinate indexing

[James Melzer]

Precoordination is still somewhat applicable in a digital world. It is
often desirable to establish the rules of precoordination - semantic
relationships and so forth - even if you don't need to manually
establish all the instances of it. In your example, "Skakespeare's
lovelife" is a precombination of Shakespeare and lovelife. This makes
sense, but "Toyota Camry's lovelife" doesn't. They're both proper
nouns, but the semantic relationship with lovelife is all wrong in the
case of the car.

Also, generally, precoordinate indexing was used when it was needed,
not all the time. So we needn't combine everyone's name with Lovelife
in the index, only the relevant people's names.  You know - Kennedy,
Monroe, Clinton, Anderson, Hilton. Obviously, this is easy in an
automated system. But the basic idea is still important - it is a way
of presenting multiple levels of information and some simple
relationships within a simple linear list of items. This is relevant
when your interface options are limited, like on a cell phone. The
card catalogs are gone, but the library science lives on. :)

~ James Melzer


On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 17:03:29 +0100, Peter Van Dijck
<peter at poorbuthappy.com> wrote:
> Question: I'm trying to figure out what "precoordinate indexing" really
> means, in a web context.
> 
> http://www.archivists.org/glossary/term_details.asp?DefinitionKey=993
> 
> Let's say we have an article about Shakespeare's lovelife. In
> precoordinate indexing, we have to put that under the categories:
> - Shakespeare
> - Skakespeare's lovelife
> - lovelife
> whereas in postcoordinate indexing, we have to put it under the categories
> - Shakespeare
> - lovelife
> and the system will also show it under Shakespeare's lovelife.
> 
> Something like that. In precoordinate, you have to list out all the
> combinations, in post-coordinate, you let the system/user generate
> combinations. Is that correct? And if so, is it correct to say that
> these concepts are useful in a manual environment, but when you're
> dealing with databases and such, the concept of precoordinate indexing
> becomes pretty much irrelevant? This page
> http://www.archivists.org/glossary/term_details.asp?DefinitionKey=989
> says: "The flexibility associated with postcoordinate systems is lost
> when index terms must be printed out on paper or on conventional catalog
> cards."
> 
> Mmmm..
> 
> PeterV
> 
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