[Sigia-l] crosswalks thesauri - does context matter?

[Alexander Johannesen]

Hi,

On 12/17/05, Melvin Jay Kumar <melvink2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Out of curiousity, even if the mapping is done from the upper
> ontology, isn't the semantic value of the terms of DDC and LCSH
> going to differ?

Yup. But hey, even within the same ontology two implementations have
difficulties. Ontologies and semantic structures is what we throw
around these days as we realise that the relational database wasn't
going to save us. I doubt ontologies will neither.

> Unless, you did a manual process of mapping the terms from DDC
> and LCSH, even then , there is no accurate mapping between DDC
> and LCSH.

Nope, and there never will be. All we're doing is trying to *anything*
to make some sense out of it. Never must the goal be to reach some
kind of ultimate climax, some semantic wet dream.

> There is a very high chance of getting a lot of garbage, based on the
> "tagging" done on both sides.

"Garbage in, garbage out" has been around far longer than I have, so
no, you're right.

> Am I talking nonsense here? ;P

No. I personally don't think doing the ontological mass hysteria is
going to save anyone, but it's the current thinking, so we're stuck
with it for now. It does some jobs good, though, and we'll learn a lot
while trying.


Alex
--
"Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know."
                                                         - Frank Herbert
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