Arthur Sale wrote:
>
> · Nobody uses any subject classification for much at all,
> anywhere in the world. They are not worth spending much time thinking
> about, unless you have a government breathing over your shoulder.
>
Well that's a shame. We know that academics are discipline focused (and
students too, to some extent). Academic communities are discipline
focused. So it would seem that services that aim to meet the needs of
these communities should at least have discipline aspect to them (but
I'm not saying that deposit isn't an institutional issue). So how are
you going to link institutional repositories to discipline focussed
services without knowing which items relate to which discipline.
BTW, arxive and PubMed seem to make use of subject classification. As
does Amazon --yes I know nobody browses Amazon by subject (but given an
interface like <http://zoomii.com/> they might), but if you buy
something from Amazon you can be sure that they will let you know about
other books on the same subject.
Phil.
--
Phil Barker Learning Technology Adviser
ICBL, School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences
Mountbatten Building, Heriot-Watt University,
Edinburgh, EH14 4AS
Tel: 0131 451 3278 Fax: 0131 451 3327
Web: http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/~philb/
--
Heriot-Watt University is a Scottish charity
registered under charity number SC000278.
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