Dear All,
Ah but there's the rub: "good controlled vocabularies". Good for whom ? Boffins ? Consultants ? Government? Intellectual elites ? I know many people who are passionately interested in archaeological topics but who can't understand or get turned off by the big fancy latinate words we often use. "Good" contolled vocabularies may have to extend to simple noun phrases like "the thingamajig that does whatyamacallit". I detect a wee bit of arrogance in the view that there is a prescribed or best way of doing things. For example, if I was a Yorkshire gardener and wanted to find out about goke rot (goke is only one of several possible spellings depending upon the pronunciation), you tell me what meta-data set would have the nouce to direct me to the most appropriate authority ? Controlled vocabularies have their uses, but I doubt if they will deliver the next Age of Enlightenment.
Cheers, Neil
>>> [log in to unmask] 12/01/2001 18:09:51 >>>
In article <[log in to unmask]>, Neil
Campling <[log in to unmask]> writes
>Unless you know the precise word or address to look for on Government web sites,
>you can get thousands of possible entries without finding what you want. A great
>way to hide information. On the other hand, one needs to think around the
>"controlled" word always giving a positive spin to information even if its bad:
>so to make a complaint, or find info about depleted uranium, you've got to look
>up "customer services" ! This latter actually defeats the purpose of controlled
>vocabularies, because one has to think up in one's mind what other words might
>find what you want ! There's no doubt that words control the way we view the
>world. Controlled vocabularies may be useful, but we should have a healthy
>respect for them.
This is not an argument against having controlled vocabularies, though,
it is just an argument against having poor, or poorly applied,
controlled vocabularies.
A good controlled vocabulary should be specific enough that a reasonable
query does not retrieve an unmanageable number of items. (This may
require you to frame the question as a combination of terms, though, not
just a single term). A good controlled vocabulary should also have lots
of "entry terms", so that whatever term you think of you will be pointed
to the preferred term used for indexing.
In fact a really good retrieval system should make the substitution
automatically (telling you that it is doing so) thus making the
retrieval on a non-preferred term as simple as if you had entered a
preferred term in the first place.
It might be acceptable to have the entry
"Complaints" USE "Customer services",
but I think most people would look twice at
"Depleted uranium" USE "Customer services"
:-)
Leonard Will
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Willpower Information (Partners: Dr Leonard D Will, Sheena E Will)
Information Management Consultants Tel: +44 (0)20 8372 0092
27 Calshot Way, Enfield, Middlesex EN2 7BQ, UK. Fax: +44 (0)20 8372 0094
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