Roddy and all,
I would like to use some sort of subject classification for our IR
(http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/. The question is what. In our Library
catalogue we use Library of Congress subject headings. There is no way
someone self-depositing could tackle that without specialist training as
it's too big. We have the default LC subject classifications in
ePrints.org at the moment - but they're not detailed enough - we'd need
to edit them quite drastically as we only have to consider social
sciences and engineering etc is out of scope. We haven't done anything
with this list yet - too many other things to tackle
Another option would be for us to use IBSS subject headings. Those too
are very extensive and are unlikely to be used by other IRs. We'd like
something that is popular with others.
One further option which may fit the bill is the use of HILCC headings
as developed at Columbia Uni. See
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/inside/projects/metadata/classify/
We haven't investigated properly yet, and I don't know if we'd need
formal permission to use them. This would fit with our use of LCSH,
would not be too onerous for self-depositors and is also used by Serials
Solutions which we use.
Author assigned keywords and full text searching are ok to a point, but
good subject headings will improve browsing for users. I'd be interested
if anyone has any further thoughts on this. If some consensus between
repositories were to be agreed then federated searching will be ok. We
haven't got enough content in our IR for it to be a problem - yet.
Sally
Sally Rumsey
eServices Librarian
Library
London School of Economics & Political Science
10 Portugal Street
London
WC2A 2HD
020 7955 7943
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Repositories discussion list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of MacLeod, Roderick
A
Sent: 13 March 2006 15:38
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Use of Navigational Tools in a Repository
In a relatively small database like http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/
the likelihood of a user finding relevant resources using the Browse by
Subject http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/view/subjects/ or Browse by School or
Research Group http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/view/structure/ is fairly low
unless they have prior knowledge of the existence of something of
relevance.
The usefulness of subject classification in repositories, from the
information retrieval perspective, grows once numerous repositories are
harvested together and access is facilitated via an aggregated subject
interface. This much increases the likelihood of a potential user to
find material on any particular subject.
This has been recognised elsewhere: "Ultimately, most seekers and users
of scholarly information are persuing a topic or train of thought.
Although the publisher, author, and the institution with which the
author was associated may be of some interest to seekers and users of
scholarly information, usually those interests pale in comparison to the
topic (and scholarly task) at hand. Ultimately, a good, user-centric
scholarly information system must meet the needs of students and
scholars. These end-users need a system that enables broadcast searching
across a wide variety of e-print servers, digital libraries, and
institutional digital repositories to identify and retrieve potentially
pertinent scholarly content". Peters, T.A. (2002). Digital repositories:
Individual, discipline-based, institutional, consortial, or national?
The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 28(6), pp. 414-417.
And
"We feel more strongly than ever that there are significant advantages
to a disciplinary approach to electronic services supporting advanced
scholarship and higher education". They continue "Unfortunately, we
have seen little of the structure of the disciplinary community in
electronic services." Stephen, T. and Harrison, T. (2002). Building
systems Responsive to Intellectual Tradition and Scholarly Culture. The
Journal of Electronic Publishing, 8(1).
Both reported in http://www.icbl.hw.ac.uk/perx/analysis.htm
Roddy MacLeod
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Repositories discussion list
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Leslie Carr
> Sent: 9 March 2006 00:38
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Use of Navigational Tools in a Repository
>
> A recent discussion between some colleagues on the utility (or
> otherwise) of subject classification in repositories prompted
> me to undertake a brief investigation whose results I present
> here. (I'll also send this to AMSCI, so apologies for any
> duplicate copies that you see.) The discussion has broadly
> been between computer scientists and librarians over whether
> subject classification schemes offer advantages over
> Google-style text retrieval; the study below looks at the
> evidence as demonstrated in the usage of one particular
> repository. As such it doesn't address the intrinsic value of
> classification, but it does offer some insight into the
> effectiveness of navigational tools (including subject
> classification) in the context of a repository.
>
> ----------------
> The University of Southampton Institutional Repository has
> been in operation for a number of years and an official
> (rather than experimental or pilot) part of its
> infrastructure for just over a year. As part of its
> capabilities, it includes lists of most recently deposited
> material, various kinds of searches, a subject tree based on
> the upper levels of the Library of Congress Classification
> scheme and an organisational tree listing the various
> Faculties, Schools and Research Groups in the University and
> a list of articles broken down by year of publication. These
> all provide what we hope are useful facilities for helping
> researchers find papers (ie by time, subject, affiliation or content).
>
> Over a period of some 29.5 hours from 0400 GMT on March 7th 2006,
> 1978 "abstract" pages (ie eprints records) were downloaded
> from the repository (ignoring all crawlers, bots and spiders).
>
> Of the 1978 downloaded pages, the following URL sources
> (referrers, in web log speak) were responsible:
> 439 - (direct URL, perhaps cut and paste into a browser
> or clicked on from an email client)
> 225 EPRINTS SOTON pages
> 25 OTHER SOTON WEB pages
> 1264 EXTERNAL SEARCH ENGINES
> 21 EXTERNAL WEB PAGES
>
> ie the local repository facilities, including subject views
> and searches, led to only 225/1978 = 11% of all downloads.
>
>
>
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