Paul Miller wrote:
>
> Hi all...
>
> I think I probably have to throw in a vote AGAINST two elements for
> this.
>
> While I can see the huge benefit for most of us (and a lot of users)
> in being able to split things in this way (as so lucidly argued by
> most of you), I went out and tried to grab a straw poll amongst a
> selection of the Computing Service's 'normal' users. As I (almost)
> expected, they were all hugely confused by the difference between the
> two and tried to use them almost interchangeably.
>
> In short, it seems like a good idea, but I think it'll confuse the
> 'casual' user...
>
> Sorry,
>
If one would take the AltaVista interface as an example, one could for
instance input as a search term:
either
a)"Computer-Assisted qualitative analysis of vibrational spectra"
or
b)the corresponding term from the INSPEC or NATO thesaurus or a LCSH
The former stems from DESCRIPTION, the latter from SUBJECT. Both search
strategies would yield relevant hits (hopefully).
The casual user does not have to know however, what the underlying DC
elements are. This is a matter for the indexers, who have implemented
the DC element in the indexing algorithm.
--
Frank A. Roos ([log in to unmask] http://www.cwi.nl/~faroos/)
CWI - Centrum voor Wiskunde en Informatica / Bibliotheek
- Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science / Library
http://www.cwi.nl/cwi/departments/BIBL.html
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