> [ Re: using Dewey Decimal system to classify Web pages ]
>
> This suggestion is a bit off the mark, for a number of reasons. I work
> in a library and appreciate that what you propose, Jon would solve a lot
> of problems. Attempts in the past to get some agreement of what
> should be used for indexing and searching have not been very successful,
> mainly I suspect because the requirement has been vague and unwieldy and
> tried to encompass too much.
>
> There is a group of librarians in the US somewhere (I can't recall off hand)
> who have put together a list of meta data called the _Dublin Core_. It's
> just too complicated for ordinary, non librarians to handle, and even
> they need a reality check as they seem to want to re-invent marc.
>
> On the other hand I do not think it too much for a HTML author to
> identify and index/keyword his/her document - pretty much the same as
> printed material. Keep it simple so that authors who only need to learn
> simple HTML can management to have their documents located more easily on
> the WWW.
Here's a thought: how about using the Usenet newsgroup hierarchy
as a classification scheme? I.e., "if this Web page were a Usenet
article, in which newsgroup(s) would it belong?"
The Usenet hierarchy is fairly well-organized, and likely to be more
familiar to the average Web author/user than the Dewey system would be.
The newsgroup hierarchy is also a better classification scheme for
much of the stuff that's on the Web. For example, it would be much easier
to locate Tom Christiansen's "Perl Data Structures Cookbook" [1]
if it were classified under "comp.lang.perl" than if it were under
"Computers and Data Processing" (or whatever the Dewey category is)
along with the host of other "Computers and Data Processing"-related
material that's out there now.
--Joe English
[1] http://mox.perl.com/perl/pdsc/index.html