HILCC
Hierarchical Interface to Library of Congress Classification can provide rationalized access to electronic collections by simulating the compartments of print shelf location.
“Although online access to catalog data has sped up and improved users’ ability to find and use information about library collections, computer interfaces have, in some ways, reduced the capacity to browse these collections by limting one’s sense of the overall contents of the library. Scrolling through screen after screen of surrogate data is not always a good substitute for moving freely through library stacks, where one’s eyes may catch a broad peripheral glimps of dozens of items at a time, while honing in on particular pieces for one reason or another.” Adam Chandler and Jim LeBlanc, “Exploring the Potential of a Virtual Undergraduate Library Collection Based on Hierarchical Interface to LC Classification”, LRTS 50/3.
2006 ALA/ALCTS/PARS award
Senior FotB Editor Gary Frost has received an annual award and can now define a lost cause theme for his brief administration. Gary has choosen to lament the dissolve of systems of bibliographic organization as a result of on-line searching. Library classification, a vision and daily routine of a millenium of librarians, is now too casually discarded by presumptive technopunks. They are not satisfied to dissolve bibliographical coherency into word frequencies, search terms and tagged images. Oh no, now they must disorganize physical books into shelf location based on size alone with the only key an inventory control software.
Its the 60’s all over again except that the young people are now the forces of regression.
“The diffusion of information through the Internet is more likely to transmit irrationality than rationality. Because irrationality is more emotionally loaded, it requires less knowledge. it explains more to more people, it goes down easier.” Yaron Ezrahi
the ocean of communication
Digital advocates enthused with dynamic change in the transmission of knowledge should consider the implications of their stance. In the knowledge transmission business print has already assimilated and been driven by the digital revolution and is positioned for new behaviors of bionic reading beyond the screen.
Print book publishers are not as backward as electronic reading enthusiasts suggest. The old publishers know they are on a ship on the ocean of communication. There are storms and you need to be on a boat and not in the water.