Perhaps the greatest power of folksonomies, especially when set against controlled vocabularies like the Library of Congress Subject Headings, lies in their capacity to empower user communities to name their own resources in their own terms. This article analyzes the potential and limitations of both folksonomies and controlled vocabularies for…

Discusses the need for accurate documentation of museum holdings and the feasibility of using online library catalogs as models for automated cataloging in museums. The description of museum computer projects covers problems that have impeded automation in the past and the current status of several projects. (34 references) (CLB)

Investigation of retrieval performance of controlled vocabulary derived from natural language terms in tables of contents and book indexes assumed that controlled vocabulary representative of users' queries should adequately represent documents' contents. Queries were indexed using Library of Congress Subject Headings (LSCH), Dewey Decimal…

Explores the qualities of bibliographic and object entities that contribute to the similarities and differences in the data describing them and the possibility of cooperation between indexers of art objects and indexers of bibliographic information. The discussion covers the role of authority control as the linking component between bibliographic…

This study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of keyword searching in an online catalog to traditional subject searching in one special collection of vocational rehabilitation materials. Subject area specialists assessed the contents of books using their terminology, and compared the results to MARC records. It was found that slightly…

An analysis of 205 records in the OCLC Online Union Catalog (OLUC) found considerable duplication among subject access points provided by title, subject heading, and classification number fields. On average, only 4.12 unique access points were found per record. The results suggest that online catalogs might outperform card catalogs more in…

Describes the development and outcome of a cooperative computerization effort involving nine public and university museums. The discussion covers the project goals, data development and analysis, and contributions resulting form the project. Appendices provide the system data fields used and a comparison between automation of library and museum…

Proposes a rationale to be used in comparing and evaluating alternative library computer catalogs, based on varieties of bibliographic data processed, kinds of indexes constructed, and desired search strategies. A glossary of terms related to computerized catalogs is appended. (Author/CLB)

Presents a metric for comparing the performance of common classes of Internet information retrieval tools, including human indexed catalogs of Web resources and automatically indexed databases of Web pages. The benefit of the proposed metric is that it is relevance-based, and it facilitates the comparison of the performance of different classes of…

Describes a project intended to improve subject access in an online catalog by adding multiword terms from the table of contents and index to MARC records for each book. The discussion covers a preliminary evaluation of the impact on workload, resources, and subject access to information. (seven references) (Author/CLB)

Expected Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSHs) and assigned LCSHs for 161 books requested by faculty in sociology, anthropology, and social work were compared to gauge the likely success of an online subject catalog search for those works. For 80% of the titles checked, inspection of the ninth edition of "Library of Congress Subject…

This second report on a two-part study on the application of informetrics to information retrieval (IR) system design used models of database contents in a factorial simulation study at the University of Western Ontario. The study explored whether different file structures were better suited for different informetric environments. (32 references)…

The author argues that traditional library cataloging (MARC) and the online public access catalog (OPAC) are in collision with the world of the Internet because items in electronic formats undergo MARC cataloging only on a very selective basis. Also the library profession initially isolated itself from World Wide Web development by predicting no…