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The folks at LibraryThing lately have been trying to devise an open source classification system for books. Currently they're testing the top-level classes on the books of site members to see how well it covers the breadth of books and if there is any refinement needed, so now there is a table at the bottom of each work page which can be clicked to indicate the category you think the work belongs in.
There is no need to be a member for this; I tried a random work before logging in. Then I went and catalogued all the books in my LibraryThing library that I have read. That was fairly easy since I have put relatively little of my collection up there, until I can purchase a full membership, and nearly all of those are plain fiction. There was only one non-fiction book up there and the only others I hesitated over were Tuxedo Gin - am a bit doubtful about including comics as a separate category since that seems more medium to me than subject area - and the The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy. I suppose I should have put that under literary criticism since it is not itself fiction but... ah well.
But I am posting this because the project interests me and I want to support it to see how it goes. I want to encourage people, especially LibraryThing members, to go help test the system on some books.
ETA: The objections raised in the comments there make a lot of sense to me. Intend to poke around and see if I can find any good reasons why it should be so and not another way - although at least one earlier stated intent was to class books by how people searching casually would think to look, if I recall correctly.
There is no need to be a member for this; I tried a random work before logging in. Then I went and catalogued all the books in my LibraryThing library that I have read. That was fairly easy since I have put relatively little of my collection up there, until I can purchase a full membership, and nearly all of those are plain fiction. There was only one non-fiction book up there and the only others I hesitated over were Tuxedo Gin - am a bit doubtful about including comics as a separate category since that seems more medium to me than subject area - and the The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy. I suppose I should have put that under literary criticism since it is not itself fiction but... ah well.
But I am posting this because the project interests me and I want to support it to see how it goes. I want to encourage people, especially LibraryThing members, to go help test the system on some books.
ETA: The objections raised in the comments there make a lot of sense to me. Intend to poke around and see if I can find any good reasons why it should be so and not another way - although at least one earlier stated intent was to class books by how people searching casually would think to look, if I recall correctly.
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Date: 2009-01-23 23:37 (UTC)From:It's one thing to produce software and codec that mimic or reproduce commercial packages, but an open-source classifications? How is that useful if say it doesn't match Library of Congress?