I was honored to be a panelist at the LITA/ALCTS CCS Authority Control in the Online Environment Interest Group presentation of “Authority Control Meets Faceted Browse.”
What is faceting? Why is it (re)emerging in use? Where can I see it in action? This program is intended to introduce the audience to facet theory, showcase implementations that use faceted approaches for online catalogs, and facilitate discussion on the relationship between structured authority data and this type of navigation.
Kathryn La Barre of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign explained the theory, while NCSU’s Charley Pennel, Vanderbilt’s Mary Charles Lasater, and I each described its implementation in Endeca, Primo, and Scriblio respectively. Scriblio is an open source project that has less than one FTE working on it, so it’s an honor to see it compared against commercial offerings, especially NCSU’s groundbreaking work.
My slides are online in QuickTime and PDF form, and I was proud to be able to show off the new public beta of the Lamson Library website and catalog, based on Scriblio.
I should be careful to point out that faceting is a theory of cataloging and classification, while clustering is the technical process of aggregating and reporting relevant metadata in search and browse screens. The difference is that Scriblio doesn’t impose rules on our cataloging practice, it simply supports clustering the metadata to make it easier to find the resources we’re looking for.
If anything, the importance of authority control increases in faceted/clustered search and browse systems, but it is a matter of exchanging one set of technological constraints for another. Card catalogs, with their alphabetical access and physical affordances (or limitations) demanded cataloging practice that is in some ways at odds with the very different affordances and limitations of faceted/clustered search and browse.
Among current implementations, clustering does well with subjects, but poorly with authors. Looking at the cardinality of those facets, it’s easy to understand the problem:
(statistics from the Lamson Library (beta) catalog.)
The number of unique authors compared to the number of total authors is very high, while a large number of subjects are represented by a small number of unique headings. Still, some authors are well suited to faceted browse, and their emergence in a result set could be mined to help users further refine their searches. Example: J. K. Rowling is an obvious top author in searches for both “harry potter” and “j k rowling”. Her statistical “pop” in the results might be worth looking at and worth leveraging elsewhere.
As currently implemented, however, clustered results most help the user who doesn’t know the proper terms for her field of interest. A user searching “sociology of education” is likely to be interested in materials cataloged under “educational sociology,” and clustered search navigation works well in that and similar circumstances.
clustering, faceting, faceted search and browse, authority control, library, library 2.0 lib20, libraries, Scriblio, presentation, LITA, ALCTS
Related:
Posted June 27, 2007 by Casey
Categories: Libraries & Networked Information, Technology. Tags: alcts, authority control, clustering, faceted search and browse, faceting, libraries, library, library 2.0 lib20, LITA, presentation, scriblio.
4 Comments
Comments RSS
TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
User contributed tags for this post:
scriblio (20) - faceted (19) - collective intelligence limitation (12) - faceted browse (9) - wordpress faceted (9) - Authority Control Meets Faceted Browse (7) - all (6) - importance of authority control (4) - faceted search for websites? (4) - 18 post com (4) - scriblio faceted (3) - faceted browsing (3) - faceted search library (3) - faceted browsing tag cloud (3) - faceted search wordpress (2) - cache zLMTEwh9wmkJ litablog org 2007 06 28 authority co (2) - faceting sex (2) - wordpress plugin faceted search (2) - mysql faceted search (2) - faceted searching library catalogs (2) - faceted browsing php (2) - Faceted Searching and Browsing (2) - search 2 0 endeca (2) - clustering faceting (2) - faceted searching open source (2) - mysql faceted (2) - metasearching clustering and facets (2) - clustered searching library catalog (2) - primo faceted (2) - faceted search explained wikipedia (2) - authority control faceted browse (2) - Faceted navigation PHP MYSQL (2) - faceting clustering (2) - online catalogs faceted searching (2) - endeca scriblio (2) - faceted searching (2) - iphone faceted (2) - arbic tv onlin (2) - faceted search vs tagging (1) - faceted browse car (1) - what is faceting (1) - wordpress faceted search (1) - faceted Searching within Mysql (1) - facets search rules (1) - faceted search wikipedia (1) - faceted browsing with php (1) - faceted search using php and mysql (1) - Faceted Search vs browsing (1) - FACETS PRESENTATION (1) - faceted php mysql (1) - presentations on collective intelligence (1) - scriblio public library (1) - faceted browsing and tags (1) - faceted browse example education (1) - faceted browse university (1) - the importance of authority control in cataloging onlin (1) - faceted search vs. tagging (1) - wordpress faceted search plugin (1) - web 2 0 faceted searching (1) - browsed using faceted browsing (1) - when to use faceted searching when to use clustered searching (1) - faceted search in wordpress (1) - faceted tag (1) - search faceted mysql (1) - clustering vs facets (1) - facetted search blog post (1) - scriblio group (1) - mysql facets (1) - primo faceted search (1) - faceted mail browsing (1) - php faceted browse code (1) - search collective intelligence brosing (1) - facets mysql (1) - DREAM ENVIRONMENT CONTROL PRESENTATION (1) - difference between faceted search versus clustering (1) - tutorial Faceted browsing (1) - Clustered search source code (1) - faceted search open source mysql (1) - facet browsing source (1) - 360 search vs faceted search (1) - Faceted Metadata Search open source (1) - innovative interfaces primo faceted (1) - ???? ??? (1) - faceted search mysql (1) - authoroty control meets faceted browse (1) - faceted searching what is it (1) - difference between clustered and faceted search (1) - help scriblio (1) - mary charles facets (1) - cache ZuLHGegA y0J maisonbisson com blog post 10763 bac (1) - faceted browsing video (1) - F (1) - crush on ncsu catalog (1) - authority control meets faceted browsing (1) - scriblio facets (1) - slides authority control meets faceted browse (1) - faceted searching libraries (1) - hotsex com (1) - my (1) - cache M451OvJjKwcJ maisonbisson com blog post 11161 pin (1) - faceted searching library (1) - 8275010933652 (1) - facet browse authority control (1) - faceted browse authority (1) - lita alcts authority control interest group presentatio (1) - libraries faceted browsing searching (1) - janusman wordpress (1) - faceted authors (1) - authority control meets faceted browse kathryn (1) - scriblio what (1) - cataloguing faceted browsing (1) - authority control interest group LITA/ALCTS LaBarre (1) - faceted metadata search browse websites (1) - google faceted browsing (1) - website using faceted browsing (1) - faceted browsing library catalog (1) - php mysql faceted example (1) - faceted browsing with php mysql (1) - php faceted browse (1) - facets catalog library (1) - faceted browsing php code (1) - scriblio permalinks browse (1) - faceted compared with tags (1) - scriblio endeca (1) - faceting library catalog (1) - clustering faceted (1) - faceted browsing ala (1) - scriblio presentation (1) - how to scriblio facets (1) - mss (1) - SG (1) - clustered search api (1) - library catalogs and faceted searching (1) - faceting and libraries (1) - Mary Charles Lasater (1) - faceted browsing open sourc (1) - php mysql faceted browsing (1) - scriblio /search/ subject (1) -
[...] Faceted Searching and Browsing in Scriblio, at the LITA/ALCTS CCS Authority Control in the Online Environment Interest Group presentation of “Authority Control Meets Faceted Browse.†[...]
The metasearch products shown @ ALA are also embracing not only faceting, but clustering (automatic creation of facets). I made a small report of those products over at http://janusman.wordpress.com/2007/06/27/metasearching-ala/
[...] Casey Bisson - Presentation: Faceted Searching and Browsing in Scriblio [...]
[...] librarians’ subject guides listed at or near the top to help you out. You can also use the facets, clustered metadata shown in the right sidebar that reflect the aggregated results of that [...]