(Yes, there is a mailing list for discussing cataloging issues, but it seems to have very little traffic, and I feel I may have a better chance of sharing my ideas with people here.) On Thu, 11 Nov 2004, Steve Thomas wrote:
The key problem is one of scale. Do you limit the field to a short list of valid terms ("fiction", "history", ...) and risk them being too broad to be useful, or do you allow a longer list with greater precision, and risk the list being too long to be manageable?
Sorry, I don't have an answer to that. Needs debate.
I don't have an answer either. So I'll ask a question: Is it possible to have both large and small scale? Here is one possible way that could be approached: In the recent discussion on this list regarding cataloging, I've seen mention of different things that I might label genre, form and subject. Genre would be examples such as Science Fiction, Mystery, Historical Fiction, etc. Form would be examples such as novel, essays, drama, poetry, short stories, etc., as Steve mentioned is coded in MARC 008 field. Subject would be the subject headings one could find in a traditional library's catalog. For example: Legends--British Columbia--Vancouver We already have some examples creeping into the PG catalog of trying to cover all of these in the Subject field. (ie a collection of poems with "Subject: Poetry". This should be used for a book which is _about_ poetry, not one which merely contains poetry.) All three of these divisions could really be of great use to people using the catalog; however, having enough volunteer effort to have them consistently entered is of course a sticking point. Andrew