Bowerbird@aol.com writes:
as i've said, i think the cataloging tool needs to give people an ability to rule out unwanted classes of e-texts, including:
first cut -- by language second cut -- human genome third cut -- audio fourth cut -- video fifth cut -- magazines sixth cut -- copyrighted seventh cut -- reference eighth cut -- religious ninth cut -- poetry tenth cut -- plays eleventh cut -- short story collections twelfth cut -- anthologies
Functionally this is no different from using Borges' fictional Chinese encyclopedia for dividing different kinds of animals. first cut -- belonging to the Emperor second cut -- embalmed third cut -- tame fourth cut -- sucking pigs fifth cut -- sirens sixth cut -- fabulous seventh cut -- stray dogs eigth cut -- included in the present classification ninth cut -- frenzied tenth cut -- innumerable eleventh cut -- drawn with a very fine camelhair brush twelfth cut -- et cetera thirteenth cut -- having just broken the water pitcher fifteenth cut -- that from a long way off look like flies Your folders are just as semantically flat as tags. You're also mixing different classes of metadata. language : English, French, Finnish etc. format : audio, video, html, plain_text form : prose, poetry, drama, anthology, serial, reference nature : fiction, biography, religious, textbook licence : pg_licence, cc_licence, restricted, gpl etc. Though personally, I would love to be able to rule out all ebooks "having just broken the water pitcher". b/ -- Brad Collins <brad@chenla.org>, Banqwao, Thailand