Information Research Weblog

I am glad to see you have a weblog! Enjoyed this bit on how faceting seems to be spreading around on the web as sit here trying write an abstract for ISKO on the same subject. I wonder though, at the tone I find on the KMConnection site (and other places), or the tendency of those to claim that they invented faceted classification utterly independently of any knowledge about the work of Ranganathan or the Classification Research Group. How many of these sites/applications/discussions are spot on? Or are some of them missing the point, or getting it wrong somehow, or just applying the concept too superficially?

Is it enough to know that facets are categories and can represent concepts? Is it possible for those with a traditional understanding of faceted classification to work with those in this brave new world of the web and create the mutable robust systems we all believe are possible by following the template created by Ranganathan, and embroidered by the CRG? Or, others seem to indicate, is reliance on this work so firmly rooted in LIS stifling and unproductive? Ranganathan gave us an elegant set of tools to create order in the world. How far can we take them?