[SAC-FAST] Re: SAC Subcommittee on FAST

[John Maier]

Actually, as it stands now the headings like "18th century" would be 
changed to 1800-1899. While you and I might make the jump easily enough, 
there is a great deal of difference in certain intellectual communities 
that does not readily place an equals sign between the two. More 
importantly, what I think sherman was getting at is the fact that the way 
chronology is now broken down in LCSH can lend itself to being a bit of 
ambiguity when broken out into simple 1910-1919, or 1900-1999. What Sherman 
mentions in his message isn't all that easy to do with a computer pulling 
headings apart, but I do agree that his comments address the specificity of 
chronology much better than what we are liable to see in our sample set of 
records.

John Maier


At 11:45 AM 1/25/2005 -0500, Arlene Taylor wrote:
>It is my understanding that FAST *does* use exact time periods.  That's
>why I wrote what I did.  The examples we'll be looking at that Ed creates
>for us at OCLC will deconstruct LCSH into FAST headings.  Therefore, the
>chronological headings will be LCSH time periods.  But if a person created
>FAST headings for the item from scratch, the time periods would be exact
>coverage of the item being described.  So, I'm asking if we can evaluate
>this part of the sample that Ed is going to create for us.
>
>--Arlene
>
>On Tue, 25 Jan 2005, Sherman Clarke wrote:
>
> > > 6.If there are chronological headings, do the time periods
> > > make sense for the item being described?  (Given the way these
> > > examples will be created,
> > > i.e., deconstructing LCSH, the chronological headings will
> > > represent LCSH time periods, not the exact period covered by
> > > the item as FAST is intended to do; so I'm not sure what we
> > > can evaluate here.)
> >
> > Since the chronological headings could not be reconstructed with their
> > topic, we should perhaps consider recommending that FAST would fit
> > better if they moved to giving the exact period covered by the item,
> > rather than fussing with the pre-existing chronological subdivisions.
> > This does invite more variety in chronological subdivisions and it
> > would be good to have indexing that would be smart about time periods.
> > For example, it would find an item with "1913-1922" if you searched
> > 1910s or 1920s or 20th century or pre-1945.
> >
> > Sherman
> > _______________________________________________
> > SAC-FAST mailing list
> > SAC-FAST at mailman.yale.edu
> > http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/sac-fast
> >
>
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