Faceted classification for community services using CRG standard categories

Faceted classification is increasingly considered as a tool in non-traditional knowledge organization contexts, such as knowledge management and information architecture. These new applications, however, are rarely based on the full theory of facet analysis as developed by Ranganathan and the CRG (Classification Research Group). In this paper we report the creation of a faceted scheme to organize Web resources concerning regional community services, including remote management of cases (egovernment). Community services are an important domain of application for knowledge organization systems and for usability models, as their target users may come from any social category and have any degree of computer skills. Determination of the facets in the scheme has been based on a corpus of subjects, according to the methods and the standard categories recommended by the CRG. The Italian enumerative scheme of “life events” for e-government has been incorporated as the Kinds category. Verbal headings have been integrated with a thesaurus. An expressive notation has been created, suitable to be exploited in a digital database. The scheme has been stored into an open source content management system (Drupal), and an interface has been designed for browsing and searching it in Web environment. Usability issues are discussed, such as which part of the scheme to show in the main form, whether and how to show the whole underlaying structure, the notation, etc. Faceted classification meets the requirements of usability, in that it does not force people to learn and navigate a single hierarchical tree; on the other hand it needs to be accustomed with, as the hierarchical model still dominates most computer interfaces.