Functionality and flexibility of traditional classification schemes applied to a Content Management System (CMS): facets, DDC, JITA

Paper presented at the 2nd ISKO Italy-UniMIB meeting, Milan, June 9 2006: http://www.iskoi.org/doc/milano06.htm Different classification schemes may be used for web indexing. The authors analyze three weblogs (Biblioatipici, Letture and Andrea Marchitelli’s blog) to demonstrate that different contents may be classified using the appropriate scheme. Biblioatipici is a weblog about temporary workers in libraries and Italian documentation centres, indexed with a faceted scheme, home made by authors. Letture, a diary about reading and books, is indexed by DDC; finally, Andrea Marchitelli’s blog, a weblog about digital libraries and open access, is indexed by JITA, the scheme used for indexing e-prints in some different open archives. The three applications are presented starting from the most complex scheme (i.e. the faceted one) to the simple but least functional (JITA), passing through a traditional bibliographic classification scheme, the Dewey Decimal Classification. The analysis demonstrates that different web contents can efficiently be classified with different schemes. In particular, with the facets one (Biblioatipici) the indexer is able to generate the needed classes in the indexing phase. Moreover with a small number of facets and foci one can obtain an exponential number of classes. Finally, one of the advantages for the user is that the faceted scheme allows multiple accesses on the basis of different information requirements, in addition to being coherent and intuitive. DDC scheme can be more suitable than the first web pages or blogs performing a sort of digital library. In this case in fact the DDC scheme constitutes a consolidated classification standard, widespread in a huge quantity of libraries and the use of a different scheme might get confusion. JITA scheme, finally, can find a huge applicability in web pages (or blogs) in LIS field showing several advantages: it’s very simple and essentialy pragmatic, intuitive and coherent. It’s a conservative scheme because structurally closed, in fact it does not allow the classifier to insert new LCS’s categories. If, from a certain point of view, this is a disadvantage, vice versa this feature is really useful because get a complete matching between classes of all the web pages implemented with it.