Miskatonic University PressI wrote How to Make a Faceted Classification and Put It On the Web for library school in 2003. I'm delighted that it's still of interest, as a couple of recent things showed to my surprise.
First, the paper was translated into Dutch: Hoe maak je een facetclassificatie en hoe plaats je haar op het web? It was translated by the Information Architecture Institute. Many thanks to Janette Shew and the IA Institute's Translations Initiative for doing this.
Second, How to Reuse a Faceted Classification and Put It On the Semantic Web, by Bene Rodriguez-Castro, Hugh Glaser and Les Carr (of the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton), takes my example of dishwashing detergents and extends it in mind-boggling ways that I'm still grappling with as I learn about ontologies and RDF. Here's the abstract:
There are ontology domain concepts that can be represented according to multiple alternative classification criteria. Current ontology modeling guidelines do not explicitly consider this aspect in the representation of such concepts. To assist with this issue, we examined a domain-specific simplified model for facet analysis used in Library Science. This model produces a Faceted Classification Scheme (FCS) which accounts for the multiple alternative classification criteria of the domain concept under scrutiny. A comparative analysis between a FCS and the Normalisation Ontology Design Pattern (ODP) indicates the existence of key similarities between the elements in the generic structure of both knowledge representation models. As a result, a mapping is identified that allows to transform a FCS into an OWL DL ontology applying the Normalisation ODP. Our contribution is illustrated with an existing FCS example in the domain of “Dishwashing Detergent” that benefits from the outcome of this study.
My advice to any library school students reading this: if you think a paper's half-decent, post it online with a Creative Commons license. Good things may happen.