[TopicMapsInLIS] Inaugurating the list

[Kevin Trainor]

Suellen & Edward,

Thanks for bringing us up to date on your heroic efforts at flying the Topic
Maps flag in the U.S. LIS world.  Thanks also for sharing your survey
results and presentation slides.

I am looking forward to seeing your article in Library Hi Tech.  Since I
wasn't able to find the article at the Library Hi Tech Web site, I assume
that it will appear in a future issue.  Of course, I may have just missed
it.  After all, it is my difficulty in finding things that drives my
interest in Topic Maps.

>From your description of the article, it sounds like you believe that
subject bibliographers are a likely group to build LIS solutions with Topic
Maps.  This seems consistent with the results of your survey: 60% of
respondents had used Topic Maps for subject gateways.  This is very
consistent with my own thoughts about what would make a good first Topic
Maps application for libraries.

I agree with your suggestion that a vendor-supplied solution would be an
effective way to overcome some of the technical and financial obstacles in
this application area.  Yet, I am wondering if there might be more questions
to be explored before we start building the tool.  Is there any consensus
among subject bibliographers on the requirements for such a tool?  Would an
end product implemented with such a tool represent a subject gateway?  Are
the requirements for subject gateways well settled?  Would a subject gateway
based upon Topic Maps technology support more features than other subject
gateways?  Or, would they just be easier to build/use?  Would subject
bibliographers from different institutions be interested in merging their
work product?

These are just a few of the questions that I have about Topic Maps in LIS.
I am very much looking forward to hearing your thoughts on them (as well as
the thoughts of everyone on the list).

Thanks for getting us off to a good start.

Best Regards,

Kevin

Kevin Trainor
President
Ligent
847-486-8044
ktrainor at ligent.net
www.ligent.net