Experiencing Information

Looks like libraries are putting Designing Web Navigation under the LC Classification of TK5105.888. This is roughly:

• Technology
  • Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering
    • Telecommunication, including telegraphy, telephone, radio, radar, television.

The full call number in a given library might be something like TK5105.888 .K35 2007.

LC Subject Headings from several libraries include:

• Electronic texts
• Web site development
• Web sites–Design.
• World Wide Web
• User interfaces (Computer systems)
• Internet searching

Amazon has these subjects:

• Books > Computers & Internet > Microsoft > Web Browsers
• Books > Computers & Internet > Home Computing > Internet > Web Browsers
• Books > Computers & Internet > Graphic Design > Website Architecture & Usability

O’Reilly has it under on their site

• Web > Web Design

Libri.de has the subjects:

• User Interfaces
• Internet - Browsers
• Internet / Programmierung
• Internet - Web Site Design

Compare these to the tags on LibraryThing:

• $ Köp (1)
• Collib (1)
• computers (1)
• currently reading (1)
• design (1)
• faceted browse (1)
• information (1)
• iacanberra (1)
• information (1)
• information architecture (3)
• information seeking (1)
• labels (1)
• layout (1)
• library2 (1)
• navigation (3)
• non-fiction (2)
• organization (1)
• rias (1)
• rich web applications (1)
• search (1)
• tagging (1)
• to catalogue (1)
• to read (1)
• usability (2)
• user research (1)
• ux (2)
• visual design (1)
• web (2)
• web design

What does this tell us? Not 100% sure. Some of the controlled subject headings are off, like “Electronic texts” from LCSH and “Web browsers” from Amazon. So it’s hard to make a case that those are better access points.

The tags seem better to me, but perhaps too numerous. (Of course, I tagged the heck out of Designing Web Navigation on LibraryThing, so I’m contradicting myself). And except for a few personal tags, I actually find they are more descriptive of the book. There is information on tagging and facetted browse interfaces in the book, and that’s hard to show in most library subject headings.

So from this sample, the tags win out in for me.