James Robertson pointed to William Denton's nice annotated bibliography about faceted classification and the web.
Almost every article or book listed here begins with an explanation of what a faceted classification system is, so I won't (but see Steckel in Background below if you don't already know). They all agree that faceted systems are very appropriate for the web. Even pre-web articles (such as Duncan's in Background, below) assert that hypertext and facets will go together well. Combined, it is possible to take a set of documents and classify them or apply subject headings to describe what they are about, then build a navigational structure so that any user, no matter how he or she approaches the material, no matter what his or her goals, can move and search in a way that makes sense to them, but still get to the same useful results as someone else following a different path to the same goal. There is no one way that everyone will always use when looking for information. The more flexible the organization of the information, the more accommodating it is. Facets are more flexible for hypertext browsing than any enumerative or hierarchical system.
Posted by Karl
October 31, 2003 07:27 AM