[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Is there an equivalent of the Dewey Decimal ...
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Ask HN: Is there an equivalent of the Dewey Decimal System for data
collections?
The Dewey Decimal System is famous as a cataloguing system for
books and other writings and medias that have to be physically
retrievable. Is there an equivalent or something similar for data
collections? I'm particularly interested in such a system for
Machine Learning Operations (MLOps).
Author : Mithriil
Score : 13 points
Date : 2023-06-16 18:08 UTC (4 hours ago)
| [deleted]
| elijahwright wrote:
| Nobody uses the Dewey Decimal system for cataloguing resources.
| Unless you're an elementary school librarian, possibly, and even
| then... no.
|
| You really want the Library of Congress's classification outline.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| This is the appeal to authority fallacy that we see far too
| much in tech, here applied to library science.
|
| The Dewey Decimal system is widely used and is completely
| appropriate for the vast majority of libraries. The LCC is
| useful for the Library of Congress. It's a custom
| classification solution designed by them, for them, for their
| own practical needs.
|
| AWS uses a custom network protocol and custom hardware for
| their datacenters. It's designed by them, for them. It doesn't
| mean we should drop TCP/IP. Similarly, Netflix, Twitter,
| Google, etc all have quite complex and robust architectures.
| That's not an invitation to do what they're doing - it's
| actually the opposite. They're operating at a very a unique
| scale, with their own unique needs on top of that. Your fresh
| startup with zero customers has no business adopting their
| special architectures.
|
| For the vast majority, LCC is just overengineered. Dewey
| Decimal is a better pick.
| elijahwright wrote:
| I used to work in a library school. I'm not just making a
| trivial appeal to authority.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I heard that the Dewey Decimal System is something you have
| to pay for a license for in order to legally use. Is that not
| the case?
| johncla99 wrote:
| I'm a former professional librarian. Left the field in
| 1985, but have never heard of anyone anywhere paying for
| use of the dewey decimal system. OCLC services is a
| different issue. You're paying for their provision of
| cataloging for your collection.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Here's one instance where they sued over this in the
| early 2000's.
|
| https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti
| cle...
|
| The issue was with a hotel that numbered their rooms
| according to the Dewey Decimal System.
| miningape wrote:
| Lol what, its literally just how you order and label your
| books - doesn't seem like anything someone would charge for
| even if they could
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes, they license it.
|
| https://www.oclc.org/en/dewey/resources.html
|
| (Blue box about a third down the page)
| dang wrote:
| This is recent and (I think?) related:
|
| _Johnny Decimal_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36308366
| - June 2023 (192 comments)
| mindcrime wrote:
| You might find something useful by poking around the literature
| around "digital libraries".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_library
|
| There's also some stuff that could be adapted to the purpose
| you're talking about, from the Semantic Web space. See the
| following example of using VoID with DBPedia categories, for one
| illustration of this idea.
|
| https://www.w3.org/TR/void/#subject
|
| And with that in mind, since somebody brought up the LOC, you
| might also find this of interest:
|
| http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/modsrdf-primer.html
|
| http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/
|
| https://www.loc.gov/librarians/standards
|
| And from the "see also" category:
|
| https://www.dublincore.org/
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(page generated 2023-06-16 23:03 UTC)