Cataloging vs. index

One of the greatest sins you can make a documentary or a librarian is to utter the taboo word: NO. "It is, no or can not do" are phrases that sometimes almost automatically launched almost without realizing the pressure of a query from a user information urged by necessity, almost no time for second thoughts . Maybe we should adopt a more positive attitude, or idealistic as look, like the computer, always ready to say yes and to convert it into a "we'll see." It is possible that this negativity arising from the documentary shows because we can put ourselves in the user side, aware of the problems it will encounter when you start using an application, a web page, an interface that attacks a database . That is why we are always willing to place a "but" when we consider that the forest is much longer than you think our friends, the computer at a time. So we should change our attitude, always place the primary consideration YES and then I'll worry about how we left the mess, just a survival mode.

I say this because recently, reviewing one of the most popular computer magazines in Spain, I encountered an opinion column attacking a computerized cataloging, folksonomies and by extension the documentation in an environment where Google could find it all. Specifically, by way of illustration, consider our computer did not need to classify the emails that came to him, since using a set of keywords could locate the lost in the avalanche email from your mailbox. At the same time, he believed that social labeling, the tagging was a dispensable activity since it could solve superalgoritmo googleliano ballot without wasting time walking in the management of personal information.

How cruel. In ten years, Google has retired. We have become expendable, in a comic figure next to the complex programming developed from Mountain View, I think it's time to end this farce ... Actually, we are a downright technophobes, realicémonos one collective harakiri and sang a mea culpa. We are about digital obsolete ...

However, we are further from the truth. For example, our readers certainly will have a greater number of examples, I wonder, have you tried to retrieve information from a database of media? Have you used search systems in the files that the media have in their webs? Have you used Google to do this? What were the results? I'll tell you, experience commands: Or know what you are looking for, specifically putting the magic words published in the text sought or is unlikely to find what you want. Or read it before, or will be difficult to find anything and just silence will be deafening.

Keep in mind that the work done since the human part in the description of the information, whether keywords, short abstracts or vocabulary control, is added value to information. It is relatively easy to miss in a document database in which data are dumped daily without any vocabulary control. When working within a media, the first thing you learn is that journalists themselves utilzan different words and concepts focused on the same topic that track a story above information need not necessarily make direct reference to the prior and time to recover both the disambiguation is absolutely necessary.

Because the computer can consider that it is possible to index all the information produced daily in print media, but what the archivists bring to the table are the difficulties of recovery, management of results and relevance of these . However, sometimes we stayed in a NO and a smile, which is not significant enough for our partner and do not add value to the discussion. Yes, indeed, the search engine will retrieve information if we put the magic words, they know that the text contained, though not always know in advance. We will have in our head of concepts and synonyms, the rich natural language, however we can not always attack a database and retrieve information with them, will not recover anything and then when something really does not exist, although we do not really recovered.