Re: New science section
In article <19991121091513.A5086@usatoday.com>,
Raul Miller <moth@debian.org> wrote:
>On Sun, Nov 21, 1999 at 12:48:10AM -0500, Amy Fong wrote:
>> My conclusion is, if you want to use a very generic definition of
>> science, then I can argue that just about everything should go under
>> science.
>
>That's true.
>
>On the other hand, most of what's in the math section doesn't
>represent math but represents tools useful for math. Likewise,
>most of what's in the science section doesn't represent science
>but represents tools useful for science.
>
>And, of course, tools can be used for more than one application.
Agreed. There's a lot of greys when you're trying to classify things.
Say for example, octave which can be perceived as a mathematical package
but octave is really designed for scientific computation and hence
may or may not want to go under science but that's just a way of using
the application. So fundamentally, is it a math or a science package? In
this case it may be more appropriate to put it under math but there's
probably alot of other packages with such ambiguities.
>The debian classification system is somewhat useful, but it has a lot
>of ambiguities. Then again, this seems to be the case for just about
>any library classification scheme. [And the usual solution seems to be
>to provide several different schemes for accessing the same information
>and letting the user pick what's relevant.]
>
>--
>Raul
You can say that again, ever work as a librarian?
Amy
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