Have you ever had one of those “Kilroy Was Here” sort of moments? You think that you are exploring some new idea, only to turn the corner and there you see: “Kilroy was here” in bright bold letters? Except that most of the time for me, it doesn’t read “Kilroy was here,” but rather “Librarians were here.”
I was reading Lois Mai Chan’s Cataloging and Classification: An Introduction when I ran across the concept of access points. Or in Chan’s words, “…the ways a given item may be retrieved.” (page 9) If you broaden that out to say the “…ways a given subject may be retrieved from a topic map…” then it sounds very much like useful information for anyone who wants to build a topic map.
Librarians have spent years researching, implementing, testing and improving ways of accessing information. I think the smart money is going to be on using that knowledge and experience in building topic maps. Look for me in the periodical shelves with library journals. I will try to post short notices of anything that looks particularly interesting. Suggestions more than welcome.