Categorization --> Countries: Include empires?

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russellhltn
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Location: U.S.

#21

Post by russellhltn »

ritcheymt wrote:Again, though, that's the nice thing about categories. Like all db tags, you don't have to have an either/or choice. So you could have something like this:

Countries
[INDENT]All countries (modern and historic)
Historic countries
Modern countries
Countries by continent
[/INDENT]
Maybe I'm missing something, but don't have to place something in a given category, but we can have referrals from other categories? For example, if I went and found "United States" and clicked on it, what would I see at the top?

Modern countries > United States
or
North America > United States

I'm thinking "Modern counties" would just be a index to finding things that are actually in the "Countries by continent" section.

ritcheymt wrote:we'll want to use Library of Congress authorities to help us generate the names above -- the folks who maintain these authorities have changed them many times over generations to accommodate new ones they continually add. So rather than us doing a lot of painful trial-and-error, we'll benefit from decades of trial-and-error of a much more experienced institution.
Except the LoC has a very diverse set of users. We're focused on the needs of Genealogists. While I wouldn't discard LoC out of hand, I'd want to make sure that makes the most sense for our users. I find the idea that we might have to move countries between top level categories just because they decide to change names the sign of a questionable system. That might make perfect sense to a library that's there to support Congress because politicians are interested in the here and now. But we're more interested in history and how it ties to records we can find today - which blurs dividing things into historical and modern.
RitcheyMT
Member
Posts: 113
Joined: Wed Mar 05, 2008 7:33 am

#22

Post by RitcheyMT »

RussellHltn wrote:Maybe I'm missing something, but don't have to place something in a given category, but we can have referrals from other categories? For example, if I went and found "United States" and clicked on it, what would I see at the top?

Modern countries > United States
or
North America > United States

I'm thinking "Modern counties" would just be a index to finding things that are actually in the "Countries by continent" section.
United States would be a subcategory of the following...
  1. Countries --> Modern Countries
  2. Countries --> Countries by Contintent --> North America
  3. Countries --> All countries (modern and historic)
This would satisfy the following use cases for users who want to browse to the United States category:
  1. User who knows United States is modern can find it in Countries --> Modern Countries
  2. User who knows United States is in North America can find it in Countries --> Countries by Continent
  3. User who doesn't know whether United States is current or historic can find it in an alpha list of all countries in the Countries --> All countries (modern and historic)
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