Hierarchies...
In a previous post I suggested that at a certain size hierarchies serve little purpose, actually this is not strictly speaking true. Hierarchies of data have two effects they both simultaneously obscure and reveal useful data. They can help lead to serendipitous discovery through browsing, however, by an item appearing in one sub-menu and not another it can lead to useful data not being discovered if the archiver's mindset is different to that of the seeker. Librarian's have worked on classification systems since their inception and be it Dewey, Library of Congress or any of the more specialist scheme they all have their issues. Someone researching a specific individual who has written poems, scientific literature and novels could have their work in very different locations in a Library or could all be grouped together depending on the scheme used. As you can see the archiver's choice of hierarchy directly effects the efficiency that the data can be retrieved and ...