Subject: Classification of entries

From: Andre HECK <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Mar 94 15:33:24 +0100

Hi Folks,

I have been watching your discussion about classification codes and I
have mixed feelings, again conditioned by my twenty years of directory
compilation.

Obviously, one code for one entry will never give a classification good
enough for this entry. If you put several codes for one entry in order
to cover its various activities or aspects, you might have to put so
many that it will look like the spectral classifications by this good
Philip Keenan: so many letters after the main spectral classification
that it is almost equivalent to describe all the spectral features in the
spectrum (= here your comment section for the entry).

We think here that searching by key-words through a classification by
countries would do (although this might be also tricky for international
ventures: is AAO UK or Australia? is ESA-La Silla Chili, Europe or what?
- and there are so many definitions of `Europe').

Institutional or organizational profiles do change also with time, or
according to the person that provides you with the information (here the
person that sets up the pages). You can expect some problems in the
future as Mosaic will become more popular. If you put on line a page
with your codes in order to help people, you can expect also a number
of reactions.

As to my directories, my own coding remains hidden and for internal use 
only. I have, for research institutions, inflections if they have space
activities, if they are also computer-oriented,i if they deal with Earth
sciences, and so on, but nothing as specialized as optical, radio,
telescope, etc.

All the best,
Andre.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Prof. Andre HECK          -+-  *    Phone (direct)     +33-88.35.82.22
Observatoire Astronomique    *      Phone (Secretary)  +33-88.35.82.18
11, rue de l'Universite   -+-   *   Fax (direct)       +33-88.49.12.55
F-67000 Strasbourg      *    -+-    Fax (Secretary)    +33-88.25.01.60
France               -+-   *    *   Telex              890506 starobs f
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mosaic homepage URL:     http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/~heck
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: [email-masked] (anton koekemoer)
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 94 23:31:07 EST

Don Wells writes:

> The codes which are currently in the file were not planned, and I put
> no great thought into their choice or their definition. I simply
> wanted to reproduce the existing lists, and putting codes in the file
> enabled me to do that.  As I did so I was quite aware of the
> ambiguities. I made decisions one by one as I edited the file.  Many
> of the decisions were made quickly, as snap judgements...

Yes - it's not really possible to define category codes until the list has
been put together in the first place; I guess that's why our lists all tended
to change their shape over time.

>    ... I would welcome a URL to page defining the codes and their
> usage. If you want to change the names of any of the codes, say so.

I'm happy with most of the classifications; my basic contribution would be to
add a top-level classification "telescope" (= "virtually no full-time on-site
academic research staff, mainly support"). I don't think there's much point
classifying further than 2 levels - see below. However, not all the sites
currently listed as "optical", "radio" etc will come under "telescopes". For
example in the NRAO list AAO, ESO, MSSSO and CTIO are all under "observatories"
but I tend to think of the first three as departments because their observing
is done elsewhere. "Telescopes" are the places where I'd look for information
about weather, instrumentation, current observations etc. "Observatory" seems
to be a somewhat hazy term since the telescopes at many "observatories" are of
historical interest only, thereby making them more equivalent to "departments/
institutes" in terms of how their research is done.

> Now is a good time for such a change, because there is still only one
> working copy of the master database.

Ok Don, how about letting me know when you've finished adding the new URLs and
I'll ftp the finished yp_protoname.html. Over the weekend I'll probably be able
to go through the entire file; I'll work on it in an accessible place in case
anyone wants to have a look and make comments.

Andre Heck writes:

> many ... (= here your comment section for the entry).

That's a good point, I agree it is a danger. I'll probably go for these two
keywords:
   dept/telescope     optical/radio/solar/space/other(?)

I'll probably keep my 'mssso' format as it is - not use the dept subclassifions
but just list them by country (of location - should state this explicitly). But
Don's list uses those subclassifications; I'll probably use them just to list
telescopes. The whole issue of keywords is subjective - personally I like
visualing a long list of sites by breaking them up into common groups. But this
has no more virtues than an alphabetical 'CDS'-format list, or those developed
by the others on this group - I feel a strong-point of AstroWeb is to offer the
variety of all our styles.

> - and there are so many definitions of `Europe').

(my 'Europe' list would eventually have been split into countries) What do you
think about listing by country *of location* (and stating this explicitly)
- might this be reasonably safe in terms of not provoking negative reactions?
(practically, this will require a small list of 'exceptions' somewhere in the
awk scripts: eg. eso.org = '.de'; ctios2.noao.edu = '.cl' etc).

						cheers,
						 - anton.