I do not have time to look at it very closely right now, but this is something that I would definitely be interested in and have been thinking about.
If we are able to support existing classification schemes with a relatively simple solution, we would have the foundations for AMAZING knowledge and sharing tools.
Supporting schemes like the Dewey Decimal System, Medical Subject Headings, the Art and Architecture Thesaurus, DMOZ etc. would astound.
The National Library of Medicine's (NLM's) Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is used as an authoritative convention for resource description/categorization in medicine. Important online medical databases such as Medline (which you can search using PubMed) use it. It is also widely used by those in the teaching and study of medical, veterinary and dental fields. Check out the MeSH Browser to get a better idea of what it is. If a general categorization package would go in a direction that would make it easy to support MeSH or UMLS* based classification I think I could easily find money in 2003 to make it happen (it would also make it easy to have every medical school using dotLRN in short order! 😉
Anyone have time to look at this a little more closely?
Dave, what kind of timeframe are you thinking about?
*The Unified Medical Language Scheme (UMLS) is a related NLM Project used to assist in online cataloguing, which maps diverse medical terminologies with single preferred concepts.
