Quote on "aboutness" and tagging

"Things aren't about what they're about. "Aboutness" is also contextual and ambiguous. For example, if my blog entry on the JFK assassination links to the 1962 Sears catalog from which Oswald bought his rifle, the author of that catalog will not have labeled it as being about the JFK shooting. And if a scientist publishes a paper about a new polymer, she may in passing reject some closely related compound because it's too sticky -- but that may be exactly what you're looking for. So, for you the article is about what the author tosses away in a footnote. Not to mention that in much of the best writing, about-ness is an emergent property. So, while the author's intentions are an important clue, aboutness is ambiguous. Systems that too easily categorize and classify based upon a univocal idea of aboutness do violence to their topic."
-- David Weinberger at www.hyperorg.com/misc/unspokengroups.html

Quote about publishing

"As the internet and all its variant technologies become a bigger and bigger part of our lives, the comoditization of content will only increase. A blogger holding forth on the merits of his favorite brew has access to the same worldwide audience as a Pulitzer Prize-winning author ... As a publisher, our strength and our future lie in partnering with the best scholars ... making their work more accessible, meaningful, and useful ... We're no longer in the business of amassing content--quantity isn't the issues ... We will all be moving away from a just-in-case content development approach (it's all in there) to just-in-time, 100 percent relevant reference delivery."

--Ron Boehm, President & CEO, ABC-CLIO

As quoted by Cheryl LaGuardia in her e-Views and Reviews column (p. 26) in the May 15, 2005, issue of Library Journal (see www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA601030.html).