More thoughts on linked data and the future of cataloging

I really enjoyed Slistopher's fun post and article link about the venom library.  I wondered about the metadata too, and his suggestion that it could be the project for next year's class cracked me up. But on a more serious note, it prompted me to look up metadata schemas for real, organic things, and it turns out there's a ton of them, this list of schemas being, I am sure, just one of many.  And that got me to thinking about linked data and cataloging in world of linked data.

Suppose you had this book on lemurs:  Behavioral variation : case study of a Malagasy lemur. Current cataloging techniques give it a several LC subject headings (this is from WorldCat; the older record in my library's catalog uses only the first four):

Verreaux's sifaka -- Behavior.
Social behavior in animals.
Mammals -- Behavior.
Mammals -- Madagascar.
Behavior, Animal.
Lemuridae.
Social Behavior.
Mammals.
Madagascar.
Lemuren.
Verhalten.
Madagaskar.
Lemurs

In a linked data world, we would reasonably expect that the basic descriptive metadata (author, publisher, identifiers such as ISBN, etc.) would use some kind of permanent identifiers that would allow them to be meaningfully linked to related content.  But what about those subjects?

In both WorldCat and my library's catalog, the subjects are clickable links, but clicking them results in a search for that subject only within the catalog.  In a more linked environment, would siloized search still be appropriate?  Maybe the subject links could bring in lots more things that are linked to that heading using LC's linked data service (e.g. Lemuridae).  But is that enough?  Will other curators of desirable content use LCSH?  Maybe instead of, or at least in addition to, expecting outside entities to conform to library-centric aboutness terminology, cataloging records should link to data hubs appropriate to the content.  Just one example in this case is the ITIS taxonomy (e.g. Verreaux's sifaka). That would potentially link this book on the social behavior of a specific type of lemur to scientific articles, datasets, images, and perhaps even its genome.  It's not hard to imagine other elements that might link in similar ways:  Madagascar, for example, or perhaps even primate social behavior.

Do you think this kind of outside vocabulary will eventually replace LCSH or will it still be important for broad, general categories like "Social Behavior"?  Will we still need it for faceted, siloized library searches?  Will we still even have the silos?