Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Commercial Websites And The Use Of Classification Schemes: The Case Of Amazon.Com. In Lopez-Huertas, Maria J. Challenges In Knowledge Represantation An Organization For The 21st Century: Intergration Of Knowledge Across Boundaries., Barbara H. Kwasnik

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

The structure and use of the classification for books on the Amazon.com website are described and analyzed. The contents of this large website are changing constantly and the access mechanisms have the main purpose of enabling searchers to find books for purchase. This includes finding books the searcher knows about at the start of the research, as well as those that might present themselves in the course of searching and that are related in some way. Underlying the many access paths to books is a classification scheme comprising a rich network of terms in an enumerative and multihierarchical structure.