I was really excited to see Stephen's posting about faceted navigation and I surfed over to his wiki page. One of my favorite projects in library school was in my classification and subject analysis course: a presentation on the great Indian librarian, S.R. Ranganathan. I loved the clarity and simplicity of his idea of using five facets to describe and classify EVERYTHING:

Personality--what the object is primarily "about." This is considered the "main facet."
Matter--the material of the object
Energy--the processes or activities that take place in relation to the object
Space--where the object happens or exists
Time--when the object occurs (the PMEST is cribbed from http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/ranganathan_for_ias)

Anyway, I read a cool article this summer in TECHKNOW, a newsletter from the Ohio Library Council for technical services librarians (highly recommended), about how a team at OCLC has developed this "Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) schema and authority file,
consisting of headings derived from LCSH that are amenable to postcoordination
and authority control. " http://www.library.kent.edu/files/TechKNOW_July_2006.pdf

More info. on the OCLC website: http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/fast/default.htm

I hope some of our catalogers/metadata experts can look at this and respond.

---