[topicmaps-comment] Topic maps 'float above' resources?

[Jon Jermey & Glenda Browne <webindexing@optusnet.com.au>]

Hi,

Thanks to all who answered my beginner's questions a few weeks ago. I have
another question::

One advantage of topic maps is said to be that they are not connected to the
resources they describe (as, say, subject metadata tags are). However, it
seems to me that for the topic map to be useful as a means of accessing
resources it must have links, and that these links might require a fair bit
of work and analysis to set up. For example, if an occurrence type is to be
'definition' or 'advanced expose' or whatever, someone must have analysed
the document to know what occurrence type it is. And then the link must be
made explicit, eg by adding the URL as an occurrence. As soon as this is
done, surely the topic map is connected to the resources it describes (even
though it can also be used elsewhere - but so can a thesaurus that has been
used to allocated subject metadata).

Thanks in advance,

Glenda.