A hybrid approach to faceted classification based on analysis of descriptor suffixes

This study explores the construction of a faceted vocabulary that can be used as a mechanism for organizing Webbased resources. After analyzing the manual process of faceted vocabulary construction using existing organizational structures to identify heuristics for automating the construction process, we modeled a hybrid, semi-automatic approach to facet generation that integrates the strengths of manual and automatic methods. This approach is based on the organization of terms according to the meanings of their suffixes. Although this heuristic could not usefully organize the majority of terms of the lexicon bases to which it was applied, it nevertheless shows promise as a component of hybrid classification.