Faceted browsing

Today I ran across an implementation on the web of something called "faceted browsing" - a taxonomy system allowing a set of documents or items to be classified in various ways, helping users to navigate large amounts of information.

The first link was here:

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/archives/day_1_ia_summit_2004_wrapup.php

if you scroll down to:

Fun with Faceted Browsing
Keith Instone

And here are some examples of websites which actually use faceted browsing:

http://eat.epicurious.com/recipes/browse_home/index.ssf?/recipes/browse_home/index.html

http://www.ibm.com/products/us/finder/finder?sid=F6245753C2E6&N=200004&Ne=200000&lst=off&trac=1T10FN01B&ca=nbfinder&me=W&met=inli&re=nbhome

http://www.eshop.msn.com/fts/ftsresults.aspx?searchText=lcd+television&searchType=1&fcId=4&rcatId=370&ptnrId=0&ptnrData=0

http://bailando.sims.berkeley.edu/flamenco.html
http://orange.sims.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/flamenco/arts/Flamenco?username=default
http://orange.sims.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/flamenco/production/Flamenco?username=default
http://orange.sims.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/flamenco/tobacco/FrankenMatrix?stylesheet=frank

Notice how in a faceted browsing system there are multiple paths you can travel along to navigate to a particular item. This is something we couldn't do in the old Dewey Decimal System used in libraries: I recently ran across a novel by a Russian author in the library dealing with women's rights, and the book was flagged as 891.7-something under Dewey (in the Russian literature section) but it could as easily have been categorized under feminist literature or under the author's name or under the period when it was written (pre-1917). Using faceted browsing, an item can exist in several categories simultaneously.

The vast and constantly growing body of news stories and commentaries (or just posts on DU?) would be a perfect candidate to categorizing using "faceted browsing". This would make it much easier to digest and comprehend.