Don’t shoot me, but I’ve got to say: “search” is just the end result. The essential building block is “cataloging.”

To this end, David Weinberger (The Cluetrain Manifesto), has published “Everything is Miscellaneous.” It is the best book I’ve read about how we find, classify and prioritize information about information (meta data).

The book takes readers from the organization of a Staples store; to Darwin; to the revolutionary but ultimately flawed Dewey Decimal system; to our present day, miscellaneous “third order” cataloging via Flickr, Amazon, iTunes and De.lic.ious.

I was congratulating myself yesterday when talking with Matthew Berk at Marchex and knowledgeably discussing “Decision Trees.” Now, I am looking forward to also matching wits with Gib Olander at Localeze. Thanks to the book, feel free to also ask me about such arcane topics as “Smart Leaves” and “the Semantic Web.”

Note: A lot of us are participating on Facebook’s virtual bookshelf. We’ve got to get one going just for “Local Search.” In the meantime, why not add the bookshelf, and books you’ve recently read?

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