6 February 2007
Diane Hillman wrote:
In the physical book world where classification was used primarily
for shelving location, the one-class-number rule made sense, but in
the digital world, we've been released from those artificial limits
and can once again look at LCC as subject access different but not
inherently less important than LCSH.
Catalogers have always been free to apply as many classification numbers
(LCC or Dewey) to the records for library resources as they want to and use
them for subject access. Some European libraries already do this and make
the distinction between class mark and shelf mark. It's just that in
practice, as least in the US, nobody does it, which is too bad. The idea
that classification is mainly for "marking and parking" still dominates.
I read not too long ago in a paper by the late Gordon Stevenson that Dewey
created the DDC mainly for subject cataloging. Mark and park was an
afterthought.
Of Dewey's classification, Stevenson writes:
To most librarians in the United States, 'classification' means
'shelf classification' exclusively. This is not what it meant to
Dewey. The use of the Decimal Classification (DDC) to organize
books on shelves was an afterthought, a byproduct of a system
originally conceived as a method of subject cataloging. In the
Preface of the first edition of the DDC, Dewey wrote:
The system was devised for cataloguing and indexing
purposes, but it was found on trial to be equally
valuable for numbering and arranging books and
pamphlets on the shelves.
You can read the rest of Gordon Stevenson's paper "The classified catalog of
the New York State Library in 1911" In Melvil Dewey the man and the
classification : a seminar (ISBN: 0910608342). By the way, Dewey's
classified catalog still exists in the Librarians Room of the New York State
Library.
Bryan Campbell
Library Assistant
Peabody Library
Vanderbilt University
bryan.campbell_at_vanderbilt.edu
Received on Tue Feb 06 2007 - 10:46:37 EST