----- Original message ----------------------------------------
From: "Tim Spalding" <tim_at_LIBRARYTHING.COM>
>tidy-looking numbers. You see it over and over in Dewey—shoe-horning
>arbitrary complex subject divisions into a decimal scheme. A
>well-designed tree can have different numbers of leaves on every
>branch. Dewey can't. It's ten ten ten until the cows come home.
Ahhh, yes. But if you think Dewey is bad, take a look at LC. Even though not shoehorned into tens, it has the same issue of lack of room for expansion, for insertion of materials on new topics, and so forth. That will necessarily be true of ANY system that classifies. Even if you invent the Spalding system, how will you know how much room (in whatever notation) for Alpha Centaurian Culture, Alpha Centaurian Biology, The Alternative Universe that is Inside of Black Holes, and on and on.
Any system will be the product of its times. Yes, any system can be modified and adapted to new information and topics, but changing it for materials that have to be marked, shelved, and so forth, makes change very difficult. Ask any public librarian who has had to deal with changes in classes for information science and technology, or many other topics.
>States? Apostles? Flavors in Heinz katsup? Stuff them in as best you
>can, and make sure to leave a "junk drawer" heading. Let a 19c.
>provincial 20-something design a subject system and you end up with
>Buddhism in the junk drawer of a junk drawer.
Sure, you can't fit everything into ten categories, but neither can you fit everything into 17, 43, or any other number.
Remember, good ol' Melvil (who was a mere punk kid at the time, as previously noted) was NOT creating "the ultimate classification system for all times", but a classification system for ONE college library. I'm not sure how many books Amherst had at the time, but I'll bet it wasn't into six figures. (I'll leave the historical research to others). Regardless of the exact number, he was classifying WHAT HE HAD. How many books do you think Amherst had on Buddhism or Hawai'ian language and literature, and so on? Sure, at the time people knew where Afghanistan was and had never heard of "Corea" (check many old maps). How many of us old geezers had heard of Korea before 1950? How many of our parents or grandparents had? Not many. And then we get into all the countries that don't exist any more, that do exist, and so on? How could Melvil plan to have a number for Israeli Government or Zambian Politics?
Of course then we get to the real issue....the fact that the notation is nothing but a place to put the damn book. Period. It makes (or may make) it more convenient for browsers, but other than that doesn't mean a hell of a lot. Even in areas where DDC "makes sense", do you put a book on "Best Southern Fried Chicken Recipes" under cooking subclassed by method of cooking, or cooking subclassed by food being cooked. Or maybe even regional cooking? You sure aren't going to buy three copies and put one under each number. And I can assure you that wherever you put it, someone won't like it.
cheers
dan
Show Up, Suit Up, Shut Up, and Follow Directions
dan_at_riverofdata.com
Dan Lester, Boise, Idaho, USA
Received on Tue Jun 05 2007 - 10:31:45 EDT