Apologies to those who've seen this - but here's an arrangement our users
can understand - but we'd have to have calibrated color printers to print
the swatch to lead them to their book...
http://www.tombendtsen.com/Conversations/files/page12-1001-full.html
Cindy Harper, Systems Librarian
Colgate University Libraries
charper_at_colgate.edu
315-228-7363
On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 12:18 PM, Tim Spalding <tim_at_librarything.com> wrote:
>> Once again, let me play my broken record---there is demonstrated by many
professional librarians a sad lack of understanding of the purpose of
knowledge classification systems ... DDC, LCC, etc., are knowledge
classification systems first, not physical arrangement devices. Physical
arrangement is a by-product; using the class #s for shelf-arrangement is
optional.
>
> Let me attack this directly.
>
> The history of a thing is not the thing. Etymology is not meaning. The
> original purpose of something does not exhaust its purpose today, or
> sometimes even have much at all to do with it. This is a very common
> feature of standards. The "purpose" of our funny non-base-10 system of
> months and measures is not to regulate the worship of Sumerian gods.
> The "purpose" of books is not to combat the cutoff of papyrus supply
> to Pergamon. The "purpose" of the Social Security Number is not really
> the regulation of a particular New Deal program. The "purpose" of the
> internet is not to provide computer networks with nuclear
> survivability.
>
> DDC exists today primarily as a standardized shelving system. That is
> it's purpose. That's what it means to most librarians, and such
> patrons as think it means anything at all. And, most importantly, it's
> how it survived being merely a quaint product of late 19c. central
> Massachusetts thinkery. A standard becomes its own justification, even
> when it has no other defensible one.
>
> Tim
>
Received on Wed Nov 11 2009 - 13:36:51 EST