> As a former dilettante-theorist of the history of classification, one thing I took away from my studies is that any classification is only a mirror of the mind of the person who made the classification. What I mean by this can be seen just by perusing the outlines of any classification scheme: with some consideration, you can know if the classifier believes in God or not, what they think about moral or political questions, when the classification was created, and so on.... The user of the classification system is also locked in time, e.g. Psychology, which is seen as more of a science now and would probably be more useful...
We can go on and on, but my favorites in Dewey are the organization of
languages—with as much space reserved for Greek synonyms as for all
languages on earth, except sixteen—top-level numbers for phrenology
and mesmerism, and the only real tip-off that we're talking about
mid-19c Massachusetts, not Paris, London or even New York:
Unitarianism as a top level category.
The OSC is a tough idea, but I think it's principles could form the
basis of a really good system. Among them were:
*Asserting from the get-go that the system was there to organize
physical books, not to pretend to some order of the universe that
could never be represented in a linear or tree-like structure.
*Rigorous testing of the system, as it went along.
We did do one round of testing, asking members to make quick spot
assignments between categories. It pointed up all sorts of problems.
On down the road, the intent was the test how OSC proximity stood up
against proximity in others systems, and in algorithmic recommendation
systems—a new idea that, I hope, someone takes up.
Tim
Received on Thu Nov 12 2009 - 09:36:53 EST