Sunday, June 21, 2015

30 My country or my profession: basis of classifying

An underlying pattern we can discern in our choice of arrangement of books is the thread of geographical location (country etc.) that can unite different subject classes. The question, in bald terms is: do we group books by subject and sub-subject to the n’th degree, or do we regroup at some level by country? We see this as options in many different classes, such as Law 340, Public administration 350, and the Arts, where we are given the choice to group principally by subject or by country.

What could be the considerations affecting this choice? A basic approach of Dewey (and other systems) is the primacy given to subject or discipline at the level of the ten main Classes or hundred Divisions themselves.  In other words, Dewey has already determined that we will group primarily by subject, not by country. I do not think any librarian would want to separate out all his items by country (barring an institution focused solely on Area studies, perhaps!). This is obvious in the case of the exact (physical) sciences and technology:  physics is physics, wherever it is studied, chemistry is chemistry, genetics is genetics, electronics is electronics.

When we come to the  arts, humanities and the social sciences, however, there is a pause for thought. In religions, for instance, apart from the major ‘world’ religions (Christianity, for example), the schedules consciously provide headings by region (culture):  292 Classical religion (Greek and Roman), 293 Germanic religion, 294 Religions of Indic origin, and under 299, religions of all other regions and ethnic origins. Still, the fact remains that these are all accommodated under the umbrella of 200, Religion.

Philosophy, like Religion, is organized largely by region (or culture) of origin, apart from a list of general categories in the beginning (reflecting, however, the concerns of mainly Western thought): 181 has sub-section numbers for various eastern philosophies, 182-189 has numbers for various schools of ancient and medieval western philosophy, 190 is for modern western philosophies. But not so Psychology: the numbers are provided mostly based on the school, thinker, or functional area or application.

The prominent number which, by definition, is arranged on regional and country lines is, of course History, starting from World history. Geography also is similarly expanded, although there are a larger number of general principles at the start of geography as an art (or science). Other parts of the humanities could also be so arranged, except that the categories are principally based on the western  development of the field, and numbers are provided at the end for parallel development of non-western modes (e.g. 789.9 Nonwestern art music, practically the last number in the range 780-789 Music!).

Where does one introduce the country development? The choice can be made at different levels of the schedule. A broad area of knowledge (say, each of the thousand Sections) may be sub-divided a number of times. Many of the schedules provide a choice of dividing by country right at the outset, and adding numbers from other parts to reproduce the detailed sub-classes, or alternatively doing the country-wise classification at a later stage (see Law, Public Administration). Many schedules provide a way of forming a main number country-wise by appending geographical appellations directly, ’93-99, rather than through standard subdivisions -093-099, which then would permit attachment of further sub-divisions in parallel with the initial number development in that section. The country classification, of course, can always be done at the last by adding numbers from Table 2, -093 to -099. This would give us the choice of expanding in the order either subject-place-topic or facet, or subject-topic-place. One of my grouses is that 789.9 Nonwestern art music does not provide this (explicitly). The schedule doesn’t say explicitly that 789.93-789.99 can be used for different countries. The above choice is then taken away, because you then have to use -009 for standard subdivisions of place: if you make, say, 789.9’00954 Indian music, you have to stop there, and cannot add all the special subdivisions provided under 789.3-789.9 using connectors -01, -1, etc. On the other hand, if you were explicitly allowed to make 789.954 Indian music, or even  789.9548 South Indian music, you could treat it as a main number (not as the standard subdivision of place) and attach -011 to -015 General principles, -016 Stylistic influences, -018 Musical forms and -1 Voices, instruments etc. (but you would need some connector, such as the “special topics” -04,  to distinguish subdivisions of place from subtopic).

Bottom line: I tend to have a large number of books on a few selected topics, and a small number on all the rest (all home libraries are probably similar, with a large collection on the subjects closest to the owner’s profession and a few hobbies or side interests). For the preferred professional subjects, I like to classify down to sub-topic and then introduce the country facet at the end (using standard subdivision -093-099): the reasoning being that it is the subject matter that is the focus, not the country. Thus, if I have ten books on say trees of different countries, ten on animals, and ten on birds, I would go Biology-Trees-country, Animals-country, Birds-country,   and not Biology-UK-trees, UK-animals, UK-birds, China-trees, China-animals, China-birds, Africa-trees, and so on. If I had only a couple of books, I might not even bother to classify down to a sub-topic, but might just put it in the highest (1000 sections) category, and be done with it; e.g. Ecology 577, not subdivided by topic or country.