tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26745814645302779642024-03-12T21:58:03.959-07:00Doing the DeweyManaging the Home Library using the Dewey Decimal ClassificationDilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-72644895401564790182019-06-08T00:57:00.000-07:002019-06-08T01:21:15.133-07:0035 The problem with cataloguing philosophy (the Dewey 100s)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I’ve been off the blog world for a couple
of years doing a degree in Philosophy (!). Now that I have a bird’s eye view of
the field, here are my gripes with Philosophy (100s) on the Dewey.</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The problem is that you could divide the
field in more than one way. First of all, there is the period-wise arrangement –
ancient, medieval, modern, or whatever finer slices you may prefer. Second is
the civilization-wise division: western, mid-eastern, eastern, east Asian, south
Asian, meso-American, Polynesian, and so on. Then you could divide it up by
country or ethnicity: Greek philosophy, Indian philosophy, and so on. You could
divide it up by religion: Jewish philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, etc. Or you
could classify by “school” of philosophy: idealist, empiricist, positivist, pragmatist,
existentialist, and many others. Another approach would be by the main person:
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Hegel. You could have combinations of
these criteria: arranging the main thinkers of each culture or civilization by
period, school and person. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Then we have subdivisions of the subject
matter of philosophy – things like ontology (the study of existence) or
epistemology (of understanding, which links up to psychology and brain science in
turn). Last, but not the least, we can (and do!) have a whole series of “philosophy
of” headings, like the philosophy of religion, of war, of love, and so on, some
of which may be similar to the subdivisions, e.g. philosophy of knowledge.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">It’s obvious that no system will satisfy
all these alternative approaches. The actual arrangement prescribed by Dewey (DDC22
in my case) gives all options, which makes for a bit of confusion. Let me get
at this now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">For a start, the hundred 100s sections (100-199)
cover not only philosophy, but also psychology and a lot of other things like
parapsychology and occultism (!). So the
field of Philosophy in itself tends to get chopped up or segmented more than a
little bit. To illustrate: we start with hard core philosophy headings in 101-109
Standard subdivisions of philosophy, then 110 to 119 Metaphysics, with various
specific headings, 120 to 129 Epistemology, causation, humankind. After this
there is a transition to other subjects: 130 to 139 Parapsychology and
occultism (!), which includes 133.1 Apparitions, 133.4 Demonology and
witchcraft, 135 Dreams and mysteries, 137 Divinatory graphology, 138
Physiognomy, 139 Phrenology. So the (supposedly) clear waters of rational
thought are already being muddied by superstition and cant! A person seeking knowledge
of the heavens may be induced to give up his search around this fracture zone.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">After this DDC shifts to Specific
philosophical schools and viewpoints from 140 to 149: 141 Idealism and related
systems and doctrines, 142 Critical
philosophy (which includes 142.3 Kantianism, 142.7 Phenomenology, and the other
digits available for future assignments). We have subdivisions (subsections)
for all sorts of –isms and -ologies: Modern Platonism and Neoplatonism, Transcendentalism,
Individualism, Personalism, Romanticism, 143 Bergsonism and intuitionism,
Humanism which consists of Pragmatism, Instrumentalism, Naturalism, Utilitarianism,
Materialism, and so on; then 147 Pantheism, comprising 147.3 Monism, 147.4
Dualism and pluralism; and a number of others like Realism, Mysticism,
Nihilism, and lastly, 149.9 Miscellaneous systems and doctrines.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Here starts our problem: we would have to
assign each work to one of these subclasses. This would call for a substantial
effort on our part to assess the work from a scholarly angle. Does a work by or
on Gandhi, for instance, go into Idealism or Realism or Pragmatism or Mysticism
or what have you – or do we need a separate entry for Gandhianism! Or would a
work on Advaita go under Monism or Mysticism or even have to be sent to Ancient
philosophies or Religion or so on? How do we decide which “system” any work
fits into (if it’s not specified in the title or subtitle of the work)?</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> When
we come to the end of the 140s, we are suddenly yanked into another discipline
altogether – 150 to 159 Psychology. These are more “scientific” than “humanistic”
branches of knowledge, except for 150.1 Philosophy and theory, which have
subject headings that seem to overlap with philosophy headings: existential
schools, reductionism, and so on which may be parts of epistemology (how do we
know?). 160 Logic brings us back to the
Science of reasoning, Fallacies, and so on – hard core stuff. These are
obviously bridging disciplines and approaches that interface between the
expansive stuff of philosophy and the exact sciences. They should then go on to
scientific thought and scientific knowledge, but that doesn’t come till the
500s. In the meantime, we have to deal with 170 to 179 Ethics (Moral philosophy),
which seem to repeat things which would have already been covered as part of previous
sections. Then comes 180 to 189, which deals with, in order, 181 Eastern
philosophy, 182 Pre-Socratic Greek ph., 183 Sophistic, Socratic, ph., 184
Platonic ph., 185 Aristotelian ph., 186 Skeptic and Neoplatonic, 187 Epicurian,
188 Stoic, and 189 Medieval western philosophy. This transitions fairly
smoothly to 190 Modern western and other non-eastern philosophy, followed by
191 United States and Canada, and so on to 199 Other geographic area. This looks
somewhat redundant, as 199 really covers all geographical areas from the
standard place names list under 4-9 subdivisions.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">This repetitious nature of the
classification scheme means that we are never sure where to expect a certain
book, say on Kant. Would it be under modern western philosophy, or modern European,
or modern German, philosophy, or under idealism, or Kantianism, or…? What about
works that compare different philosophers… say, Hume and Kant? Or Kant and the
Bhagavad Gita? The problem is even worse because, as you scan the shelves, you
get unexpected chunks of different fields like occultism and ghosts in between!</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Because DDC philosophy is so fragmented as
it is, there appears to be no real solution that will bring together all
philosophy in one tidy sequence. Ideally, we should be able to group together
all rational approaches in philosophy, followed by irrational modes under superstitions
and magic, then go on to the inner workings of the human mind in psychology, to
be followed by the exact sciences like logic and maths. But it is not till 180 that we begin to get
specific classes for different provenances (eastern, Greek…) and vintages of
philosophy as we encounter them in surveys like Bertrand Russell’s massive <i>History of Western Philosophy</i> (which stops at around
1930, so not touching post-war developments like existentialism). Since,
however, 180 and 190 cover the major approaches in philosophy (with a sprinkling
of subdivisions even for eastern philosophies, especially Indian and Chinese),
perhaps a starting point would be to push as many items as possible under these
two heads. This would give precedence (in the shelf position) to non-western
philosophies, followed by ancient Greek, medieval western, and then modern
western philosophies. While ancient Greek and medieval western are provided
with specific subheads (medieval western not so detailed), when we come to 190-199
Modern western and other non-eastern philosophy, there are no subheads, but
only geographical subclasses: 191 United States and Canada, and so on, to 199
Other geographical areas. Indeed, we could as well use just 199 with
geographical (area) suffixes 4-9, from Table 2.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">A couple of choices would have to be made
if we wanted to avoid scattering our items over the whole range of the 100s.
For a start we will usually have works by or on a prominent philosopher, say
Kant. Modern western philosophy, to which this belongs, is pushed as far down
as 190, but as we saw previously, 140 Specific ph. Schools and viewpoints
provides specifically for 142.3 Kantianism (and neo-Kantianism) under 142
Critical ph. But there is no parallel
entry for, say, Hegel; under 140-, we would have to make a categorization of Hegel’s
school: would it be Transcendentalism, or Romanticism, or Humanism, or
Naturalism, or Evolutionism, or Mysticism? Would we put Vedanta together with Hegel?
I would suggest that we should not be called upon to make such judgements. Hence
I would prefer to put Kant and Hegel under 190 Modern western, but not under
193 Germany and Austria, because I think they belong to all humanity. I would
cheat a little, by using letters: 190KAN for Kant, 190HEG for Hegel, and so on.
This would at least give one specific destination (under Western ph.) for all
works by and about Kant, or Hegel, or whoever. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">For Indian ph., we are given specific
heads: the six schools are well represented (Samkhya, Nyaya, etc.); Vedanta has
individual entries for Sankara, Ramanuja, etc. Under 181, we also have the
option of putting (from non-Christian religions 29<b>4</b>-29<b>9</b>) 181.04-.09 Philosophies
based on specific religions: e.g. 181.0<b>43</b>
Buddhist ph. (from 29<b>4.3</b> Buddhism). We could even use
further subdivisions, e.g. from 294.392 Mahayana Buddhism, we could form
181.04392 Buddhist Mahayana philosophy. Strangely, they don’t recommend this
for Hindu ph.; so while we have 294.5512 Vishnuism, the philosophy has to go to
Vedanta, e.g. 181.483 Ramanujacarya (Visistadvaita) or 181.484 Dualistic
school(s). Again, “Christian” philosophy is assigned under 189 Medieval western
ph. or 190 Modern western ph.; and again, the parallelism of philosophy and
religion is not extended to 292 Classical religion (Greek and Roman religion)
and 293 Germanic religion. Perhaps we should cheat a little in such cases, and extend
the use 181.0- regardless of DDC’s specific instructions!</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">But a couple of problems will still remain.
For one, a work covering both ancient and modern western ph. (like Russell’s <i>History</i>) cannot be put under 180 or 190;
it would have to be pushed all the way back to 109 or even 100 or 101 if it
were about the general principles of philosophy (like Russell’s shorter volume <i>An Outline of Philosophy</i>. An alternative (for the latter) could be to
take it as Russell’s philosophy, and put it under modern western ph. 190RUS. But
the <i>History</i> would still have to go
all the way back to 100 or 109!</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">A second issue is with books that treat of
a given approach or school, without reference to a single individual. You have
a book that deals with Idealism, say; where would you put it? It seems it has
to be pushed all the way back to 141 Idealism and related systems, For an individual
philosopher or thinker, you would still have to do some considerable research
on which system he is related to; if, like Wittgenstein, he changed his
approach over the years, it may even be difficult to assign the whole body of
work to one system, which is why I would prefer to relegate it to modern ph., e.g.
190WIT. And the problem of the intervening chunks of Occultism, Psychology, and
others would still remain!</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">A final word about the <b>real</b> problem with Philosophy: some 90% of it doesn’t make sense! After
a lot of labour, one gets so little out of the remaining 10%, that it’s not a useful
subject for study unless one wants to make it a profession!</span></div>
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Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-51224321127825305992016-04-17T00:01:00.000-07:002016-04-17T00:02:29.769-07:0034 Tweaking the social sciences (Dewey 300s)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-GB">As I mentioned earlier, I am having
problems with the social sciences. My first gripe is the way the Dewey
schedules interpolate Environment and natural resources, 333.7, in the middle
of the Economics line-up. I feel Economics is a specific discipline with a definite
approach to matters of its own, and somehow natural resources conservation and
environmentalism – forests, wilderness and recreational areas, parks, wetlands,
biodiversity, and so on – doesn’t seem (to me) to fit in seamlessly. Especially
since economics proper picks up again after 333: after all the green stuff, after
the birds and the bees, it’s back again to proper this-worldly subjects 334
Cooperatives, 335 Socialism and related systems (under which they’ve put Fascism
as well!), 336 Public finance, 337 International economics, 338 Production, 339
Macroeconomics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I have a particular problem in my
collection, which is that my economics items (up to 339) are all mostly books,
which will fit into smaller shelves and make a pretty display, whereas my 333
collection is full of dusty A4-size reports and photocopies picked up here and
there (mostly bound compilations of conference papers, for instance). What I
have done is to bring out the economics books to the front hall, all lined up
in wooden shelves, but left the 333 items in the back room in the old
angle-iron racks with the inter-shelf heights adjusted to suit the larger
sizes. The back room collection then picks up at 340 Law (old dusty manuals!),
350 Public administration (ditto!), and carries on as usual.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">So far so good, but here’s my peeve. A
number of topics to do with the environment and socio-economic problems get
relegated to the 360s, such as 363.7 Environmental problems, or 362.5 Problems
of poor people, under which are measures to prevent poverty, etc. This scatters
books on similar subjects too far apart… some under the 330s, some under the
360s, and so on, depending on the accent – whether it is on economics, or on
social welfare, and so on. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I used to be a bit of a fanatic about
zeroing in on the most precise number, but after seeing the way the items are dispersed
around, I am bringing them back together by choosing the nearest approximation
under one preferred number. For example, I had put some items under 362.57
Measures to prevent, protect against, limit effects of poverty, but am now of a
mind to bringing these back to, say, 339.46 Poverty (under 339 Macroeconomics,
of all things!) Dewey advices us to “Class comprehensive works on poverty in
362.5”, but I am not happy with such a wide scatter of my collection. When we
think of poverty, we usually think of economics and development, i.e. 339.8
Economic development and growth. I realize that many works actually talk about
the micro-level interventions to mitigate the effects of poverty, and not the
macro, but the convenience of having all poverty-related books in one place
outweighs the technical nicety. Similarly, books on famine are being relocated
from 363.8 Food supply (“Class here famine, hunger”), to 338.19 Food supply
(which has a “class here” note for “maladjustments in food supply”, “food
requirements” or “demand”, etc.). On a
similar note, rather than sending works on population to 363.9 Population
problems, I would prefer to bring them back to the main number 304.6 Population
(there doesn’t seem to be a number for Economics of population).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">There is another promising entry under 338.9
Economic development and growth, that is 338.927 Appropriate technology. This
has a note “Class here alternative technology, environmental economics (!!),
sustainable development”. I feel now that this is a suitable place to put most
of the books on multi-disciplinary aspects of tackling the problems of underdevelopment
<b>and</b> development, some of which may
have been sent to 333.7 Environment or to 362.57 Measures to prevent (etc.)
effects of poverty. In fact, with “environmental economics” and “sustainable
development” having been hitched to this wagon (338.927), I would put all works
on the environmental costs of development also here: a title like <i>When a Billion Chinese Jump</i>, for
instance. Incidentally, Dewey doesn’t want you to suffix place numbers to 338.927
(and other subdivisions under 338.92 Specific topics), but to use 338.93 -99
(development and growth in different locations) suffixed with 027 etc. (standard
subdivisions have to be attached via -00-, as per the footnote). In other
words, it doesn’t want sequences like 338.927’051 Sustainable
development-China, but prefers 338.951’027 Development-China-sustainable
development. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Other special topics under 338.92 are 338.922
Subsidies and grants, 338.924 Nationalization, 338.925 Privatization, 338.926
Information policy, and of course 338.927 Appropriate technology. The same caveat
applies of not adding -093-099 geographical locations after these suffixes, but
using the alternative 338.93-338.99 Economic development and growth in specific
localities, followed by suffixes -022-027 for the Special topics. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I am in the process of liquidating my
previous assignments to 363.7 Environmental problems, and bringing them back to
earlier numbers like 333.7 for general
works, or this newly discovered 338.927 where the accent is on development.
Even climate change and global warming, which has a specific number 363.73874,
are being brought back to 333.7 for general works, 333.92 Air for air
pollution, and 551.5 Climatology and weather (or more narrowly 551.525
Temperatures) for more technical-scientific works. You could even suffix the
scientific aspects of climate change by using the ‘015 subdivision, to any
topic in the schedule, thus keeping climate change effects with the thing acted
upon, be it biodiversity 333.95 or forest lands 333.75 and so on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">In summary, then, I really wish Dewey would refrain
from breaking up topics over too wide a range of locations, so that one is not
all the time confused over the likely location of the required items!</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
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Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-52547436672756545852016-04-09T21:20:00.001-07:002016-04-09T21:21:34.236-07:0033 Revisiting Environment & natural resources in the Dewey Decimal Classification<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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As I have said before, there are
complications with the Dewey classification of Environment and Natural
resources. As recounted in a previous post (here!), DDC20 had 333 Land
economics, 333.7-.9 Natural resources and energy, whereas DDC22 calls it 333 Economics of land and energy, 333.7-.9 as
in dc20), and there are sub-classes individually for forest land, wetland,
recreational and wilderness areas, biological resources and organisms, and so
on.</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">One of the complications is Dewey’s
well-intentioned provision of further sub-numbers to deal with specific aspects
of each topic under 333.7-.9 Natural resources and energy. These aspects are introduced
by digit 1 after the main number, giving ’11 for “Resources, Reserves” (e.g.
333.75’11 Forest lands-reserves), ’12 for “Requirements”, ’13 for “Consumption”
(further subdivided into ‘137 for “Abuse and wastage”), ’14 for “Environment
impact studies”, ’15-17 for “Management and control”, ’16 for “Conservation and
protection”, and ’17 for “Control of usage”. After experimenting with these for
years, I have come to the conclusion that they are, unfortunately, more or less
useless for the following reasons.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Firstly, very few books on natural
resources can avoid dealing with a number of these aspects simultaneously. I
mean, can you think of writing about, say, “Conservation & protection”,
without first describing the “Use and abuse” of the resources? And when you do
that, can you really avoid talking about the rising “Demand” or “Requirements”?
And the shrinking “Resources” or “Reserves”? I did try using these sub-topics
but found that the end result was a senseless dispersal of my little collection.
Now that I am re-doing the shelfing (not, I hope, the shelving!) of my
collection, I have decided to just put general works under the main heading
333.7, covering all environment and natural resources, followed by 333.73,
333.74, 333.75, etc. for each specific type of resource.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">What is this “dispersal” I am talking
about? Let us take 333.75 <st1:place w:st="on">Forest</st1:place> lands, for
example. The natural sequence would be to arrange by geography, so forests of
countries in Europe, then Asia, Africa, the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Americas</st1:place></st1:country-region>, and other jurisdictions,
following the geographical standard subdivisions -094-099. Now if you wanted to
use the -1- special subtopics, you would have to start the sequence all over
again: 333.75’11 Reserves, once again in Europe, then <st1:place w:st="on">Asia</st1:place>,
and so on. Then you would have to start yet another sequence </span>333.75’12 for “Requirements”, 333.75’13
“Consumption” (further subdivided into 333.75‘137 “Abuse and wastage”), and so
on and on. So my little collection on forest resources of, say, <st1:place w:st="on">Southeast Asia</st1:place>, would be scattered and interspersed with
other geographical jurisdictions according to these special topics. </div>
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The
problem, as far as I can tell, is that the numbers don’t provide for
sub-classifying by special topic within each geography: if you wanted to do say
333.75’0954’11, 333.75’0954’12, 333.75’0954’13, and so on, it wouldn’t work,
because ‘0954 can’t be suffixed like that. If the special topics ’11, ’12, etc.
had been provided through the standard subdivision connector -04-, this would
have been possible, but since the suffixes are attached directly, we cannot do
the arrangement resource-country-special topic. So we are forced to do
resource-special topic-country, which to my mind is not as useful in the normal
course.</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">There are a couple of cases in which,
however, the arrangement resource-special topic-country may be called for. I
gave the example of Law, above: 333.75’026’09.. Forest-law-geography may be
worthwhile, as it brings together all works on forest law at the head of the
sequence. I also use it for resource economics:
333.7’0681 Natural resource economics, valuation, etc., or 333.75’0681 Forest resource
economics (works which emphasis the land and natural resource aspects rather than
narrower business decisions like rotation and regulation of yield, which I send
to 634.9). There is one work which may merit its own special topic number: this
is a report “<i>Rationale for Prescribing
the Requisite Forest/Tree Cover in India</i>” by K.D.Singh. This is a prime
candidate for special topic ’11 Reserves, giving 333.75’11’0954 SIN. But this
would be a sole occupant of this interstice, hence liable to get lost in the
long term. I have to choose between this and the more gregarious 333.75’0954
SIN, which is what I may prefer because even I may forget that I have used
333.75’11 for this single item! As I said above, the option of 333.75’0954’11
or ‘011 or ‘00411 is not available, hence I would have to sacrifice the
precision of narrow classification in favour of ease of location in the future.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Secondly, the main sub-divisions of 333.7
are to do with specific categories of natural resources: 333.73 Land, .736 Arid
lands, .74 Grasslands, .75 <st1:place w:st="on">Forest</st1:place> lands, and
so on. The same micro-divisions are provided for each of these as well, but
once again each reader may well have a different opinion of which of the
sub-sub-classes (’11 to ’17) is appropriate. This will only result in
frustration when one tries to locate a particular book. Much better to put all
under the overall head (333.74 for Grasslands, for example), followed by the facet
notation for geographical location (‘0954 for instance), then three letters
from author name and year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Indeed, the most useful facet
classification here seems to be the geographical, something which will probably
sound sensible to most users. If one wants to go further, of course, we can
always append standard subdivisions, but using two zeroes instead of one:
333.74’0954’0072, research, for instance. Or 333.75’0954’0026, Forest in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India-</st1:place></st1:country-region> law
aspects. You could, alternatively, reverse the order if you wanted to group all
law titles in one location, 333.75’026’0954 Forest law - <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I make one exception for not using the
’11-’17 subdivisions. This is to denote the specific subject of “Joint forest
management”. The number range >15-17 Management and control is introduced
with the comment “Class here citizen participation, planning, policy”, but this
is merely tantalizing, as what is provided under it are the numbers 15
Development (consisting of 152 Improvement, 153 Reclamation, rehabilitation,
restoration, 158 Subsidies), 16 Conservation and protection, 17 Control of
usage. Of course, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Joint</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">Forest</st1:placetype></st1:place> management
probably has elements of all of these. However, in order to have one uniform or
customary location, I have centred on 153 to denote Joint management: 333.75’153
Joint forest management. This will be followed by the usual standard
subdivisions, such as ‘09.. for geographical location, etc. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">All other forestry items are now classed
under the general number 333.75’09…., subdivided by geography (the one exception
so far being 333.75’026, <st1:place w:st="on">Forest</st1:place> law). I have
come to this conclusion because I am not happy at the way the collection is
dispersed if I use the ’11-17 sub-numbers. That is, every time I take up an
item I tend to change my mind about which of these it will fit under. There is
no long-term stability or consistency in the way these ’11-17 numbers are
liable to be interpreted. That’s why I have decided that they are more or less
superfluous (except for the one number, ‘153, for Joint management). This can
apply to each category of land, not just 333.75 <st1:place w:st="on">Forest</st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">One other complication, as discussed in the
previous post #26 (<a href="http://doingthedewey.blogspot.com/2015/03/24-when-you-have-too-many-choices-in.html">here!</a>), is the choice between the social sciences, 300s, and
science, 500s, or technology, 600s. In this regard, I am not quite satisfied
with Dewey’s instructions under 333.75 (for instance). These subdivisions seem
to be providing narrowly for forest <b>products</b>,
rather than the more over-arching concept of forest <b>lands</b> (which is what 333.75 is about, strictly speaking). I would
prefer to keep the narrower topics of forest products under 634.9, such as
timber supply, demand and production, forest management and regulation as a
technical subject, non-timber products, etc. What I think 333.75 is suitable
for, is for books that deal with forest lands in the broader economy and
polity, and all those that look at the interaction of <b>forests with society</b>. <st1:place w:st="on">Forest</st1:place>
policy and history would definitely come under the social science categories,
hence 333.75; but reports of forest area would go to 634.9 unless they
addressed the social aspects. Forest economics poses a special problem; since
it is to do with application of economic principles, it evidently should be
under 333.75; but as the business end of forest management, it would be more appropriate
under 634.9 (maybe with the help of suffix ‘068). So that’s the way I would
prefer to deal with forest economics books: those which deal with forests in
the overall socio-economic framework go to 333.75, but those focused narrowly
on business economics (the rotation question, for example), to 634.9.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Similar considerations would apply in
deciding between 333.7 numbers and 630 numbers for agriculture and soil
conservation, or between 333.78 Recreation and wilderness areas and 639.95
Wildlife reserves, and so on. Works that deal with social and political
considerations will go to the social sciences; more technical accounts, to the
technology numbers. That’s why, incidentally, I would send Gifford Pinchot’s
autobiography (he was the first , and politically highly influential, chief of
the US Forest Service) to 333.75, rather than 634.9!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The principle I like to follow is that the
end result should look logical and convenient, and not that the precise Dewey location
should be assigned fanatically. Similar considerations apply to the subject of
climate change (which have a place under 363.7), but in order not to disperse
books on the environmental conservation area, can well be brought back under
333.7 in a small home collection (see post #31 <a href="http://doingthedewey.blogspot.com/2015/10/31-climate-change-in-dewey.html">here!</a>). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-63581161009970251932015-10-27T04:50:00.001-07:002018-12-12T06:11:43.822-08:0032 Tribes and castes in the Dewey Decimal Classification<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">One of the topics I’m getting really
interested in lately is all about tribes, which is expected to be covered under
301 Sociology and Anthropology, but Dewey also advices to “class social
problems and social welfare in 361-365”. This is less than satisfactory,
because most works on tribes are usually about their problems in adjusting to
the pressures of the modern world, and it would be awkward to have only
descriptive works under 301 and analytical works under 361-365. Further, for
aspects of society not provided for in 302-307, they want us to push on to the
aspect, e.g. general history 900. This results in a substantial dispersion of
works on tribals and tribal history into different corners of the library.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Let’s start with a fairly general work on
say “The Tribes of India”. There is a number 301.7 Nonliterate societies, but
that is not what we are looking for; moreover, with the passage of time, tribes
are no longer going to remain solely “non-literate”, or the even more
judgemental descriptors “backward” or “primitive” and so on. Indeed use of the
number 301.7 for “types of societies” was discontinued in DDC 20. Where then
would we class a work on the tribes in general, say on the ethnology of tribes
of a region or a specific tribe or community?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The thing is that 302-307 provide for a
range of “specific topics in sociology and anthropology”: 302 Social
interaction, 303 Social processes, and so on. Obviously, a general work on the
tribes would include all these several aspects, which could at best be aspects
of the general description of tribes (or of a tribe). We need a separate number
for “tribes”, to which these aspects could be attached, but unfortunately there
is no provision in DDC for attaching humanities numbers as facets, such as there
is for attaching Science subjects 500-599 (which can be attached through the
standard subdivision 015).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Possibilities for “Tribals” as a subject suggest
themselves under 305 Social groups, 306 Culture and institutions, or 307
Communities. 305 has an instruction “class here culture and institutions of
specific groups”, but it would be somewhat inappropriate to have to decide
where tribals go as a group. Under 305.512 Principles of stratification, is 305.5122 Caste systems, which is where general works on castes in India (or even castes and tribes) can go. There are classes specified by level: “Upper
class”, “Middle class (Bourgeoisie)”, and even “Lower, alienated, excluded
classes” under 305.2 onwards. There is a class for 305.565 “Culturally disadvantaged persons”.
There is even a class under 305.568 Alienated and excluded classes, for “Dalits”
(305.5688), which refers to scheduled castes, but nothing which specifically
refers to tribes or indigenous or traditional peoples. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">There is, however, 305.8
Ethnic and national groups, with the ‘class here’ instruction for “indigenous
ethnic and national groups [formerly 306.08]”; “ethnology, ethnography”; which
is potentially a suitable slot, with 305.8009 provided for Historical,
geographic, persons treatment, hence 305.800954 “Tribes of India”. Of course,
this would not really be restricted to tribes, since other ethnic groups would
also have to be accommodated here. A more specific slot would be provided by 305.805-.89
Specific ethnic and national groups, which takes numbers from Table 5 Ethnic
and National Groups, thus providing a separate slot for each indigenous group
(tribals) and for larger non-tribal groups. For a large jurisdiction like
India, for instance, the population would be split along linguistic and quasi-racial
lines: Table 5, -914 South Asians (peoples who speak, or whose ancestors spoke,
Indic languages, Indo-Aryans); -948 Dravidians (which includes many tribal
groups like Toda, Gond, Kurukh according to the languages spoken), and
Scytho-Dravidians (including Mahratha, Sindhi); -95 South Asians who speak, or spoke,
languages closely related to East and Southeast Asian languages, with a
specific number -9595 Mundas (which would presumably cover speakers of Gadaba,
Ho, Mundari, Santhali, etc., constituting the major tribes of central-east
India). Then there is Table 5, -9911 Aeta, Andamanese, Semang. This scheme is
seen to follow language classes rather than ethnic, and it would therefore
cause some ambiguity in the case of tribal or ethnic groups that have adopted
another language, e.g. Indo-Aryan dialects in place of the original Dravidian
or Munda.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">It would be interesting to note that the abandoned
number “[formerly 306.08]” was used in DDC 20 for “unassimilated indigenous
racial, ethnic, national groups”, which actually would have provided a separate
location for the groups we recognize as tribal, as against more ‘advanced’
groups that we would probably call ‘castes’. The Manual of DDC 20 accordingly
had some explanation of the choice between 306.08 and 305.8: “Use 305.8… for
specific racial, ethnic, national groups which interact more or less freely
(whether in a dominant, nondominant, or intermediate position) with the rest of
society. Use 306.089 only for indigenous groups living in distinct communities
or ‘tribal areas’ not fully integrated into the economic and social life of the
nation in which they are (often involuntarily) incorporated. …If in doubt,
prefer 305.8”. DDC 22 dispenses with this explanation as well as with the bifurcation,
which hearkens back to the time when traditional or remote groups with their
own culture were considered ‘primitive’. In line with the removal of such seeming
stigmas, the two are coalesced into one number, 305.8. We do not have to make
the painful judgement of where a group is along the line of ‘development’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">However, because many old libraries would
have classified ethnic groups in 306.08 under the older DDC versions, we would
have to remember to search in both locations, 305.8 and 306.08 for works on
traditional or ethnic communities and tribals. To further complicate matters,
however, there is another number expressly for tribals, under 307.7 Specific
kinds of communities: this is 307.772 Tribal communities. This carries a note
“Class tribal communities considered in context of culture and institutions of
indigenous ethnic and national groups in 305.8”. The utility of 307.772, as far
as I can make out, is for works that
deal with the generalities of tribal communities. However, it may be used by a library
for works on specific tribal communities, such as “Gonds of Andhra Pradesh”, by
using suffixes from Table 5 and Table 2. One would have to make a considered
choice between 305.8 and 307.772, so that gradually there will be the single
location for such works.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">A final caution is that works with a
historical flavour may be sent to the 900’s, especially works on native American groups (tribes), where special numbers are provided for “Ethnic and national
groups”, such as 970.004 (with suffixes from Table 5), and 970.1 for North
America, 980.004 (with suffixes from Table 5) for South America, and generally
with <i>any</i> number under 930-990 History
using the (special) standard subdivision 004 Ethic and national groups (with
suffix from Table 5 for specific groups). General works on the native Indians
are often classed in history with these numbers, rather than under ethnology
305.8. Incidentally, Table 5 for American Indians has further subdivisions by
languages from Table 6, and of course geographical subdivisions could also be
added, useful where a tribe or Nation has been widely dispersed..<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Once again, the bottom line is, where we
would like to group our books physically. I would ideally like to have all the
volumes on Indian sociology together, which suggests that I should use the
location facet 0954 first, and then add ethnic facet from Table 5 (I believe
that can be done using two zeroes instead of one after the geographical</span><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span>location subdivision).
Scanning my shelves, I find there is a confused jumble: older accessions are
generally under 306.08 (which will have to be relocated under DDC 22 to 305.8),
general books on tribal culture and affairs tend to be at 307.772, and as I
said, books on American Indians are at 970. In the library in my institute,
again, books on tribal matters and on individual communities and groups are
scattered among all these numbers (and others that may have a few works on,
say, marriage customs, or census data, or social change, and so on). In a way,
this chaotic condition reflects the considerable ambiguity of the term ‘tribe’
itself: after all, at the bottom, we are all tribals of a sort, but overlaid
with cultural and social mechanisms to deal with the fact that we are living in
huge conglomerations of diverse types and lineages.</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">On considering the alternatives, I think I
will be standardizing on three locations: 305.5122 for caste system, 305.5688
for works dealing with scheduled castes (dalits) in general; 305.8’<b>00954</b> for works on general ethnography
(e.g. castes and tribes of India; society in India), followed by specific
national and ethnic groups using 305.805 to 305.89. If possible,
I feel it would be good if accounts of specific castes could follow immediately
after 305.5122 and 305.5688, but the Table 5 numbers may be somewhat limited in
this respect, being more specific in terms of tribes or indigenous ethnic
communities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span lang="EN-GB"><span lang="EN-GB">Then I would use 307.772 Tribal
communities for works to do with the tribal situation and scheduled tribes in
general,</span><span lang="EN-GB"> followed by works on a specific tribe
or group of tribes, using finer subdivisions as available with Table 2 (geographical location) and
Table 5 (specific ethnic communities). I do feel the sequence would be more logical if castes could
follow general accounts of society, i.e. if “dalits” could have come after
305.8. I realize also that a specific caste or tribe should strictly be
under 305.8 (the note under 307.772 says “Class tribal communities considered
in context of culture and institutions of indigenous ethnic and national groups
in 305.8), but I would prefer to separate out so that under 305.8’00954… will come<b> </b>books on the combined
population, on castes, and on castes and tribes in general, (INSERTED on 12 December 2018: 305.805 to 305.89 for specific ethnic communities), and under 307.772<b> </b>would come works on tribal communities where the tribal character is highlighted. I hope the jumble is
straightened out somewhat! </span></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-79148255496269775912015-10-26T04:20:00.000-07:002015-10-26T04:20:50.287-07:0031 Climate change in the Dewey classification system<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Climate change is a hot topic for
discussion today (pun is entirely incidental!), and we can expect to be getting
a large number of works on this subject. Funnily enough, there doesn’t seem to
be one single heading under which all these could be collated. Let’s have a
look.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">On the face of it, we would expect the
topic “Climate change” to be filed under
the broad head of Climate, rather than Change. The first number that occurs to
us is probably Climate, which occurs under the Earth sciences (550), which
takes us successively to 551 and finally 551.6 Climatology and weather. However,
there is no entry under this number (sub-section) for climate change as we understand
it. If we wished to put the item in this class specifically, we may have to
make do with the closest approximation: perhaps 551.609 Historical, geographic
and persons treatment, on the premise that climate change is mainly about how
it’s been undergoing change over eras and centuries (especially since the
Industrial evolution), and how it’s going to change in the coming decades
unless world leaders take responsible action. Another number that may be
suggested is 551.63 Weather forecasting and forecasts, but I think this would
narrow down the scope too much (from general climate to weather), and would be
useful more for specific discussions of the increased variability of the
climate as expressed in specific phenomena like monsoons, heat waves etc. in
specific regions (the <i>effects</i> of
climate change).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">However, to me the number 551.609 is not
quite satisfactory as it does not reflect the special focus of the topic, which
is the sudden and unprecedented acceleration in all sorts of effects in the
global atmosphere that is leading to the unpleasant changes in the large scale
climate phenomena, with all the consequences for humanity. A mere retelling of
the history of climate does not appear to reflect this sense of urgency and
impending doom. This number, therefore,
would be at best kept for older accounts that describe the changes over time,
without much emphasis on the international and national policy and other
efforts that are urgently called for to mitigate, or adapt to, the effects of
climate change.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Another possibility occurs in the number
for the physical science of climate phenomena, which would be under 551.5
Meteorology. Here is where the specific phenomena are discussed: rainfall and
snow, storms and hurricanes, monsoons and clouds. These numbers may be suitable
for works that focus clearly on the science of climate. Where would the notion
of <i>change</i> fit in? Since we are
principally concerned with global warming as a prelude or cause of change in global
climate patterns, we would probably be looking at 551.52 Thermodynamics etc.,
specifically 551.525 Temperatures: atmospheric warming, for instance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">So far for the physical science of climate
change. When we think of the topic in relation to the contributing factors and world
policy, however, we will probably look at the economics or the ecology of the
environment and natural resources, which would tend to take us to 333.7 – 333.9
Natural resources and energy, or specifically to 333.7 Land, recreational and
wilderness areas, energy (renamed in dc22; it was previously more general, Land
and natural resources in dc20). This is where works “interdisciplinary works on
the environment” are to be filed, and this is where there seems to be a
plausible entry point for books on climate change. This number may therefore be
suitable for works which treat of climate change as an environmental and social
issue, rather than as a scientific topic for research, methodology and
technological control. The number 333.72 Conservation and protection is also
available, as it includes a “class here” instruction for works on
“environmentalism, comprehensive works on conservation and protection of natural
resources” (of which atmosphere is presumably an important one). If you really wanted to stretch it, perhaps
you could even consider 333.92 Air, but then it appears this number is meant to
consider these as resources for use (in the line up of all natural resources
like land, water, minerals, etc.) rather than as an environmental sink.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">We were also considering climate change as
a part of ecology, which would take us to 577 Ecology (in dc22); here, the only
remotely connected entry seems to be under 577.2 Specific factors affecting
ecology. We see 577.27 Effects of humans on ecology, then 577.276 Air
pollution, “Including pollution by gases contributing to greenhouse effect
(global warming), to ozone layer depletion” and a note “Class here pollution by
combustion gases”, which presumably refers to gaseous oxides of carbon,
nitrogen sulphur, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">A broader hint is provided under the entry
333.7, “See Manual at 363 vs. 302-307, 333.7, 570-590, 600”, and under 333.72,
Environmentalism, “See Manual at 333.72 vs. 304.28, 320.58, 363.7”. These other
suggested numbers provide yet more possible options. Thus, 363.7 Environmental problems provides a
completely new alternative location under the broad rubric of Social problems
and services, specifically under 363.73 Pollution, 363.73874 Greenhouse gases.
However, the note under this number very helpfully refers us to other numbers
for a “specific aspect of greenhouse effect (global warming) not provided for here”,
“e.g. changes in earth’s temperature 551.5253, effect on ecology 577.276”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The number 304.28 is a very interesting
topic, under 304.2 Human ecology; 304.28 Environmental abuse, “(i)ncluding
greenhouse effect”. The Note in the Introduction says “Use 333.72 for works on
environmentalism discussing the broader concept of preventing and protecting
the supply as well as the quality of natural resources and for works about the
environmental movement that focus on the concerns it shares with the long
established conservation movement”; and use 304.28 for works “that emphasize
the effects upon society of overuse, misuse, or pollution of the environment”.
“Use 320.58 for works that emphasize the potential ideologies of
environmentalism. Use 363.7 for works on preserving and restoring the quality
of the social living space… If in doubt, prefer in the following order: 333.72,
304.28, 363.7”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">There is a general instruction in the
Introduction (para 5.4 in DDC22, Vol.1), which is that “a work is classed in
the discipline for which it is intended, rather than the discipline from which
the work is derived”. Another principle, which I feel is closely related, is
given in para 5.7, termed the <i>rule of
application</i>: “Class a work dealing
with interrelated subjects with the subject that is being acted upon”. This
rule is to take precedence over any other rule. Accordingly, a work that is
concerned with the <i>effects</i> of climate
change would be classed with the resource affected by climate change, that is
the ecological subjects provided under 577 or the natural resources under 337.
On the other hand, if climate change itself is being discussed as a consequence
of other actions, then I feel the work would go (as per the above rules) under
a climate heading, i.e. 551. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">We can see that even a sharply defined and
dynamic topic like Climate Change is amenable to multiple options under the DDC,
even though one of the strengths of this scheme is precisely that it provides
concise, specific, headings for interdisciplinary subjects so that we would not
have to construct our own composite numbers (an option that is liberally
provided in the Universal Decimal system, through the co-ordinating colon : connector
for any two or more individual numbers). Probably the people at Dewey have not
got around to this as far as Climate Change is concerned (there is not even a
proper entry in the index, which provides a different aspect of “climatic
change”): perhaps we will see it very soon in DDC 23 or 24! In anticipation of
such a development, we should be making an educated guess now about the most
likely location or section under which such a specific heading will be
provided. To me, the natural location for interdisciplinary works on Climate
Change, with a heavy tilt to policy and instruments, mitigation and adaptation,
would be under 333.7, atmosphere as one among the natural resources, or perhaps
right under 333.92 Air.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">As before, more than getting every nuance
right, it is a probably more helpful to get all our books and resources on this
subject grouped together in one location. On looking at my collection, I find
that the majority of works have ended up (rather tamely!) under the catch-all
number 333.7. This is understandable, because most of them treat the subject in
the context of a whole lot of other environmental and policy issues, like
development strategies, international competition, optimal consumption and life
styles, income distribution, technologies, trade and barriers, population
control, energy, water, forests, and so on. However, some books that deal with
only the physics or technology of the subject have gone under 551.525, while a
few which are about mitigation and adaptation have gone under 363.7. Given an ultimatum
to choose, I think it would be my instinct to put most of them under the
inter-disciplinary number 333.7, while
works that focused more on measures to retrieve the atmosphere and reduce its carbon
load would perhaps go under 333.72. I would probably avoid 363.7, because this
would scatter the works over too wide a swath of numbers, and 363 would
probably be naturally expected to hold works on various aspects of social
welfare, and not works on environmental conservation (in comparison to 333.7). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Incidentally, 333.7 itself has been
modified in DDC 22, where it is labelled “Land, recreational and wilderness
areas, energy”. In DDC 20, on the other hand, it had the definition “Natural
resources and energy”, which has been retained in DDC 22 for the “centred
entry” 333.7-333.9. Despite all this, 333.7 continues to be the recommended
number for “interdisciplinary works on the environment” in both versions, while
DDC 22 indicates 333.72 specifically for “environmentalism, comprehensive works
on conservation and protection of natural resources”. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-77976792555359418742015-06-21T09:59:00.000-07:002015-06-21T09:59:59.556-07:0030 My country or my profession: basis of classifying<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
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.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">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. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">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.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">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 <i>last</i>
number in the range 780-789 Music!).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">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). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt;">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.</span></div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-67350467174749491792015-04-28T07:05:00.000-07:002015-04-28T07:05:57.031-07:0029 Public administration in the Dewey Decimal<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">As a government servant (public official),
I tend to collect a lot of reports and documents pertaining to public
administration and government work. These are not exactly good for bedtime
reading (or maybe they are… they do put you to sleep!), but they are nevertheless useful as a source of official
policy statements, progress reports, and statistics in general. They are also
difficult to get outside of the official routines: collect them when you can,
where you can, and don’t throw them away, because chances are you won’t find
them in any collections. In fact, there are occasions when the ministry people
will be approaching you for a copy of some old (but seminal!) report,
especially if they are not in printed form (what is known as ‘grey
literature’).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Now there is always a choice of locations
for these types of documents. One appropriate place for many of these reports
would be with the subject matter concerned, so that they will be a supplement
and a complement to the other books and reports you have. I happen to be in the
field of forestry and natural resources myself, so naturally I tend to collect
a lot of reports of government departments on these subjects. Since I have a
shelf full of stuff on ‘forestry of …’, the natural thing would be to put them
in there with a standard subdivision to denote government reports or
statistical compendiums. The standard subdivisions that I use (with 634.9
Forestry, or 333.75 <st1:place w:st="on">Forest</st1:place> lands) tend to be
the following: -021 Tabulated and related materials (including statistics,
statistical graphs), which is very good for statistical compilations; and
various sub-divisions of -021. The standard subdivision -025 Directories of
persons and organizations is also useful, especially as you can directly append
place names 1-9 from Table 2. The standard subdivision -05 Serial publications
may be useful, as well as -06 Organizations an management. Indeed government
reports can be safely lodged under -0601 International organizations (you can
give a letter code for well-known bodies like the WB, WWF, and so on); then we
have -0603-0609 for National, state, provincial, local organizations where we
can put government departments and ministries (though these numbers are meant
for actual organizations and government is supposed to go to 350 Public admin.).
The country code is built in directly, so we need not use -09 numbers for these
separately. For educational and research, I prefer -0701-0709, or -07101-07109
Education, or 0711 Higher education/ -0712 Secondary education/ -0715 Adult
education and on-the-job-training (append place numbers directly to all these),
or -07201-07209 Research (here again, numbers of place are already built in).
Thus, forestry research in the FRI, <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">India</st1:country-region></st1:place>, 634.9’072’054 FRI. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Incidentally, the prescribed order of appending
these subdivisions is given in Volume I at the start of Table 1 Standard
Subdivisions. For the numbers I have been referring to above, the order of <i>preference</i> is as follows (only selected
numbers cited here!): <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">-07 Education, research, related topics<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">-0601-0609 Organizations<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">-093-099 Treatment by specific continents,
countries, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">-021 Tabulated and related materials<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">-05 Serial publications <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This is actually the order of <i>preference</i>, meaning that we should
choose <i>between</i> them in this order,
rather than an order of <i>precedence</i>
which would be the term to use for the order in which these numbers could be
appended one after the other. Dewey states that these standard subdivisions
should <i>not</i> be added one to the other
“unless specially instructed”, but the temptation is too strong to resist
sometimes! The problem arises because the second subdivision may be
misinterpreted as a part of the first subdivision appended. Thus, if I want to
specify research institutions separately from research itself, I might try to
use both -07 and -06 subdivisions:
report of (or on) the Forest Research Institute in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">India</st1:country-region></st1:place> (as distinguished from a
report on the results of the research itself), 634.9’072’06054 FRI. But this
could be read as ’07206, which obviously is research in <st1:place w:st="on">Africa</st1:place>!
Then the final appendage ’054 may not have any meaning (or could be read as a
time period). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">There is another instruction of relevance
here, that is to use -00 to introduce the standard subdivisions, if -0 is
already used in the (main) number for other purposes, or even -000, if -00 is
already used. But whether this can be stretched to a number already having one
appended subdivision is moot (in the above example, 634.9’072’006054, for
instance). The rules do not seem to provide for such concatenations!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">So much for the first alternative, which is
to file government and institutional reports together under the concerned
subject. The advantage is obvious, as the person interested in a specific
discipline or topic is served more efficiently in one location. However, there
is another possibility: that is to group together all the official government
reports under Public Administration, 350-359. This is a complex range of
numbers, similar to law 340-349, as it provides for various ways of slicing up
the facets of country, subject, level, etc. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Let me take the example of the <i>Forest Code of Karnataka State</i>, issued
by the Government of Karnataka, as official-sounding a document as can be
imagined. It’s the ‘Blue Book’ for the public forest officials (I suppose you
could then call it a ‘Green Book’!). I have four things to convey: Public
administration, <st1:place w:st="on">Forest</st1:place> department, Karnataka
state, Code of procedure. Or I might
prefer the state (jurisdiction) before the department. I could even prefer in
some cases the type of document (Code) to come before the other two. Dewey
gives various options for expressing these facets in the classification number.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Option A is to use 351.3-.9 Public
administration in specific countries, thus 351.5487 Public administration in
Karnataka, to which can be added further subdivision -02-04 Specific topics of
public administration. The last are taken from the digits following 35 in the
range 352-354, which cover the different “specific topics”. Since I want forest
administration, I take from the number 354.55 Forestry, the digits following 35,
and add these to the previous number (through the connector -0-), so that
Karnataka forest administration becomes 351.5487’0455. There is an even longer
concatenation possible, because 354.55 Pub. Adm. Forestry itself can take more
appendages, through connector -2-, as provided under 352-354: from 352.2
Organization of administration, I could take the digits 2, and form
351.5487’0455’22 Karnataka forest administration – organization of
administration; or to be narrower, from 352.28 Internal organization, I could
take the digits 28, giving me 351.5487’0455’228, Karnataka forest administration - internal
organization. Or I could choose 352.283 Distribution and delegation of authority,
giving the number 351.5487’0455’2283; or 352.3 Executive management, giving 351.5487’0455’23.
The <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Karnataka</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Forest</st1:placetype></st1:place> <i>Accounts</i> Code could go under 351.5487’0455’24, using 352.4
Financial administration and budgets. Indeed even the number from which we borrow
can itself have concatenated appendages, which gives the possibility of making
the process more or less an endless loop.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">As if this were not enough, we could take
the “preferred” Option B, which is to use the main numbers 352-354, and add
facets as we go along. Thus, 354.55 Pub. adm. - forest, to which geographic facet
is added through -09, thus 354.55’095487 Pub. Adm. forest in Karnataka. Now the
notes permit us to add to each geographical subdivision in the identical manner
as provided under option A: 354.55’095487’023 Pub. Adm. of forests in
Karnataka, executive management, 354.55’095487’024 Pub. Adm. of forests in
Karnataka, financial adm. and budgets. And so on! And obviously, these
subdivisions are not to be confused with the standard subdivision -023 or -024,
which only goes to reinforce Dewey’s prohibition of stringing standard
subdivisions together in a string.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Now to the bottom line: which is the
preferable option? Dewey likes option B, which is to distribute a country’s
public reports by topic of administration. All forest departments will be in
one place, all education in another, all legal in a third. If however you would
like a particular country’s reports to be grouped together, option A may be
preferred. I suspect it comes down to the nature of the collection: if it has a
large number of countries with few topics, I might like option A (country-wise
arrangement), since country may become the basis of search; whereas if it has a
large number of topics, with very few countries, I may like the reverse, as
country does not become that much of an issue. Since I have reports mostly
about my country (and maybe a few international reports), I guess I would like
to use the topic-wise arrangement, option B. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-89901519316328565162015-03-18T10:19:00.000-07:002015-04-29T02:16:07.700-07:0028 Cost Benefit Analysis in the Dewey<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Here’s a case of a strange hole in the
Dewey listing: cost benefit analysis, which could be financial, economic, or
social. Usually, we think of CBA in the sphere of public projects: this is
where ‘social’ or ‘economic’ prices come in (shadow prices, as they are
called). For private proposals, we would talk of investment analysis,
break-even, and so on. But the general topic of CBA seems to have been missed
in the DDC.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Let’s start with the Index, which gives the
following suggestions for ‘cost-benefit analysis’: 658.1554, and a sub-entry in
‘public administration’, 352.43 (there’s also ‘cost control’, 352.85). The
first number, 658.1554, is of course in the domain of business management, and
is repeated under the index entry ‘cost effectiveness; financial management’
658.1554, ‘cost reduction’ 658.1552, ‘cost-volume-profit analysis’ 658.1554. If
we go to the DDC entry, we find these numbers under 658.15 Financial
management, then 658.155Management of income and expense, which has 658.1552 Cost
analysis and control, 658.1553 Kinds of costs, and 658.1554 Income (Revenue),
with the note “Including break-even analysis, cost-benefit analysis,
cost-volume-profit analysis”. If this is what we are looking for, we’re home
and dry: the very phrase CBA is reproduced here, so it should fit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">But what if we are looking for a more
general, strategic, conceptual sort of slot where the theoretical stuff can be
put? What about extension to all types of costs and returns, not just
financial? If we want to stick with 658 management, we can try in 658.4
Executive management, especially where project management or decision tools are
provided for. A promising heading would be 658.401 Planning, policy making,
control, quality management, but it has general themes like strategic
management, and not CBA specifically. Another entry may be at 658.403 Decision
making and information management, since CBA is, after all, a decision tool for
choosing between options. Again, it doesn’t quite answer: there’s Mathematical
techniques, Systems theory, Operations research, Group decision making, but not
CBA. Perhaps we may have to settle for a generic 658.404 Project management,
but we are actually looking for CBA as a tool of analysis even before choosing
a project alternative, so it doesn’t quite fit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Let’s look at the other location suggested
in the Index, 352.43 or 352.85. This is not even in Economics, but under
352-354 Specific topics of public administration, 352.4 Financial
administration and budgets. 352.43 is Financial control, including
non-financial managerial accounting, performance auditing, etc. This again is
too narrowly focused, as is 352.85, Price and cost controls. We want something
more generalised, broader, more conceptual and theoretical. We would like to
see such a slot under Economics, rather than in the applied (techniques) parts
of the schedules. According to E.J. Mishan (<i>Cost-Benefit
Analysis</i>, 3<sup>rd</sup> edition), it is not enough to judge projects
merely by financial profitability because “…what counts as a benefit or a loss
to one part of the economy – to on or more persons or groups – does not
necessarily count as a benefit or a loss to the economy as a whole. And in
cost-benefit analysis we are concerned with the economy as a whole, with the
welfare of a defined society, and not any smaller part of it.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">One hint is that CBA is especially relevant
in the case of <i>public</i> projects, where
costs or benefits (not necessarily financial) accrue to a wide range of
persons, most of whom are not even remotely concerned with the project or its
objectives (bystanders, in a way, who are willy-nilly dragged into the
process). So we may expect to see some slot in parts of Economics like Investment,
Public expenditure or Welfare economics. There is no alternative, then, to
scanning through the entire schedule under Economics to see if there is a
likely slot missed out by the Index.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Starting with 332.6 Investment, we find
these numbers are more narrowly focused on the mechanics of investing finances,
rather than on conceptual treatises on what constitutes costs and returns and
how to compare unlike items accruing to non-identical persons. We do have
332.678 Investment guides, but these are not about different criteria (of which
CBA might be one), but information for different types of investors (private,
individual, institutional etc.), or different types of industry. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This brings us to 336 Public finance, which
really should be the home of CBA and assessment criteria for public projects. Much
of it, however, deals with the actual inflow of funds (Public finance as a
species, not as a subject of study!), then specifically Revenue, Taxes, etc.
The section 336.3 Public debt and expenditure looks promising, especially
336.39 Public expenditure, but this has no subdivisions at all to cater to CBA
as a decision tool. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The next possibility is under 338
Production (economics), where costs and returns should surely be treated in a
general fashion. There are some promising locations: 338.06 Production
efficiency (including cost-output ration, which may be taken as the obverse of B/C
ratio which is another way of expressing the results of CBA); and similar
subclass numbers for ‘Production efficiency’ under different sectors, such as
338.16 under Agriculture, 338.26 Extraction of minerals, 338.3 Other extractive
industries (strangely, no 338.36), 338.45 under Secondary industries and
services (why not 338.46?). This brings us to 338.5 General production
economics, which refers actually to microeconomics (economics of the firm), but
I suppose we could extend it to society as a large firm! We have 338.51 Costs, 338.516
Profits (which is the closest they get to C/B!) 338.52 Prices, 338.521 Price
theories (class here law of supply and demand, theories of value), but no CBA
as a criterion. There doesn’t seem to be any number for the field of Welfare Economics,
unless you count this one in macroeconomics, 339.2 Distribution of income and
wealth, or the Index entry 330.1556 Welfare economics school. There are some
other numbers for economic theory, such as 330.157 Marginal utility school
(neoclassical school, utility theory), 330.16 Theories of wealth, 330.17
Theories of property, but no specific number for theories of value, especially
for “unpriced” values where there are no market transactions (so important for
a social CBA; but see 338.521 cited above, which includes theories of value).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">So there are cases where you may not find a
suitable slot; I wonder whether this reflects some underlying ideological bias
in the founders of the DDC! Bottom line: where have CIP (cataloguing-in-publication)
entries slotted CBA books? The Mishan volume I cited above has been put by CIP
(by the Library of Congress) under the business management class 658.1554 Income
(Revenue), which has the note “Including break-even analysis, cost-benefit
analysis, cost-volume-profit analysis”, as already quoted. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Looking over my shelves, I find that I have
put all my books on CBA under 350.1556 Welfare economics school, since most of
them go on to deal with the social costs and benefits (not just the returns to
the investing institution or entity), and these are for the most part treatises
on theory and concept, rather than descriptions of the economy. There is, of
course, another underlying consideration in this, as in all my classification
decisions: it is more useful to group together items on a broad area of
interest, even if some should have strictly gone to some other location.
Especially in a smallish home collection, it may be better to sacrifice a
theoretical precision for the sake of convenience in usage. On the other hand,
where the treatise deals with a particular sector, I have tended to class it
under that subject, with the nearest standard subdivision to approximate the subject
of CBA. Thus, books on forest economics, including those dealing with social
costs and benefits (SCBA, the subject of my PhD) have gone to the location
333.75’0681 Forest lands – Organization and financial management, even though
the exact slot should have provided for <i>economic</i>
or <i>social</i> rather than financial, <i>analysis</i> rather than management. Books on
the financial and business economics of forest management, however, have gone
to 634.92 Forest management (or, if they are heavy on financial management,
such as the classic <i>Forest Planning</i> by
Johnston, Grayson and Bradley, 1967, to 634.92’0681), if they are not much
concerned about social and welfare aspects. I guess I have still to sort out my
ideas on 634.9 (left-brain) versus 333.75 (right-brain) for forestry! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-72681800514733831242015-03-17T11:15:00.000-07:002015-04-29T02:16:37.730-07:0027 Psychology, philosophy and self-help in Dewey<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Another area in which there seems to be too
much choice of numbers is psychology and philosophy, with self-help or
self-improvement thrown in. As in the case of natural history, there is a pretty basic divide between the humanities
and the sciences. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">To start with, the 100’s have the core
topics of Philosophy, parapsychology and occultism, and psychology. These are
not exactly happy bed-fellows for a discerning lot. Then we have the 110’s,
Metaphysics, the 120’s, Epistemology, causation, humankind, the 130’s Parapsychology and occultism, then the 140’s
Specific philosophical schools and viewpoints. Then come the 150’s Psychology,
the 160’s Logic, the 170’s Ethics (Moral philosophy), then the 180’s Ancient,
medieval, eastern philosophy. This is where you have the great classical age
thinkers like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and Epicureans, and one
section 181 for Eastern philosophy (yes, in singular!). The last is 190’s for
modern western philosophy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">One problem with this arrangement is that
philosophy books tend to get split up on the shelves. Apart from the rather odd
interpolation of paranormal and fringe pursuits, there is the problem that
books on general philosophy, world philosophy, theory of philosophy, or
abstract subjects under Metaphysics and Epistemology etc. are bunched in the
start, while Logic and Ethics and the entire gamut of ancient philosophies go
to the end, with Psychology forming a broad wedge in-between. This is bound to
confuse the searcher in any case, leave alone resolving the perplexities of
life and living!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">A second difficulty was experienced by me,
at least, in the treatment of eastern philosophies (181). While there are
numbers for philosophies of different places, starting with 181.1 Far East and
South Asia, there is a specific list for <st1:country-region w:st="on">India</st1:country-region>
181.4 (as here is for <st1:country-region w:st="on">China</st1:country-region>
and <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Korea</st1:place></st1:country-region>
181.11). The six traditional schools are provided their individual numbers from
181.41 onwards; but Buddhist philosophy is at 181.043, Jainist at 181.044. The
confusion sometimes comes because philosophy and religion are so closely
intertwined, and there are separate numbers for all the main religions in the
200’s. Thus we have this interesting effect that much of Buddhist thought
(philosophy) goes off to the religion numbers; while much of Hindu religion may
happen to come into philosophy, especially if you think of Vedanta as a
religious (or at least a spiritual) rather than a philosophical pursuit. On the
other hand, many philosophical works are classed under religion, such as the
Upanishads (294.592’18), which may better be studied as philosophy, in fact
very similar to the precepts of say the Stoics (188).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">A subject head that seems to mirror the last
mentioned philosophy is in 158 Applied psychology. It is worth spelling out the
note under this heading:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"> “Class
here application of individual psychology in general; comprehensive works on
how to better oneself and how to get along with other people; comprehensive
works on psychological and parapsychological or occult techniques for achieving
personal well-being, happiness, success.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This looks like a tall order; even more specific is 158.1 Personal
improvement and analysis:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Class here works intended to make one a
better person (!) or to stave off failure, to solve problems or to adjust to a
life that does not meet one’s expectations; works on specific systems and
schools of applied psychology written for persons who wish to be improved or
analyzed.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">No mention of 'believe it and you’ll see it', 'awaken the giant',
'you can be great', and so on!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Of course there are only a limited set of
original books on psychology itself (think of Freud, Jung, and a few others),
but a veritable flood of self-help and improvement books that could claim a
place in 158.1. If you wouldn’t like to clutter (I was about to use the word
foul!) your ‘serious’ psychology shelves with these other genre of slightly
doubtful vintage (if you have a person in the household that has done a college
course on psychology, you may have this situation), there is a completely
different slot for the latter: this is in the technology 600’s, to be precise
under 646 Sewing, clothing, management of personal and family life (it looks
like Dewey was of the conviction that 'a stitch in time saves nine'!). You could put most of the self-improvement
works under 646.7 Management of personal and family life, which has 646.76
Social skills, 646.77 Dating and choice of mate, 646.78 Family life (“Class here
guides to harmonious family relations”, essential if you have teenagers
around!), 646.79 Guides for persons in late adulthood (“Class here guides to
retirement”). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">On the other hand, if you look at success
in a more corporate world, you have 650.1 Personal success in business (“Class
here interdisciplinary works on success, formerly 646.7"), which includes 650.11
Time management (also at 640.43 Management of time, in home and family
management), 650.12 Financial success, 650.13 Personal improvement and success
in business relationships, 650.14 Success in obtaining jobs and promotions,
and a few more; and 658.409 Personal
aspects of executive management (“Class here success as an executive”). So do
not think there is any dearth of choice, for classifying or for life
strategies!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Another useful location for self-help in
the sense of physical and mental fitness comes in at 613.7 Physical fitness,
which includes not only exercises of different genres, but also techniques
(hence in the 600’s!) of yoga and so forth. The spiritual side of yoga, of
course, is in religion: at 204.3 Worship, meditation, yoga, or in Hinduism: 294.543
Worship, meditation, yoga, or in philosophy: 181.45 Yoga in Indian philosophy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">So you can imagine that your practical
psychology and philosophy books are going to be scattered around. And don’t
forget to cover your 'unusual' psychology books in plain paper!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-27325450836937301492015-03-15T08:19:00.001-07:002015-04-29T02:17:17.617-07:0026 When you have too many choices in Dewey<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">There are often situations where a book
will fit into any of a number of places in the Dewey Decimal Classification
system. I have a couple of suggestions, or tricks, if you will, to find your
way in such situations. I’ll take a
couple of examples to make my suggestions clear.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Take a simple straightforward title like <i>America’s Wild Woodlands</i>, a National
Geographic Society (NatGeo) publication from 1985. Now this could be filed
under Forests and forestry, if such a number existed in Dewey; or under Forests
alone, or Forestry alone. It could, however, also go under Wildlife, if such a
number existed, as it deals with the flora and fauna of the country’s forest
areas. It could of course also go into the subjects under Ecology, if the
approach adopted were their inter-relationships and the way they interact with
and in their habitat and environment. It could, of course, be classed under Natural
history (which has been generously endowed in DDC 22 in comparison to earlier
versions), or under Environment and Natural resources. It could of course be
put with outdoor pursuits like Walking, trekking or hiking, outdoor camping,
even Geography and travel in and of the region. I am almost certain there could
be a few more numbers which could plausibly accommodate such a title.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">For a small home library, it may not be
that crucial to get the Dewey class numbers exactly right: what is more
important is probably to put together the relatively few books on a topic all
together at the place one would most usually expect hem to be. As I have
suggested many times, it is important to arrive at a grouping that gives you to
hand, at one place, all your books on the subject, rather than spreading them
sparsely throughout the shelves. The subject is more important, in my
consideration. If you make the country the main criterion, then you would have
to search through all the shelves country by country to locate books on a particular
subject (starting from World, then by Continent, and so on). As far as
possible, therefore, I put Country last in the number-building exercise. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This does not, of course, answer the question
of which subject (Classes) to put each title under. Now is when I try to
visualize where I would like to have all books with such an approach or slant. Since
forests and forestry are the subject in which what I have a <i>lot</i> of titles, I feel I have to exercise
a little more discretion and split up my collection judiciously. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The basic distinction I try to make is
between science/technology and … non-science! That is, the social sciences and
humanities. Titles that talk of the sociology, politics or economics of forests
go into the latter category, to be assigned to the 300’s in the DDC. Even
within science/technology, I like to separate the purely technical books,
reports and manuals out, and put them under the 600’s. Those titles which deal
with the science aspects would go to the 500’s. Of course, those which contain
a travelogue, or talk about the geography and history could go to the 900’s,
but I would perhaps not mind having them with the titles in the other
categories depending on the accent or coverage.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">These are admittedly somewhat vague
distinctions, and one can decided only by scanning the book and judging where
the main emphasis lies. The book decidedly seems to me to be about the forest
as habitat, about its trees and plants and animals, the changes in ecology over
time, etc., although there is one picture of a bearded bloke with a home-made
guitar (dulcimer) as a nod to the human denizens. In the present case, I feel
‘forest as a habitat’ would sum up the subject of the book. On the whole, I get
the sense that the book is about the natural history of <st1:place w:st="on">North
America</st1:place>’s wild (natural) forests, rather than about the forest
economy or managed (planted) crops. I will be happy to put this book in the
natural history section, to join a number of others about the forests of
various regions and places. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Natural history has been given a good deal
in dc22, as we no longer have to isolate all these nature books in 508 Natural
history, to be followed by all the mathematical and physical sciences before
coming back to biology, botany, ecology etc. Instead, dc22 advices us to go to
578 ‘Natural history of organisms and
related subjects’, and we have a nice entry in 578.7 ‘Organisms characteristic
of specific kinds of environments’, with the note “Class here biology of
specific kinds of environment”. This is right up our path in the woods, and
578.73-.75 gives us a mechanisms to bring in digits from 577.3-577.5 for
nonaquatic environments, and 578.76-.77, from 577.6-577.7 aquatic environments.
In our example, 577.3 is <st1:place w:st="on">Forest</st1:place> ecology, and
we can take the last digit and attach it to 578.7, thus giving us 578.73
Natural history of organisms in forest environments, thank you and welcome! Now
it is a simple job to add the place code, -0973 for <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>, 578.730973.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The number 578 refers to natural history of
all types of organisms in different environments, but there are separate
classes for the natural history of limited groups of organisms: 579 Microorganisms
etc., 580 Plants (or more specifically, 581 Specific topics in natural history
of plants), similarly 590 Animals or 591 Specific topics in natural history of
animals, 598 Birds and finally 599 Mammals, where there are no special numbers
for natural history as such (I suppose the whole field is about natural
history!), but you can attach sub-numbers for specific topics from 591.3-59.7
and so on to mix and match for a narrower focus. Of course, for a small
collection, it may not be necessary to go down to that level of detail; put all
elephant books together arranged alphabetically by author, rather than trying
to distinguish sub-topics like ecology or behaviour or diseases or reproduction
and so on. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">It would be interesting to check our choice
with CIP (cataloguing-in-publication) if it’s available; NatGeo are
particularly meticulous in providing this for all their publications at the <i>back</i>, usually after the Index. I was
surprised to see that they chose to classify <i>America’s Wild Woodlands</i> under 917.3’09152, Geography of and
travels in, American forest, rather than in Ecology which is listed as the
subject matter! I guess NatGeo cannot but give primacy to the Geography aspect.
However, for me it is nice to have this book close to titles like <i>American Rainforest</i> and <i>Rainforests of Australia</i>, not to speak
of <i>Wild India</i> and <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on"><i>Silent</i></st1:placename><i> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Valley</st1:placetype></i></st1:place>.
And followed by <i>Deserts of</i>…, <i>Wetlands</i>…, <i>Grasslands</i>… and so on. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Where was natural history provided for in
dc20? The number 508 Natural history was meant for “description and survey of
phenomena in nature”; for “natural history of organisms” you were packed off to
574 Biology! The closest you could get would be 574.5 Ecology, which was more technically
oriented to topics like “adaptations, behaviour, biomes, ecosystems, ecological
succession”: no picture books here! Subclass 574.5264 was for land
environments, including 574.52642 Forests, jungles, woodlands. You could skip
to 581.5 Ecology of plants, or 591.5 Ecology of animals, to which you could
attach similar digits from sub-numbers under 574.5. The number 578 was for
Microscopy in biology, 581 just Botany (and not the more interesting dc22
Specific topics in natural history of plants), and likewise for Zoology
(Animals). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The reverse tack would be to ask, what do I
<i>not</i> put in the 500’s to do with
nature/ wildlife? I feel that documents on the management of wildlife reserves,
for example, are better put in the technology section, 639.9 Conservation of
biological resources, which has a special sub-class 639.95 Maintenance of
reserves and refuges. So reports of the tiger conservation project, for
instance, go there. So do picture books on individual reserves, or even on many
reserves (although the last could equally well go to Natural history 578). The
reasoning is that these are narrowly focused on the conservation aspect, and
not on the general biology and ecology of the habitat or group of organisms. Thus
the equally colourful and lavishly produced NatGeo book <i>Wild Lands for Wildlife. America’s National Refuges</i> goes into
639.95. So I do split up my books between biological accounts and applied or
technology books, even if they are glossy and colourful!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Similarly, books of forest <i>management</i> are sent off to 634.9
Forestry, even if they may be picture books or dealing with the same American
woodlands. <st1:place w:st="on">Forest</st1:place> resource surveys, forest
products, economics and business, and statistics are all sent to the technical
class 634.9. There is a problem with 333 class numbers (dc20 had 333 Land
economics, 333.7-.9 Natural resources and energy, whereas dc22 calls it 333 Economics of land and energy, 333.7-.9 as
in dc20), because there are classes that include forest, wetland, recreational
and wilderness areas, biological resources and organisms, and so on. I guess
you’ll have to take a call whether a title goes with the science/technology sections
or with the social sciences (economics being somewhere in-between because it
tries harder!). I prefer to put all policy and polemics under 333, while honest
accounts of some poor naturalist will be best kept in the 500’s! I have this
problem with a title like Kenneth Brower’s <i>American
Legacy: Our National Forests</i>,
another NatGeo publication that can be fairly said to be not so much about the
natural history alone, but about policy issues: “exploring the multifaceted
problems of overcutting, watershed protection, erosion control, wildlife
conservation, and more”. I find that I have put it under 333.75, but I could
have put it under 634.9 Forestry; the only consideration is that it is written
for a general audience, by a non-forester, and is more concerned with public
perceptions and aspirations, public policy, and trade-offs, and not just with
maximizing forestry returns (from forest products). Incidentally, CIP has it
under 333.75’16 <st1:place w:st="on">Forest</st1:place> lands, Conservation and
protection; and the previous example, <i>Wild
Lands</i>, under 333.95’16 Biological resources, Conservation and protection. On the other hand, another NatGeo book, <i>America's Hidden Wilderness: Lands of Seclusion</i>, has been put in 917; so go figure! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This is, of course, just one example. My
next post will consider the Psychology-Philosophy-Self improvement gamut on
similar lines. </span></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-49617389107976945742015-02-24T09:38:00.001-08:002015-04-28T06:58:38.167-07:0025 Law and the Dewey Order<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">I just got a jeep-full of my old collection
of forestry documents and books from my erstwhile institute, where I had stored
them during my tour of duty. I’m now stuck with the task of finding space for
them in my already packed shelves! But I was missing too many of my old
documents and resources and wishing I had them around; hence this indiscretion!</span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimWx3Fh4G2ekr6Wewhi8Ypnvvfal7bnbbBPbCCkGqrFir-RseXLORERd-5z71uCJINlo__jxBoQfrjed8fseZTX4gFELKF2O5RtslnuuvUbL7XiGPva-BZE8uFC0EFLbfPw_LUpafflj4/s1600/DSC_0677-web.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimWx3Fh4G2ekr6Wewhi8Ypnvvfal7bnbbBPbCCkGqrFir-RseXLORERd-5z71uCJINlo__jxBoQfrjed8fseZTX4gFELKF2O5RtslnuuvUbL7XiGPva-BZE8uFC0EFLbfPw_LUpafflj4/s1600/DSC_0677-web.jpg" height="200" width="132" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Someone's been naughty!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But to get to the point of this post: among
these documents are a few of the official manuals and legal enactments. Law has
always been a difficult field for me, both during my government days, and now
in the Dewey system! Let me share my thoughts.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Law is provided for in a very detailed
manner in Dewey under 340, that is from 340 to 349; this is followed by Public
administration, from 350 to 354 (and Military science, from 355 to 359, which
does not concern me here). The law of traditional societies in the modern
world, and of the ancient world, are
provided for under 340, international law under 341. The principles of
building numbers for the law of a jurisdiction or area are provided in the
notes under 342-349.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The number 34 is the base number for Law,
and is one of the <i>five elements</i> that
are used to build numbers for law subjects. The second element is provided by
the digits for <i>specific branches </i>or<i> type of original materials</i> etc.: thus, the
eight categories from 342 to 349 are devoted to the following subjects, the third
digit (at the level of the thousand <i>Classes</i>)
serving as one of the five <i>elements:</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">342 Constitutional and administrative law</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">343 Military, defence, public property,
public finance, tax, trade (commerce), industrial </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">344 Labour, social service, education,
cultural law</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">345 Criminal law</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">346 Private law</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">347 Civil procedure and courts</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">348 Laws (Statutes), regulations, cases not
limited to a particular branch</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">349 Comprehensive works</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The facet indicator -0- is a <i>third element</i> (-00- is used for standard
subdivisions). This is followed by the <i>fourth
element,</i> digits indicating a subject under (subordinate to) the specific branch
etc. listed above. The <i>fifth element</i>
is the geographical indicator -4 to -9 from Table 2. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This scheme gives us alternative ways of
building numbers, depending on the order in which the elements are added. A
simple way would be to put the geographical indicator last. Thus, under
Criminal law 345, we can have Courts, 345.01, and in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Australia</st1:place></st1:country-region>, 345.01’94. The order can
also be reversed under option C: 345.1, Criminal law, Courts, of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Australia</st1:place></st1:country-region>
345.1’094. These options however still distribute law of a specified
jurisdiction among the different subjects, which may be inconvenient if we
wished to group together all the laws of a particular geographical area or
jurisdiction (e.g. country) in one place. That is, if we are doing research
into the law of a country we are going to start a business in, we would like to
have all its laws in the library’s collection
conveniently to hand in one location, rather than having to roam the
stacks (shelves) trying to locate the relevant documents under different
subjects and subdivisions of subjects. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Two alternatives are available to group all
material of a preferred jurisdiction together. One, option A, is to use 343 –
348 for the preferred jurisdiction, e.g. usually the home country, and 349 for
all other jurisdictions. The way 349 is built up in this option, is as follows:
349.4-.9 cover different jurisdictions from Table 2, e.g. 349.94 Comprehensive
law of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Australia</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
Another option B is actually to put geographical notation first, immediately
after 34, thus, Law of Australia 3494 or 349.4, followed by facet indicator 0,
then the subdivision of the subject, say Criminal courts 51, thus 349.4051.
There is not supposed to be any confusion of this with 349.4, which would
indicate Comprehensive Law of Europe! This suggests that further facet addition
is not an option if geographical indicator is appended last, as under option A 349.4-.9
(from Table 2).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This description barely scratches the
surface, of course, and the relevant pages of DDC must be consulted. However,
let us try applying these options to a practical situation. I have certain
documents dealing with the forest law of a particular jurisdiction, <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>. I also
have the Wildlife law, Environment law, Land Revenue, Income Tax, etc.
applicable to India and to Karnataka state, etc. There are also descriptive or
discursive works on the law of forest of other subjects apart from the actual
legal enactments and cases. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Now the arrangement I prefer would be to
group all the laws pertaining to the country together. Within these, I would
much prefer the laws pertaining to each subject to be grouped together, say
land revenue, forest, wildlife, etc Let us see what possibilities there will be
for such an arrangement.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Suppose we reserve 342-348 for the
preferred jurisdiction under option A, but using this for the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">UK</st1:place></st1:country-region>, the
erstwhile colonial power, and generally recognized as the ‘mother’ country for
law and constitution. Then I would like to put all laws of a specific country
under 349, thus 349.54 <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
But then there does not seem to be a way of adding facets to this through -0;
we would have to put the facet in-between, yielding the sequence
Law-Forest-India. To realize the arrangement Law-India-Forest, Law-India-Environment,
and so on, we have to resort to option B, appending to Law 34, area indicator
54 (from Table 2), yielding 345.4 Law of India; then appending the facet
indicator, 0, and the subject, ‘3076498 Forest products (from 343.076498), thus
345.40’3076498 Law of India-forest. The problem here is that different types of
original material on Law of forest would be dispersed: case law, for instance,
would have to go under 345.40’8, and it would be difficult to arrange
subject-wise.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Dewey does come to the rescue, however, by
providing a special development of standard subdivision -026, that can be
appended to numbers built up under 342-347, which includes the sector-wise
subjects like forest products, 343.076498. The standard subdivision -026 in
Table 1 is itself indicated in DDC 22 in parantheses, (026), i.e. not
preferred, with numbers under 341-347 shown as preferred. However I personally
have found -026 extremely useful to class law of each subject with the subject.
This is convenient for shelving books about the subject’s law and policy, e.g.
discussions on India’s forest land law and tenure, and suggestions for change, 333.75’026’0954
Forest-law-India or 333.75’0954’026 Forest-India- Law. Perhaps we could use
some license and expand -026 the way it is developed under 342-347 Branches of
law. Thus, we have ‘02632 Individual and collected laws, ‘02636 Administrative
regulations, ‘02643 Court decisions, ‘02646 Rulings of regulatory agencies, and
so on. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Coming back to option B, then, we have
derived Law-India-forest as 345.40’3076498, and to this we can append -026 to
show type of material as per the special development of -026 indicated above:
separating the actual acts, rules, case judgements and orders, and so on. What
is convenient here is not just the separation of these different materials, but
the fact that a standardised arrangement is provided, which will recur under
each subject. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">There is always some conflict between
filing law matters under each subject separately using standard subdivision
-026 (the final option suggested under 342-347), and bringing them to the Law
discipline as described above. Since -026 is a standard notation for law (even
though it is shown within brackets, i.e. as not a preferred option, in Table 1
of DDC22), perhaps books about law (which may include a general discussion of policy,
history, biography, etc.) of a particular field can be kept within the field;
333.75’026 would be preferred for books on forest law, 634.9’026 for
regulations on forest management (timber extraction and certification, working
plan codes, etc.). There is again a dilemma when a subject is so ambiguously
divided between two numbers like forest lands (333.75) and forestry (634.9),
not to speak of conservation (333.95 or 639.9). One will have to use one’s
discretion and familiarity with the way the users think: forest professionals
will gravitate to 634.9, while social scientists will naturally expect books on
forest law to be filed under 333.75,
books on environmental law under 333.7 and so on. This is a difficult call, and
perhaps to avoid this choice altogether, everything can be filed under law 34--
with either subject or geographical jurisdiction coming second. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Bottom line: I tend to file pure law
documents (bare act and rules, case law, court judgements) under 34--, preferring
the sequence Law-subject-country-type/origin of document, whereas social
environmentalists’ tracts on forest law, tenure, rights, etc. go under
333.75’026, and wildlife law enforcement, intelligence, regulatory bodies, etc.
under 639.9’026. A library catering to Law professionals will probably prefer
everything under Law 34--, whereas for a collection coming from an applied
field like forestry, the expectation would be to file law tracts under
different subject heads: law pertaining to forest conservation, law governing
forest management, law of environmental conservation, and so on (hence,
scattered). On this basis, I like to know that pure law resources (bare acts,
case judgments, regulations, etc.) will be found under Law 34--, whereas
subject matter tracts which probably discuss law in the context of history,
policy, etc. will be found under the relevant subject; this dual approach suits
my requirements. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">And I am not above cheating a bit and using
the extended -026 development not only under Law numbers, but even under
different subject matter numbers using standard subdivision -026 from Table 1…
something definitely not recommended by the official schedules! A further (definitely
un-standard!) twist is also conceivable if you want to use the 026 addendum <i>twice</i>: Forest lands 333.75-law
’026-country ’0954- court decisions ’02643, for instance, where the final -026
subdivision is expanded using the special schedule provided under 342-347 (not
authorised as per Dewey on two counts: the expanded schedule for -026 is not
available in Table 1, and moreover -026 is supposed to precede -09 subdivisions
if at all permitted!). </span></div>
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Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-41708694788416347392015-02-08T10:35:00.000-08:002015-04-28T06:58:19.268-07:0024 Dewey versions and changes – DDC 19 to 23<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-GB">Dewey has been around a long time – since 1876,
when the system was first published as a 42-page pamphlet with less than 1000
classes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Decimal_Classification). Naturally,
there have been a number of revisions – edition 23 was introduced as of mid-2011,
and no doubt the 24<sup>th</sup> edition is already in the offing. Interestingly,
the 1876 publication has been uploaded at the Gutenberg site (<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12513/12513-h/12513-h.htm">http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12513/12513-h/12513-h.htm</a>).
This is the official OCLC Forest Press blog (025.431: The Dewey blog):</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">http://ddc.typepad.com/ , which may be of
interest. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">So what are all main reasons for all these
versions, and how do we respond to periodic revisions and in-between
developments? If you want a learned version, here’s one:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">“The evolution of Dewey Decimal
Classification editions illustrates the contextual actions between the
cognitive approach and the operative research which become decisive in the
dynamic of the indexing language.” (Dr. Zenovia Niculescu of the Library and
Information Science Department, University of Bucharest, “Dewey Decimal
Classification Editions”, at <a href="http://www.lisr.ro/en13-niculescu.pdf">http://www.lisr.ro/en13-niculescu.pdf</a>.
If you want a simple account, read on!</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Let me recount my own experience. I am on
DDC 22 presently, but started off with DDC 19 a few years back – mainly because
that was the printed version available in the library in book form (not much
internet those days!). This was the “Abridged” edition, incidentally, which
compresses the 4 volumes (or it may have been 2 volumes those days) of the
full-blown version into a single volume for the convenience of small
collections. (The latest full blown version is currently DDC 23 published in
2011, and the latest abridged version is the 15<sup>th</sup> (Abridged 15), published
in 2012). If I remember rightly, this one didn’t have the detailed expansion
for 333.7, Land and natural resources, which was my main interest, and so I was
forced to graduate to the full version of DDC 20, which I got my office to purchase. I discovered
just now that archive.org has uploaded the entire DDC 20, my main learning
platform, here: </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><a href="https://archive.org/details/deweydecimalcla01dewe">https://archive.org/details/deweydecimalcla01dewe</a>
(and replace 01 in the tag by 02, 03, 04 for the other volumes). And here is
DDC 19: <a href="https://archive.org/details/decimal19v1dewe">https://archive.org/details/decimal19v1dewe</a></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">DDC 20 (published in 1989) was revised to
DDC 21 (1999) and then to DDC 22 in 2003, which is the version I got when I
finally decided to order it online (used) through Abebooks.com, from
London-based bookseller phatphocket.com who charged some 30 BP, that included
around 10 BP for shipping (actually one attempt at getting the 21<sup>st</sup>
edition misfired, the packet never reached my address!). Some of the numbers
that have been modified include a complete revision and expansion of 780-789 Music,
and a considerable development of Tables such as Standard subdivisions.. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Some of the changes in the 21st edition of Dewey
Decimal Classification (from Dr.Niculescu’s aforementioned article: “changes
for the index terms in religion, public administration, scientific life;
developments for groups 296 Judaism, 297 Islam; the introduction of new
subjects in the scheme: Internet, virtual reality, rap music, etc. and resizes
the geographic notations for the ex-soviet area.” The publisher of this
edition, Joan Mitchell specifies that the main changes: “were induced both by
the evolution of some domains such as: Public Administration 350/354; Education
370, as well as by the new socio-political reality (the modification of the
table 2/42 for the ex-soviet states, for instance) or for diminishing the
present lack of balance between different cultures (the modifications of Classes
200 Religion; 296 Judaism; 297 Islam).” Worthy of mention would be the major
revision from DDC 20 to DDC 21 of Biological sciences: 574 Biology is no longer
used, Biological processes having been developed in 570 itself; Ecology of
organisms moved from 574.5 to 577, e.g. Forest ecology 574.5 to 577.3, Desert
ecology from 574.5 to 577.54; some numbers are shifted to 578. A number of taxa
have also been shifted: 589 Fungi etc. to 579, etc. Human evolution and palaeontology
have been shifted wholesale: Human races from 572 to 599.97, 573 Human physical
anthropology to 599.9, 573.2 Human evolution to 599.93, 573.3 Prehistoric man
to 569.9, for example. Thus one can gather that librarians had their work cut
out keeping up with these changes!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">DDC 22 (2003) was the first edition to be
produced “in the context of the web environment” (DDC 22, Vol.I, p.xix), although
not the first edition to be provided
alternatively as a computer-based version (the 20<sup>th</sup> edition
of 1989 was provided as a DOS-based version in 1993, and for Windows in 1996,
as per Dr.Niculescu). Edition 22 contains many new numbers and topics: new
geographic entities, new emerging topics in fields such as computer science and
engineering (Numbers under 004-006 have been updated), sociology, law, medicine,
and history. Table 7 has been removed (Groups of persons), preferring use of
notation already available under Table 1 (-08) and in the schedules. Table 5 has been renamed Ethnic and national
groups, dropping the term “Racial”. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I have not really got into DDC 23 (2011),
as I am still not through with reclassifying and rearranging according to DDC
22, but these are some of the proclaimed changes: </span></div>
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<div class="MsoListBullet">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB">new provisions in 004–006
Computer science and elsewhere to reflect changes in technology</span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB">updates to provisions for the
Orthodox Church and Islam in 200 Religion</span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB">improved provisions in 340 Law
for legal systems based on civil law</span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB">updated provisions for food and
clothing</span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB">updates to 740 Graphic arts and
decorative arts</span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB">a new location and expanded
development for cinematography and videography at 777</span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB">significant expansions
throughout 796 Athletic and outdoor sports and games</span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB">significant expansions in Table
2, with parallel provisions in 930–990, for the ancient world, Italy,
Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam and Canada</span></div>
<div class="MsoListBullet">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Symbol; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span lang="EN-GB">updated historical periods
throughout 930–990.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">A long article is available at: https://www.oclc.org/content/dam/oclc/dewey/versions/print/new_features.pdf
</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">It would obviously be time-consuming to
make all the changes at each revision, and a choice will have to be made
between continuing with the old and rearranging. Personally, I like DDC 22 quite
a lot (as I have the printed volumes – I would expect the web-based version to
be extra tedious, from a brief bout with the simple web-based classifying resource
provided at <a href="http://dewey.info/">http://dewey.info/</a>. If one were
starting out, by all means go with the latest (but remember that copies of the
older versions are much cheaper on the used books market!), but if one is
already invested in an older version, it may be smart to adopt the new version
only for specific schedules of especial interest, such as the topics under
computer science and data processing where the field is changing rapidly.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">And check out the colour scheme – DDC 22
came in spring green, now DDC 23 is dressed in autumn colours.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyPCMnBwe__IzfaMVqlO8Wib-lU1sq8feKcMxy_oyfJllnFoMmY7Gd9S2aY8L3nk4Ki89eZigBbQK6GBfKUFeWY9DdvZQpCW9pb25smhtqcRsSTRhPsw5UHpGYGz05JhVmdolUDKIhqOY/s1600/DDC22-cover.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyPCMnBwe__IzfaMVqlO8Wib-lU1sq8feKcMxy_oyfJllnFoMmY7Gd9S2aY8L3nk4Ki89eZigBbQK6GBfKUFeWY9DdvZQpCW9pb25smhtqcRsSTRhPsw5UHpGYGz05JhVmdolUDKIhqOY/s1600/DDC22-cover.JPG" /></a></div>
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Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-10358574544097308802015-01-21T10:33:00.000-08:002015-04-28T06:58:01.113-07:0023 MS-Windows ® based cataloguing – HomeBase ® at the home base!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It would be nice if they could develop a basic
program that has Lotus Agenda’s unique approach and capability (see previous
post) of assigning items to categories based on text matching, as this is what
automated classification is about. Until then, one has to fall back upon other
database programs available for inventory management. One such, especially
suitable for home libraries, is a simple and effective program called HomeBase,
which is available free from AbeBooks at abebooks.com (American Book Exchange,
if I am not mistaken). It is actually meant to make your book catalogue
available to prospective customers on the AbeBooks site (for a payment); but
we can use it in the meanwhile to develop our own stand-alone catalogues. In
doing so, we may have to find certain work-arounds to emulate Agenda’s sorely-missed
capabilities.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">HomeBase (now in version 3) has fields for
most of the details one would like to enter for a book, and then some. Being a
database for book sellers and collectors, it has fields for binding, type of
edition, condition of the book, size, and so on. Many of the fields are
sortable, in the sense that the display or list View can be rearranged
alphabetically in ascending or descending order according to Author’s name, or
Title, or Publisher, to name a few possibilities. It also has fields for
keywords, comment/description, and private notes, ISBN, etc., but since it’s
obviously not geared to the classified library, it does not have a field
specifically for the Dewey classification code or call number /shelf number. An
obvious choice to enter the DDC number would be the Keywords field, and that is
what I do, but it’s unfortunately not one of the sortable fields. Since the
catalogue needs to be arranged by the DDC number (apart from the Author name),
I suggest using one of the available fields for this; I am presently
experimenting with Illustrator, which is a sortable field: you can display the
list in the order of the DC numbers on this field with a key stroke; the
Description/Comment and Keyword fields do not have this capability, which makes
them less useful if you wish to arrange the books by Subject or Class Number.
If there are a lot of books under each
subject or class number, it would obviously be good to put the full
Shelf No in the DDC field (DDC number, three letters from Author name, year), so
that the books can be arranged in the same specific order on the shelf as well
as in the database view. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The plus point is that books can be picked
up based on text searches in the Keyword and Description/Comments fields (and
also based on Book Number, Title, Author/Illustrator, Publisher, ISBN, and
Status fields); this means that you can get the program to list the books
having a certain text string in any of these fields (termed a Filter), say
‘Wildlife’, and then sort them by Author or Year and so on. Incidentally, there is also a long list of category names already built in, so you could use these instead of the Dewey subject headings. Or you could add your own categories (up to a limit, I think it is 100).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">All this is not as versatile as Lotus Agenda,
where you could type any text desired in
the main Item field, and Agenda would automatically make assignments of the
Item to different (pre-existing) categories based on text matches. In HomeBase,
I don’t think there is a facility to save specific queries as Views (which is
another of Agenda’s delightful features), one has to ask it to pick out items
matching your criteria, and then work from there. But there is another facility
in HomeBase that should be useful: you can assign each item to different
Catalogues. One use may be to put in DDC Classes here; there is of course a
limit to the number of catalogues, something like 100 I think. The idea would
be, I suppose, to have a limited number of Catalogue names that could broadly
follow the DDC Hundreds (with a few selected sub-disciplines to reflect the
local interests, if there were a large number of specialized books). If the
file starts getting too big, for instance, one may think of hiving off portions
of it, say all Humanities (000-499) in one Catalogue, Science & Technology
in another (500-699), and so on. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Another potentially useful feature in HomeBase
is that it will locate the book in its own database and fill in all the fields if
you give it some information like the international standard book number (ISBN).
That requires you to register as a seller, however, which starts at 25 $ a
month for 500 books (apart from a commission on sales), so you had better be a
serious vendor with a good inventory and be prepared to work hard in case you
want to recover your money! I guess eBay is a little easier to start as a small
or occasional seller, as it allows you to list up to 50 items free and charges
a 10% commission only on sales. </span></div>
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Disclosure: I’ve only played around with
HomeBase, and not actually gotten down to filling in the database records for
either my books or my music albums. I think that necessity will arise only if I
intend to sell (and that too, through AbeBooks). I’m not very sure that it will
be worth the effort at present to fill in all the books, merely to be able to
search and locate automatically… my collection is not that big that books get
completely lost sight of if they are misplaced on the shelves!</span></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-89396167319222584952015-01-12T11:18:00.000-08:002015-01-13T10:21:12.662-08:0022 Building catalogues with a Personal Information Manager (PIM) - Lotus Agenda ® for MS-DOS ® ! <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Have computer, will database. Obviously, a
book catalogue is a prime candidate for computerisation. Funnily enough, one of
the greatest software programs I have ever used for this type of application,
is an old MS-DOS package by Lotus Corporation called Lotus Agenda. Here’s what <i>Underdogs</i> has to say about this program
on the site http://www.hotud.org/component/content/article/40-application/23496</span></div>
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<div class="Quotationtext">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white;">“Lotus
Agenda</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 6.5pt;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white;">is arguably not only the best
"personal information manager" (PIM) software ever made, but also one
of the best applications ever seen on a PC. A DOS program originally marketed
by Lotus during the late 1980's and early 1990's,</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 6.5pt;"> </span></span><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white;">Lotus Agenda</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 6.5pt;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white;">is in fact the program for which the term PIM was
coined. Even to this day, it has PIM capabilities and features that are
unmatched by any other software available.</span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="Quotationtext">
<span lang="EN-GB">"Until recently</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 6.5pt;"> </span></span><b><span lang="EN-GB">Agenda</span></b><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 6.5pt;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-GB">was the only PIM in
the market that allows the keying of data to precede the creation of database
tables. It is an immensely useful tool for sorting piles of information into
meaningful categories.”</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 6.5pt;"> </span></span></div>
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The great thing about Lotus Agenda is the
capability of searching out matches and making allotments to categories
automatically based on these text matches. In specific terms, this can be used
to assign each book to its subject classifications (which can be more than
one), based on text matches – words or parts of words. All other programs I
have tried require you to make assignments manually – this job may be
marginally speeded up by drop down lists of categories or by autocompletion of
the entry based on your initial key strokes, but you would still have to look
at the list of categories (say, Dewey numbers) and choose the appropriate
entries manually. What Lotus Agenda does is to parse through the description
(your main item entry), and match it with the words in its list of categories ,
and automatically make assignments (which you could overrule manually if
required). Another, probably unappreciated, and unexpected, advantage of this
is that each item can have a different number of assignments. In a usual
database program, it is generally required to specify a fixed set of entries under
each category. For instance, we would need to specify Author1, Author2, and
Author3, in the design stage of the database. Similarly, Subject1, Subject2,
Subject3 and so on, but a definite fixed number. Now if a particular item had
say four authors, we would be stuck. These traditional databases are fixed in
their structure. Lotus Agenda, on the other hand, can have a different number
of assignments under each head, for each item.</div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Of course, we would have to provide the
master list of categories (and sub-categories too, nested a few levels). Each
file can get to 5.5 megabytes (MB) according to the Help pages, and you would
have to split the file beyond this size. I used it for a collection of 2000
items with close on a 100 categories (average 25 categories assigned to each
item!) and the file size hardly came to 2 MB. This is suitable for the
simplified Dewey classification, but because very big file sizes generally
increase errors in processing (the file will come out “corrupted” sometimes,
and we will have to reload the older file), I have generally split up the
catalogue by broad areas of knowledge, e.g. each 100’s gets its own database
file. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The advantage of multiple assignments is
that a book can be classified in many ways. A book on wildlife conservation
could thus be automatically classified under Wildlife management in 639.9, and
simultaneously also under other subject categories (DDC subject codes) like
Conservation of Biological Resources 333.9, Animals/Zoology 591, Ecology 574.5, etc. The pre-condition
for this to happen automatically would be either that we enter the numbers in
the description itself, or that the category names each should have the keywords
of the item description (Title of the book, etc.) already entered in its
definition. The flexibility afforded is that keywords can be added to the
definition at any time if some new text items crop up as the books are entered.
. It is doubtful whether a single file could handle the entire DDC subject
categories as well as the Tables for Place, etc. I guess what one should be
doing is to add subject headings and place names as one goes along, which will
help to keep file sizes down, and not really try to pre-enter the entire DC
subject lists. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The disadvantage – and a crushing one, I’m
afraid – is that Agenda was only made for DOS, and never ported to Windows.
There are groups that discuss these things on the Internet, and they used to suggest
that an Open Source project was under way led by Mitch Kapor, one of the
original team that developed Agenda for Lotus. Unfortunately it appears that
they were interested in certain other capabilities, especially web-based
information tracking and team-based processing (emails, contacts,
calendars and the like), and it seemed
to have resulted in ‘bloatware’ that doesn’t do the intelligent Personal
Information Management (PIM) that a single user needs. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">One good thing that Lotus has done is to
provide much of the old software as freeware. The official download page for
Agenda (from the above blog, dated March 2009) is <a href="http://www2.support.lotus.com/ftp/pub/desktop/Agenda/dos/2.0/misc/">http://www2.support.lotus.com/ftp/pub/desktop/Agenda/dos/2.0/misc/</a></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The site provides the individual
installation disks as a file image, a throwback to the 3.5 inch microdiskettes
on which they used to come (each had a 1.4 MB capacity!). </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">One really wishes there were an alternative
‘free-form’ database package where one could change the structure, add fields,
have variable number of fields for each item (record), and have the software
intelligently parse the text and make matches on the run, but there doesn’t
seem to be any for Windows. A German product called InfoHandler seems to have
made the effort, but I could never understand the logic of their system and gave
up. The one practical option seems to me to be ABE (American Book Exchange)
HomeBase, which they provide free of charge here <a href="http://www.abebooks.com/homebase/software-inventory-management-system-catalog/?cm_sp=Ftr-_-Home-_-C2">http://www.abebooks.com/homebase/software-inventory-management-system-catalog/?cm_sp=Ftr-_-Home-_-C2</a></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I preferred v.2.x, as v.3 which they have
now has very tiny typefaces! One advantage if you pay the membership is that
the program can fill all the fields from its international database if you give
the basic information. You could also be a seller on AbeBooks.com if you pay
the fees. More on AbeBooks HomeBase in the next post! </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Abundant disclosure: I used Agenda mainly for my music collection, and only experimented with it for the Dewey classification. Which eminds me, I really must port the music data into HomeBase... but I will have to make assignments to the categories manually!</span></div>
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Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-88580169668735275632014-12-29T07:32:00.000-08:002014-12-31T10:29:23.714-08:0021 Dewey on the wild side<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-GB">This one is on classifying Wildlife and
related topics in the Dewey Decimal system. Just as with Forests (see posts
12-14), Wildlife also poses the problem of too many choices! And these numbers
are situated variously in the Social Sciences (under 333, Land and natural
resources), in 639 (Hunting, fishing, conservation, and related technologies),
and under various numbers in the Biology sections. Let’s have a closer look.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Say you just got a copy of a lovely book on the <i>Wildlife of the Indian Subcontinent</i>, about
all the richest wildlife habitats and the habits and conservation status of the
important animals and birds, their place in history, religion, and culture, and
so on. Where would I like to put books on the wildlife of this place or that on
my shelves? My first instinct would be to… follow my instinct! I think it would
be my instinct to gravitate to the biology shelves… but here we have a problem,
because the book can be filed in Animals (590), or in Ecology (577), or in
Natural history of organisms (578). The biology numbers like 590 may feel a bit
hard-core (in the sense that they are for more scientific or zoological
treatises on body parts, for example), whereas we are looking for a place to
put works for the animal-lover and watcher of live animals (often the opposite
of the biologist!). This is what is called “natural history”, not quite
official as far as the hard-core are concerned, but DDC 22 has fortunately
provided a nice alternative in the form of 578, Natural history of organisms
(which is a relief from DDC 19 which sent you to 508 for Natural history). The
strange problem here is that they don’t seem to provide for geographical
faceting under this particular number. They prescribe 578.01-578.08 for
“standard subdivisions”, then provide only 578.09 for “Historic, geographic, persons
treatment”, but don’t mention extensions of -09 for specific locations and
jurisdictions (578.093-099, as they usually do in their schedules), but only
show one entry, 578.0999 for “Extraterrestrial worlds”! They do have a caution
not to use 578.0914 to 578.0919 extensions for general regions, but instead to
use 578.73 to 578.77, under which you have various ecological types like forest,
grassland, etc. (repeated from 577.3-577.7, under Ecology). I pay no heed to
this implied truncation of -09 numbering, and go right ahead and form the
numbers like 578.0954 (for the Indian sub-continent, for example). And,
naturally, other similar numbers for all “Wildlife of…” type of books which
deal with all types of animals and birds, in relation to the climates, habitats
etc. of regions and countries in general.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The section 578 also has special
subdivisions for other types of natural formations, under 578.7, “Organisms
characteristic of specific kinds of environment”: the numbers after 577 from
Ecology, 577.3 to 577.7, are added to 578.7. Forests, for instance is 578.73
(from 577.3, <st1:place w:st="on">Forest</st1:place> ecology). So books on
“Rain forests” will go in under 578.734 (from 577.34 Rain forest ecology), and
you can always append geographical endings using 09 from standard subdivisions.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The matter doesn’t end there, however (how
could it be so straightforward!), as you may like to use numbers under Animals
(590) or Mammals (599) or Botany 580 or whatever, for specific “taxonomic
groups”. Say you have a book on the “Large mammals of <st1:place w:st="on">Africa</st1:place>”,
that is rhino and elephant and lion and so on: would you like to put it under
578, or would you shift it to its own niche in 599.1, Natural history of
animals? Similarly for other groups. You may like to put a book dealing with
the botanical aspects of forests under 581.73 (again this repeats the numbers
from 577.3 to 577.7), rather than under general natural history. That is, you
could choose to differentiate the books depending on their focus, or accent: is
it dealing with all sorts of organisms? Does it describe the whole ecosystem or
does it talk of each species in particular? The latter would be better off in
the narrower number referring to the taxonomic grouping: say, a “Field guide to
the mammals of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">India</st1:place></st1:country-region>”
would go under 599, rather than 590 or 578, which could be for books dealing
with their ecological relationships.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Another type or genre is books on
behaviour, ethology. Previously Ecology and Ethology used to be treated pretty
closely together. Now the choice would be to put Behaviour under the specific
sub-class under the taxonomic group: “Behaviour of mammals” under 599.15, of
Birds under 598.15, of Animals under 591.5. You have sub-divisions under them
for different aspects of behaviour, such as territory, feeding, mating,
nesting, migrating, and so on (they have omitted 581.5 for Behaviour of Plants,
presumably expecting us to be happy with 581.7 Plant ecology). </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">As
if this weren’t enough, you have a totally different set-up under Technology,
639.9 (Conservation of biological resources), which comes after Agriculture,
Horticulture, Forestry, Animal culture, and so on. This suggests a
differentiation of techniques of husbandry from basic knowledge of the
organisms. Now is wildlife management a form of husbandry or a subset of
ecology? Under 639.9, they have headings like 639.92 Habitat improvement,
639.93 Population control, 639.95 Maintenance of reserves and refuges, 639.96
Control of diseases etc., 639.97 Specific kinds of animals, and so on up to
639.979 for Mammals and 639.99 Conservation of plants, which suggests what
types of topics go here. I tend to file the more technical books and reports on
wildlife here: manuals on census operations, manipulation of habitat, captive
breeding, disease management, policing (a part of protection), plans and
reports on wildlife parks and congresses, and so on. There is a category of
books which I am still vacillating about, puttng them at times under 578, at
other times under 639.9: this is books on specific wildlife parks and
sanctuaries. The profusely illustrated series of collector’s volumes published
by <i>Sanctuary</i> magazine, for instance,
on individual wildlife areas (Corbett, Bandhavgarh, Sunderbans, and so on), and
some imitators, for instance, treat of the wildlife of the region and should go
under 578, but I prefer to have them under 639.95, Wildlife reserves, because
they are actually focused on the management of these particular jurisdictions,
each with a unique background, history, and set of problems and solutions. I
feel these are books primarily useful for the wildlife manager (639.9),
although packaged as a table-top picture book for the general wildlife
enthusiast (578). I guess either choice would be acceptable. General accounts
of wildlife parks (protected areas) in a state or region also go under 639.95,
even though they may describe their habitats, give species lists and talk about
the habits and ecology of the organisms.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">We’re not done yet: there is still the
disturbing factor of the social sciences, which we met with 333.75 Forests, and
now meet again under 333.95 Biological resources (conservation of). Many CIP
(Cataloguing-In-Publications) entries I have noticed, tend to put all
multi-disciplinary accounts under 333 (Economics of land and energy)
sub-divisions, as recommended by Dewey: especially the types of books published
by National Geographic. I tend to avoid this, unless we are dealing
specifically with the social or economic aspects. A book on Wildlife economics,
for instance, or books dealing with wildlife and tribal rights, or community management,
or international conventions, or policy, may prefer this location. On the other
hand, there is a tendency to send Nat Geo books equally to Geography &
Travels 910 to 919, or Ethnology or Human ecology (indigenous peoples and so
on) to 306. There could be other subdivisions on specific aspects like
Government and Public administration, Law, International cooperation, Trade,
Commerce, Production, Non-governmental or Voluntary organizations, etc., which
may receive some of the books and reports, especially boring annual reports and
ministry documents. In all this, finally, we may have to choose two (or at the
most three) favoured locations, even if there were other tailor-made choices,
in the interests of keeping stuff together on the shelves.</span></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-637132169411987102014-12-13T06:08:00.000-08:002014-12-13T07:01:30.086-08:0020 The physical catalogue on cards<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsAel63RxxYb0i00bJnlXOEDh18-i_eiO7MPyrV9VVFm7vFfTsQzrhKrTR4s_hVGGzdIKTmne9UxyU0nnwQfurtcdw4cxVj-bPfkmd6qVwW126lViZ-HXy2BBBKOF5PHzu5uAOt5bShV4/s1600/DSC_0436.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsAel63RxxYb0i00bJnlXOEDh18-i_eiO7MPyrV9VVFm7vFfTsQzrhKrTR4s_hVGGzdIKTmne9UxyU0nnwQfurtcdw4cxVj-bPfkmd6qVwW126lViZ-HXy2BBBKOF5PHzu5uAOt5bShV4/s1600/DSC_0436.JPG" height="131" width="200" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">We would all like to have a detailed list
of the books and tapes we own. The basic version, of course, is to have a long
notebook (a ledger) for each type of possession, and go on entering our
acquisitions as they come in, with basic description, title, date of purchase,
and price paid. A separate ledger could be maintained for books and other
texts, perhaps with separate sections for periodicals and for reprints or
‘grey’ matter (newsletters, mimeographs, occasional documents); and separate ledgers
for recorded media (CDs, tapes, etc.), all types of equipment, and what have
you. A running serial number may be all that is required to identify each item,
and if you put this number on a sticker on or in the item itself, you have a
robust and simple system to keep track of their status. When you give an item
away, you can record the information and draw a diagonal line through its entry
as token of disposal. In fact I use precisely this system to keep track of my
financial investments (and significant equipment purchases), as it has the
advantage over a computer based system of being always ready to go, robust and
physically available at hand, and amenable to all sorts of annotation, on the
run, whenever a thought strikes. Of course, it doesn’t produce nicely formatted
reports or column totals, and doesn’t send out warning beeps when it’s time for
renewal or servicing, which a computer system could do, but I suspect that it
will be too late by the time I get round to putting all this on disk. Anyway,
the old data will always reside between the covers.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">When it comes to books, however, if you
plan to have a few thousand, it makes sense to build up a card catalogue from
the beginning. My card catalogue started when I was collecting references for
my doctoral thesis; my book acquisitions took up steam only sometime after
that, so it was a natural extension to enter the books as well on those 3 by 5
inch cards. Now it has become a ritual whenever I get home with any books or
reports, whether from the bookshops or from meetings and conferences. They all
get entered in the 3 by 5’s, and put into the card tray. Usually I enter the
classification number as well, but if I am too bothered with other stuff to do
it rightaway, I keep the unclassified cards in a separate holding tray, to be
filled in later. I also enter the classification and date of purchase on the
first leaf of the book itself (in pencil!), so that I can put it in its due
place on the shelf after I have finished reading it (which is falling behind
these days!.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">What do I put on the card? There are very
elaborate conventions on this, the best known being the Anglo-American
Cataloguing Rules (AACR2), of which I have a copy of the Concise version,
revised 1988, prepared by Michael Gorman, and published jointly by the American
Library Association (Chicago), the Canadian Library Association (Ottawa), and
The Library Association (London). But I rarely look into it. I have
standardized on the following format: leave the top line blank, on the next
line enter the author’s name following the usual last name – first name
conventions used in citing references, and year of publication; below that, the
title of the work and any subtitles or smart one-liners; then other editorial
information like series or set name and general editor (if important enough), illustrators,
foreword writer (if an eminent person), then edition number, publisher and
place, and finally the international book number (and Library of Congress
number if available). At the top left, I write the Dewey class number, followed
by shelf numbers (usually three letters from the author name, followed by year)
to identify it uniquely; on top right, any special Location (Music Records, or
Series, or Loft, for example). At bottom left, I pencil in date and price (both
original and buying price if needed), and any supplemental information like key
words, alternate classification numbers, etc. All this by hand: it takes a
couple of minutes, and my record is ready! The cards are physically kept in a
metal card cabinet with four sliding trays. You don't even have to go and buy the printed cards: you could do as well with any old paper cut to size (I notice my institute library does this for their internal purposes, although their actual catalogue is on computer, of course). Not pretty, but works well enough!</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq5-S7k9gOsLQCdIFBf-isltgRcTBEO9D2VEwwbaZ_X6KNF-AWgLugz0k39c2ClP3Jl_gJxtz7t9V10R2eoy7uBBY_73hTQrtsXRv1_Jj_JD9IZPnMZ74WOzhdtpEPkb2_NdI6ndC3BOk/s1600/DSC_0438.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq5-S7k9gOsLQCdIFBf-isltgRcTBEO9D2VEwwbaZ_X6KNF-AWgLugz0k39c2ClP3Jl_gJxtz7t9V10R2eoy7uBBY_73hTQrtsXRv1_Jj_JD9IZPnMZ74WOzhdtpEPkb2_NdI6ndC3BOk/s1600/DSC_0438.JPG" height="131" width="200" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">The official AARC rules are very precise
about what each card should contain, and they also have official registers for
the correct way of expressing names and so on. For the record, the following areas are prescribed:</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Area 1: Title and statement of
responsibility</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Area 2: Edition</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Area 3: Material (or type of publication)
specific details (serials, computer files, maps, music etc.) </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Area 4: Publication, distribution, etc.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Area 5: Physical description</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Area 6: Series</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Area 7: Notes</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Area 8: Standard number and terms of
availability</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Area 9: Supplementary items</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Area 10: Items made up of more than one
type of material</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Area 11: Facsimiles, photocopies, other
reproductions</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">One point on which I disagree with the
AARC2 is the rule that editors and compilers should not be made the “main entry”.
I prefer to stick to only one type of main entry, which is the author or
editor, and if this is not available, then sometimes the corporate body itself
or even the publisher (like Government, or National Geographic, or Newsweek, or
<st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Oxford</st1:place></st1:city>). AARC2
says that in the absence of a clear author or creator, one should use the title
as first entry (leaving out articles at the start, e.g. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations,
The). Sometimes I have used the dreaded Anonymous, too, but that is not a happy
solution as it may tend to bunch up a lot of stuff at the head; much better to
put the organisation name instead.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivApsK7c1pKPF_h07bhCRZsv79tDVaTKPeQb33vzp5ZujTqqK_37G_B7qHDh_qgCf4bPhLgbgLcQEexjk_R-7He7BnyrZ1AIqEDDqJP9HduAN0imxEL-lJV8cXLyuH0QqHw4sdI0gJG78/s1600/DSC_0440.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivApsK7c1pKPF_h07bhCRZsv79tDVaTKPeQb33vzp5ZujTqqK_37G_B7qHDh_qgCf4bPhLgbgLcQEexjk_R-7He7BnyrZ1AIqEDDqJP9HduAN0imxEL-lJV8cXLyuH0QqHw4sdI0gJG78/s1600/DSC_0440.JPG" height="131" width="200" /></a><span lang="EN-GB">Actually, I don’t think they expect all the
fields to be filled; the main bits, of course, are author, title and
identification by edition or book number. If you have the time, by all means
fill in some of the other stuff. The class numbers are my favourite, because I
arrange both my cards and my shelves according to them; naturally, I favour
Dewey Decimal numbers (I’m on DC22 now). This gets the books in order of field
of knowledge and subject matter (in the Dewey order with all its
idiosyncrasies!), which suits a knowledge-based user better than arranging by
author name alone (or by title!). Very occasionally, if a book seems equally at
home in two classes, I may put in a card for each DDC number, giving the shelf
position on the top line. Of course, if I have two copies (which happens
occasionally!), I put one copy in each location.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">These other types of catalogue, of course,
are also useful sometimes (e.g., if you are making up a short list in a
particular discipline). In public libraries, they used to make up two card
catalogues, one arranged by Subject (following the DDC or any other system),
and the other by Author, called respectively the Subject Index (which could be
an Alphabetical or a Classified Index) and the Author Index. Nowadays, of
course, catalogues are maintained on computers, and the database software will
allow you to list them by almost any of the fields: maybe by year, or
publisher, or combinations. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">I don’t actually use the card catalogue
much, except to keep it up to date. At the back of my mind is the expectation
that I will enter it into a computer some day (but I wonder whether that will
actually be useful). I do not think it will help my heirs to sort out what is
to be thrown or given away, nor do I expect my Maker to call me to account on
this matter! I do riffle through it once in a while to see whether I have a
certain book already, if I cannot see it anywhere around. Of course, since it
is only a classified index, it won’t help me do alternate searches on author or
ISBN or title; that will be possible only if it is put on a computer. I did
make an experiment with a couple of software packages to do this, and I will
talk about this next post.</span></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-49065634359707242972014-12-02T07:25:00.000-08:002014-12-02T07:26:18.408-08:0019 Classify and Catalogue – two sides of a page<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
One small point that may be worth pointing
out here is the distinction between two parts of the process: one is
cataloguing, the other is classifying.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">A catalogue (catalog) is basically a list
of all items: they could be our own possessions, or they could be even a
seller’s stock list (or inventory) or our own wish list. When it comes to
books, there are usually two basic types of lists used: one is an Author
Catalogue, which starts each item with the author’s name, followed by whatever
details we feel are needed to identify the item uniquely. The other type of
list is a Subject catalogue, where the first entry is the code number or word
for the subject. If anybody remembers, our institutional libraries used to have
these two types of catalogues written on cards of approximately 3 by 5 inches,
stored in sliding trays that formed an impressive piece of furniture near the
entrance. Earnest scholars would spend hours thumbing through these cards,
trying to locate their particular requirements.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Both types of catalogues have their uses.
If we wish to locate records (cards) for books by a particular author, say Dickens,
and we do not know where in the library shelves these books will be found, we
go the Author Catalogue and pull out the tray for the D’s. Of course, the
utility of these cards depends on what else is recorded on each book’s record:
usually it includes the serial number of the book in the library’s stock
register (the Accession number) which should be a unique identifier, the book
title, year of publication, and publisher’s name and edition, and perhaps the
international standard book number (ISBN). There are detailed codes written for
this (the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules AACR2, for instance) But apart from
these, the most useful to locate the book would be a location number or code.
In the least ordered library, they could be simply stacked in the order of
their accession numbers, as we suggested could be done for reprints of papers,
as they don’t have solid spines which will enable them to stand up on their own
in the shelves. For most collections, however, it will be nice to have them
grouped by subject, which is where the Classification scheme comes in.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Commercial bookshops usually do not adhere
to a very strict code of classification, and generally group books by broad
subjects, like Physics, Chemistry, Sociology, Politics, History, Current
Affairs, and so on, maybe even under further subdivisions if it is a campus
bookshop, say different branches of Chemistry or Physics or whatever (usually
following the university syllabus). Meticulous (let’s face it: somewhat
obsessive-compulsive) documentation experts like Dewey (or to a greater degree,
Ranganathan of the Colon Classification) like to reduce these non-standard
subject headings to a standard code with a consistent system of labeling.
Dewey, of course, uses mainly numbers: the 3-digit numbers stand for the one
thousand subject headings (Sections), which are then expanded by adding on
further digits to the right after a decimal point (the successive digits show the
hierarchical position, rather than a value). The Colon Classification system
follows a different philosophy, which I won’t even try presenting here (maybe
another day!). It is my impression that the Dewey Decimal system is more
popular because it has a strong management backup with the OCLC Online Computer
Library Centre, Inc. (obviously), is constantly being developed by specialists
at the Library of Congress, and more than anything has an infinitely more
friendly and common-sense approach as against the Colon’s (let us face it)
somewhat dry language, exaggeratedly punctilious rules and cryptic terminology
(well, one has to admit that it lives up to its rather unfortunate name). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The Dewey number locates the book under the
broad discipline (more or less the 3-digit Section heads, but also maybe under
further subdivisions where there are distinct areas), and then under the most
appropriate specific subject according to the entries in the schedules. However,
for large collections, one can go even further, by adding various suffixes from
the half-dozen Tables provided in Volume I. These enable various aspects or <i>facets</i> to be specified: a favourite is
the geographical or regional coverage, for instance, from Table 2. The Standard
Subdivisions in Table 1 provide tags for various aspects: the suffix -01, “Philosophy
and theory”, for example, is the first subdivision provided in many numbers in
the schedules (it could be used for Policy as well). The suffix -09 introduces
the geographical locations, persons, and periods from Table 2, and so on. Table
3A and 3B provide tags for different numbers of authors and so on (for
collections and anthologies, for instance). Table 3C provides “Additional
Notation for Arts and Literature” to be added “where instructed”. Table 4 provides
“Subdivisions of Individual Languages and Language Families” (from 400), Table
5 “Ethnic and National Groups”, Table 6 provides
tags for “Languages”, while Table 7 for types of persons has been deleted.</span></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-8078292274013135252014-11-28T22:07:00.000-08:002014-12-02T07:34:59.531-08:0018 Why classify when “Everything is miscellaneous”?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
While on this topic of classifying our
music resources, it would be as well to revisit the question of why at all we
want to have a <i>classified</i> list of our
possessions. Why not just keep a running list where we enter each thing as it
comes, something like a “general ledger account” of day-to-day transactions?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB">I came upon a very interesting book on this
question (yes, there are geeks who write whole books on as mundane an activity
as classifying and arranging!) titled “<i>Everything
is Miscellaneous – The Power of the New Digital Disorder</i>”, by David
Weinberger (published 2007 in Times Books by Henry Holt & Company, New
York, ISBN 978-0-8050-8043-0). Weinberger is described as a fellow of the <st1:placename w:st="on">Harvard</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Law</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">School</st1:placetype>’s <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Berkman</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place> for the Internet
& Society, and an adviser and consultant for Fortune 500 companies,
bestselling author, and a doctor of philosophy, so he should know a thing or
two about the subject. His thesis is that the power of the computer and the
Internet have placed huge databases at the call of a button, and searches on
key words can be made in a fraction of a
second, so nothing really needs to be classified any more. In other words,
everything can be entered in a single, massive list of all things. <br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The prime example Weinberger cites is,
appositely, from the world of online music resources, the Apple iTunes music
store, where the albums I referred to in the previous post, have been unpacked
as tracks, enabling consumers to download just what they want, when they want,
thereby giving Apple “more than 70 percent of the market”. The files need not be
organized on your hard disk in any sort of structure, as the software allows
you to search on key words any time (it will be faster, I suppose, if all the
filenames and their embedded <i>metadata</i>
(data about data!) are already indexed on every word, like Google does for the
entire Internet). By giving keyword filters, we can narrow down the choice as
much as we wish. Even filenames need not be intelligible (say
Western-Bach-Concerto-Violin-No.1), but can just be a miscellaneous number, as
the file’s embedded metadata would have information on which searches and
selections can be made.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Another example Weinberger likes is the way
digital cameras have generated millions and millions of pictures that are
stored on the Web, viewed and exchanged and commented upon on the Web, and
seldom printed out or put into albums. Here again, programs like Flickr.com
have relieved the consumer or average user of the responsibility of classifying
the pictures – as long as some metadata is embedded to indicate date, or maybe
location, even the subject may not be all that relevant. What Weinberger says
is that in order to “take full advantage of the digital opportunity – we have
to get rid of the idea that there is a best way of organizing the world”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">On
the other hand, if you tried this with physical objects – your collection of
photographic prints or slides, or your books, or your CDs – you would end up
with a big pile of stuff that you would have no way of using purposefully
unless you did some sort of sorting – usually by subject, not colour or size! There
actually was such a bookshop in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bangalore</st1:place></st1:city>,
where I live, which was more or less an icon – the owner could locate almost
any book in his pile, but few others could. The store, sadly, closed a few
years back, but another phenomenon has sprung up in many cities across the
country – shops selling huge collections of used books imported by the carton
(we are talking of shipping, not cardboard), sometimes even sold by weight!
Most of these stores, I find, do group their books by subject matter
(philosophy, gardening, health, sports, and so on).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">I’m a bit old-fashioned (alas, I have not
read Harry Potter, and I have already built up my collection of music on
physical media), and I have to confess that even with my computer music files,
I cannot help but organize them into subdirectories by composer, instrument,
and form (concerto, symphony, etc.) at the very least. I still find the “album”
concept convenient to record concerts, for instance – I find that the 1-hour
format of most media (LPs mostly 40 to 50 minutes taking both the sides) is tailored
to the average length of most performances. So even if I do manage to digitize
all of them (or procure digital versions), I think I will still organize the
files on my hard disk in a proper subdirectory structure, and I will probably
follow a formal classification scheme like the Dewey Decimal to do so. And I
will preserve the album cases and covers (especially the old LPs) for their
erudite notes, beautiful graphics and illustrations, and the way they are
evocative of places and events that computer files just cannot match! I’ll have
occasion to describe my experiences with some of these computer classifying and
cataloguing packages in future posts.</span></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-17409617574853825552014-11-28T10:27:00.003-08:002014-11-28T10:27:59.403-08:0017 Classifying recorded music with Dewey<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Actual music comes in various media –
tapes, plates (LPs, for example), discs of various types (laserdiscs, audio
CDs, DVDs), and so on. I don’t think anybody would think of mixing these
objects with books on the shelves – they will collect dust, and be of different
sizes and shapes from books, that will call for different handling. So the
actual physical media tend to get stored in separate locations, probably under
a shutter or door of glass or other
material.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">My usual approach to such classification
issues is to first visualize where I would put them normally. In this case, I’m
pretty sure that I would like to stack the LPs separately, singles separately,
the tapes separately (by size, but I have only micro-cassettes), then CDs (and
DVDs and video discs with them, probably). Within each type, I’d probably arrange
them in the standard Dewey Decimal order for 580 Music, just as if they were
books (treatises, texts). All that remains is to give some mark or tag to show
what type of recording media each item is. A simple way, obviously, is to
prefix each number with a code symbolizing the type: LP (Long Play platter), EP
(Extended Play), SP (Short Play), ACD (Audio CD), VCD (Video ditto), MC (Micro
Cassette) or CC (Compact ditto), DVD, MP3, and whatever else you want. Of
course, this will split a particular performer’s works among a number of locations
or catalogues, so if we wish to keep them together, we could add the type of
physical media (LP etc.) <i>after</i> the
Dewey number and performer, so that a mechanical listing (by a computer, for
instance) would list a particular performer’s ACDs, then LPs, and so on. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">For Western music, it is usually convenient
to classify by genre and instrument (represented by the appropriate Dewey
number) and composer, represented by the initial letters of the name, then the musical
form (if desired), year, and serial number, if needed. Of course things can’t
be always simple, and some “local” innovation may be called for to group
symphonies together, or violin concertos together, and so on. For Hindustani
classical, it’s usually the instrument that is the distinguishing facet, then
the performer (not the composer), then year. Since each item may have pieces in
a number of genres, it may not be so important to specify this in the
classification number; the manufacturer’s name and the item’s serial number may
be more useful to distinguish similar pieces. Enough letters would have to be
carried for names to distinguish them clearly. For Western names, the surname
is usually the entry point (Beethoven, rather than Ludwig, although the Bachs
would need both the family name and the individual’s names). For Indian names,
the surname is usually boring, because, like the old king who gave each of his
three daughters half his kingdom, half the names are Kumar, half are Singh, and
the remaining half are Khan (more or less!); I find it much better to enter
with the first name, e,g, Ali Akbar, Allauddin, Rashid, and so on for the
Khans. Thus an audio CD of a vocal recital by the Hindustani classical singer
Rashid Khan would be ACD-789.9H’1’32 (for solo voice) followed by RAS 2011, and
maybe the serial number. Or if I wanted a combined list for all media by the
artist, 789.9H’1’32 RAS 2011 ACD, 789.9H’1’32 RAS 2010 DVD, and so on (this is
a purely local innovation, not standard as per DDC!). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Dewey declares under 580 that it “does not
distinguish scores, texts, or recordings”, but goes on right thereafter (in the
usual delightfully contradictory style we have come to love) to offer a choice
of three methods of doing so. One is to
prefix a letter or other symbol, such as R for “Recording”, M for scores, etc. to
the usual Dewey number for a treatise (which is the first method illustrated
above). The understanding is that one goes to the appropriate storing place for
each type, say the “Recordings Room” for R’s. In my institute’s library, they
have put all the annual reports, project documents, and such like, in a
separate room, and the catalogues show this location by the prefix D for Docs.
Thus, Beethoven’s violin concerto could be classified as R- 787.2 (for Violin),
followed by ’1’86 (for Concerto from 784.186), followed by composer, giving say
R787.2’1’86 BEE 1964. Of course, this
would scatter Beethoven’s works all over the shelves, so to keep each person’s
works in one place, we may have to alter the order in which these elements are
entered: R-BEE-787.2’1’86 OIS (for Oistrakh, the violinist) 1964 (a rather non-standard
way of achieving it!).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The second method provided by Dewey to
segregate recordings is to add to the number for texts, the numbers following
78 in the range 780.26-780.269. As mentioned earlier, standard subdivisions of
780 Music are modified in places to cater to the special requirements of the
subject. 780.26 is actually 78 with the standard subdivision -026, which in
Table 1 is actually Law (but not recommended for developing numbers, preferring
to use the main numbers 341-347). Under 780 Music, however, the standard
subdivision -026 (actually, -26, as the zero is already provided by the base
number 780) and its further subdivisions are used for a different purpose:
“Texts, treatises on music scores and recordings”. Under this, then, 780.266 is
“Sound recordings of music”. The number, when used normally, would refer to
treatises <i>about</i> recordings (like the
various guides to recorded music), but
Dewey is suggesting that we use the latter part of these numbers <i>for</i> the recordings themselves, or for
the scores: 787.2’0266, recordings of violin music. This standard subdivision
-026 can be used wherever an “add as instructed” from 780.1-780.9 is provided:
thus, 787.2’1’86 (for Violin Concerto) followed by ’0266 (for Recordings),
787.2’1’86’0’266 BEE 1964 and so on, neat! Standard subdivision -0267 likewise
referes to “Video recordings of music”. (As
far as can be made out, we have the option of adding suffixes through connectors
-1- or -0- any number of times).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The third option suggested by Dewey is to
class recordings under 789, and instructions at that number suggest using an
alphabetic mark for composer, followed by the numbers after 78 in the range
780-788. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">I must confess that I have not actually
gotten round to classifying my recorded music under Dewey or other system. What
I have is a list of these items (LPs, cassettes, CDs etc.) grouped by composer
in the case of Western classical, and by performer in the case of Hindustani
music. This is maintained physically in a loose-leaf ring binder of half the
normal page size, so that pages can be added for new names or items as needed.
The same information is also entered in a computer database (I use Lotus
Agenda® about which I will talk later), which is based on DOS, and has never
been ported to the Windows environment, alas! Since many of these albums (as
they are technically called) combine say concertos and sonatas, or Hindustani <i>khayal</i> and <i>thumri</i>, and so on, there is not much scope for following strictly
the Dewey order of musical forms; however, I broadly class vocal forms first,
followed by the main instruments in the Dewey order. Mixed albums, of course,
are located in front (or top). The lot are kept in various shoe boxes (ideal
for CDs!) arranged alphabetically (by first name of artist for Hindustani,
standard family name of composer for Western), and the LPs, of course, are
stacked in a cupboard. </span></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-60885389597179475082014-11-26T23:58:00.000-08:002014-11-29T07:38:06.900-08:0016 Music in the Dewey world<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Music, developed through the Dewey sections
780 to 789, is one of the subjects that ought to satisfy any enthusiast, except
that it is let down by its euro-centrism, as in many other fields (Religion,
for instance).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Let’s look at the wealth of detail and
faceting that is provided. Sections 780 and 781 provide for general aspects. For
starters, 780 Music can be related to <i>any</i>
other subject through the expedient of tagging on any three-digit number (the
Section heads, in other words) through the connector -0-, yielding a fulsome
range 780.0001 – 780.0999. One is tempted
to extend it beyond the prescribed 3-digit limit by adding further digits from
the schedules, and why not standard subdivisions too! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">If this were not enough, 780 is itself
developed through standard subdivisions
by 780.1-780.9, which have a number of specialized modifications of the
standard concepts like 780.26, “Texts, treatises on music scores and
recordings” rather than -026 Law in the standard subdivisions (Table 1). In
developing 780.9 Historical, geographic, persons treatment, there is provision
for historical periods which appear tailored mainly to western music, and only
one entry (I am talking from DDC 22) of an actual geographical region, 780.94
Music of Europe. I suppose we should take the diplomatic liberty of assuming
that numbers like 780.95, 780.96 and so on are not precluded, or indeed 780.954
for South Asia or 760.951 for <st1:place w:st="on">East Asia</st1:place> and so
on.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The numbers under section 781, that is
781.1 to 781.8 (there appears to be no 781.9), have a number of general topics,
termed “General principles and musical forms”, such as 781.1 Basic principles, 781.2
Elements of music, 781.3 Composition, and so on to 781.8 Musical forms. For
instance, 781.26 Tonal systems, which provides among other numbers, 781.264
Other modes, including Indian ragas (my area of interest). The interesting
thing is that an “Add as instructed” provision is attached to the entire range
781.2 to 781.8, which provides for adding on standard subdivisions as modified
under 780.1-780.9, as well as “General principles” from the range 781.1-781.7 using
connector 1 (this is a bit circular!). Thus, “adding from” 781.43 Performance
techniques, we can form 781.26’1’43 Performance techniques for tonal systems
(inexplicably, the “add” instruction is not provided for 781.264 Other modes,
including Indian ragas, but I think we should stretch it a bit anyway since it <i>is</i> provided for the numbers 781.263
Medieval church works and 781.265 Macrotonality – dare we think the unthinkable,
that Dewey has a mistake?). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Another productive number is 781.6
Traditions of music, which provides for a diversity of cultures and styles:
folk, pop (which is called, properly, Popular music), country, and even 781.68
Western art (i.e. classical) music, and 781.69 Nonwestern art music. The
numbers, in the range 781.63-781.69 Other traditions of music, have “add”
instructions: standard subdivision as
modified under 780.1-780.9, historical periods, etc. connected through a 0, and
special subjects (facets) connected through a 1, taken from General principles
under 781.1-781.5, and stylistic influences from 781.62-781.69. There ia also a
cryptic suggestion that one should not add numbers using connectors 0 or 1 more
than twice, immediately countermanded by a suggestion in parentheses that you
can add as many times as you desire. Such are the joys of the Dewey world!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Things get really interesting when we cross
over from the general principles and move to the numbers 782 to 788, which
cover various ways of producing music, starting with the human voice: 782 Vocal
music, 783 Music for single voices, and then 784 to 788, Instruments and
ensembles classed by type (keyboard, percussion, string, wind, and so on). Most
of these are tagged with an “Add as instructed under 784-788”, enabling us to
attach numbers from standard subdivisions through connector 0 (you guessed it, as
modified in 780.1-780.9!), and general principles, musical forms etc. through
connector 1 from the range 781.1-781.7 or 784.18-784.19 (this is really
specific; they could have given a more liberal selection!). Again there is the
cryptic instruction that you can do this only twice, or any number of times.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The last section after the different types
of instruments is 789 Composers and traditions of music, except that the whole
section is placed in brackets and the suggestion is given to “prefer” 780-788.
Here is where the rub lies, as the very last number in the whole range, 789.9,
refers to “Non-western art music”; and the problem starts really if we have
different tradition that we would like to group separately.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">As long as we have only western music to
deal with, 780-788 is more than sufficient, it is a surfeit. But if we want to
develop any other traditions separately, then a mighty effort is required to
cobble together parts of numbers from the other ranges, somewhat like the
strange insect (stuck together from various species) that those clever boys
asked Darwin to identify (he is supposed to have asked them “Did it hum when
you caught it, boys?” and when they confirmed that it did, he pronounced it a
Hum Bug). The problem starts with tagging the traditions: suppose I want to
have two, the north Indian classical (Hindustani) tradition and the south
Indian (Karnatik) tradition, I can do it by adding geographical facet numbers,
thus 789.9’00954 for Hindustani and 789.9’009548 for Karnatik (from Table 2).
So far so good, but then the problem is that the “add as instructed” note
provided for the range 789.3-789.9 has the limitation that I can add other
facets (through connector 01) like general principles, stylistic influences,
musical forms, and (through connector 1) voices and instruments, but only to
the base number like 789.9, and not to the geographical facet 789.9’00954 or 789.9’009548 or whatever. What
can be added to the geographical facet numbers (-3 to -9 in Table 2 ) are other
facets introduced by the connector -0- from Table 1 Standard subdivisions,
which are pretty much defined already. There is a provision for developing facets specific to a subject
through the connector -04 Special topics, which could have been utilized to add
on all the music-specific facets like styles, instruments, and so on, but Dewey
prescribes that -04 subdivisions should come first, much before geographical
facets under -09; this would have to be countermanded. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The natural pattern of arranging books on
music with many traditions like Hindustani (which we will call H) and Karnatik
(K) and others like Western (W), would be to group each tradition separately.
Under each, say H tradition, we would like to put books on general principles
first, then books on styles or genres, then books dealing with each type of
instrument, including performers (or even composers) specialised in each
(biographies, memoirs, discographies, etc.), and so on. Then to the next major
tradition (say, K), and likewise further on. If we try this under 789.9, we get
stuck after the geographical facet, and cannot revert back to the music facets.
We would have to put the music facet first, then the geographical facet, which
would make no sense on the shelves (imagine composers in formal dress rubbing
shoulders with pundits in silken pajamas!). I resolve this impasse by cheating:
instead of geographical faceting, I represent each tradition by a letter, thus 789.9H
and 789.9K, then add the music facets through connectors 0 or 1 or whatever is
provided in the Dewey schedules. This is neither standardized nor consistent
with the rest of the schedules (there would be clashes if the same letter were
appropriate for more than one tradition), and we should ask Dewey to provide a
robust connecter (maybe -04-) to connect to the technical facets <i>after</i> the geographical tag (Dewey
apparently recognizes only two traditions: western classical 789.8, and non-western classical 789.9!). </span><br />
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-GB">Similarly, one is stumped by the relative lack of choice of non-western instruments, if we wish to group books (or recordings) by instrument. For example, the Indian tradition has a number of different instruments that could go under 787.82 Round-backed (plectral) lute family: sitar, surbahar, sarod, veena, rudraveena, and other local variants. They would all be jumbled together since there are no specific numbers. Once again, I cheat by inserting an alphabetic code of 5 or 6 letters in the number: 787.82sitar,,,,, 787.82sarod..., 787.82rudra... etc. Or, since I separate the traditions, 789.9H'1'782sitar...., </span>789.9H'1'782sarod.... 789.9K'1'782veena.... and so on. Further numbers can be added through connectors 01 or 1, using the "add as instructed under 789.3-789.9" provision, to tag on even finer subdivisions of topics, like performances, or techniques, or history, and so on. </div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-38625630385695951672014-11-19T23:43:00.002-08:002014-11-20T02:46:16.610-08:0015 Meeting Forestry 634.9 in the field!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Speaking of old traditional foresters, one
of my memorable moments was a visit to the Grey Towers National Historic Site
in Milford, PA (<a href="http://www.fs.fed.us/gt">www.fs.fed.us/gt</a>, <a href="mailto:greytowers@fs.fed.us">greytowers@fs.fed.us</a>) a couple of years
back. This was the home, of course, of <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s founder forester Gifford
Pinchot, built by his father James Pinchot in 1886 (according to the brochure).
Two things make this especially close to
my heart: one, that Pinchot had a special regard for Dietrich Brandis, who set
up Indian forestry during the latter part of the 19<sup>th</sup> century, and
considered him a teacher. In fact, the nice thing about being the
Director-General of the forest ministry in New Delhi is that a bank of crusty
old colonial foresters is staring over your shoulder, and Brandis leads the lot
(he was Inspector General of Forests from 1864, which makes 2014 the 150<sup>th</sup>
anniversary). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM5CuvSi_mtTLlMuaCCMdk9ZCDfuqA3AWWuRRNUFF4EmsZNQqeXz45gePMQ80K3_fB_qZKpVt9-66Kben9g0OrIT-bqCMvvqJhFu5kOOeHDz8CHh5JOzBDHXd2Ndvg11gP0c28BrpS_wY/s1600/16112010196.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM5CuvSi_mtTLlMuaCCMdk9ZCDfuqA3AWWuRRNUFF4EmsZNQqeXz45gePMQ80K3_fB_qZKpVt9-66Kben9g0OrIT-bqCMvvqJhFu5kOOeHDz8CHh5JOzBDHXd2Ndvg11gP0c28BrpS_wY/s1600/16112010196.jpg" height="200" width="150" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">In the Dewey context, what was nice in this
visit was to meet our friend, DDC 634.9, in Pinchot’s library of old books. Of
course, I don’t expect many of his volumes to go into 333.75 under the social
sciences! </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">I am posting two
pictures, one of the library shelf, and another of the grounds. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyzZ3lISCRSn8uvi5hLaQCWDJHhedGlAMBUarHhGRUpokyKjlvaosmJxjkP2yQ86Iu4zjiZmf1GibkygbBjozYJPYcnZUAeFOXJVF0qd8FTRvR0L0RM0OILxZggtbThqYhb4frnuALl88/s1600/IMG_0671.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyzZ3lISCRSn8uvi5hLaQCWDJHhedGlAMBUarHhGRUpokyKjlvaosmJxjkP2yQ86Iu4zjiZmf1GibkygbBjozYJPYcnZUAeFOXJVF0qd8FTRvR0L0RM0OILxZggtbThqYhb4frnuALl88/s1600/IMG_0671.JPG" height="132" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRTBj-5qjrquaobkenjDFuUPFbPA-wBNFFfIk9dXBf2wqRxBH68f4NZEyjbGk_EJTJM15Q6lqSWYSUeQo1wKqjCM-wRXBHAvzUwDezlTzl5BoSLIghdtSdsL-1dg7Tws1XsTvEXRTGlA8/s1600/IMG_0644.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRTBj-5qjrquaobkenjDFuUPFbPA-wBNFFfIk9dXBf2wqRxBH68f4NZEyjbGk_EJTJM15Q6lqSWYSUeQo1wKqjCM-wRXBHAvzUwDezlTzl5BoSLIghdtSdsL-1dg7Tws1XsTvEXRTGlA8/s1600/IMG_0644.JPG" height="132" width="200" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The second sentimental link is that Pinchot
got into trouble over some frank remarks on the opening up of some Alaskan coal
blocks in pristine forest areas, which ended up in an acrimonious fight with
the government and Pinchot’s resignation. Diversion of forest areas, especially
for coal mining, was the most contentious difficult part of the DG Forests’s
responsibilities during my term (2009 to 2012) at the ministry in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Delhi</st1:place></st1:city>; it did not come to
resigning in a storm, but there were moments when the balance between the
bureaucracy and the political masters was tested. Later on, Pinchot got his satisfaction by
running for the Governor’s post and winning, but of course this is not possible
for all civil servants (although more and more retired officials are stepping
into the political arena, which may or may not be a sign of Indian democracy
maturing).</span></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-87700876171374582862014-11-19T23:31:00.001-08:002014-11-19T23:32:50.538-08:0014 More Forestry numbers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">It is seen that forestry topics can be
accommodated under 634.9 Forestry as well as under 333.75 Forest lands. This
division between the mother-lode under agricultural technology and the social
sciences in fact mirrors what is happening to the field of forestry itself: all
the shiny new book spines, like bright young research students, will flock to
the social science cabinets under 333.7, leaving the old dusty tomes to moulder
in 634.9 in the company of doddering old colonials and others of their ilk.
Probably this is one reason why 634.9 seems to have been abandoned by the folks
at Dewey, whereas other areas are constantly being developed and modified. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">ODC had a separate primary number 6 which
encompassed <st1:place w:st="on">Forest</st1:place> management, Business
economics of forestry, and Administration and organization of forest
enterprises. This sometimes looks like overkill, because there are just too
many detailed subject headings, apart from further choices under 7 Marketing of
forest products, etc., and 8 Forest products and their utilization, 9 Forests
and forestry from the national point of view, Social economics of forestry
(what we refer to in DDC 333.75).. Dewey seems in general to be more
circumspect in introducing subject headings, preferring entry numbers to cover
a well defined range of ideas, leaving it to standard subdivisions for finer
division. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Thus, other standard DDC subdivisions can
be used as usual, for instance Forest terminology can be put under 634.9’014
using “standard subdivision” -014, Forest law can be put under -02 (i.e.,
634.9’02, though this seems to be “optional”, Dewey preferring the main number
340. The choice is between putting all the forestry books in one location, or
distributing them across the whole collection.
Obviously, a professional would prefer to collect the subject matter
volumes in one compact location. Other useful standard subdivision suffixes are
-07 Study and teaching, which can accommodate research methodology and institutions
(though not the results of research, which have to go under the appropriate
subject head), and of course -09 Historical and geographical treatment.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">There is no separate number for policy in
DDC, we have to make do with 634.9 itself with geographical subdivisions -09,
or 333.75, with its special subdivisions. Or maybe stretching it, we could add
a standard subdivision -01 Philosophy and theory, whereas ODC has a choice of
subdivisions under primary class 9 or using “auxiliary numbers” -09 (which seems
to parallel the main number 9 itself!). ODC seems to have a number of very
similar subject headings, which makes it difficult to standardise. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">My office library used the device of
classing forestry under DDC 634.9, and then subdividing by ODC, but after
trying this for some time, I was just not comfortable with this sort of
duality. I finally decided to switch over completely to DDC, forcing me to go
through some heroics to get specific topic headings using the Standard
Subdivisions.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">In the course of my web browsing, I came
upon this resource for classification of forestry subjects: the IUFRO Global
Forestry Information Service GFIS, with the following id:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><a href="http://www.iufro-gfis.net/handbook/">www.iufro-gfis.net/handbook/</a>
(accessed on 26 November 2004 (!). There is an Appendix 3-1 that gives a
breakdown of forestry by topic headings grouped by subject, e.g. Silviculture,
then Physiology and Genetics, Forest Operations, Inventory Growth Yield etc.,
and so on. There is a GFIS “Classification Scheme” that gives the “Forest
Decimal Classification” (FDC) that generally mirrors the Oxford classification
(ODC), with a proviso that this will later be “supplemented or replaced by
other schemes” such as Dewey. Most interesting for Dewey fans, there is a
section giving DDC equivalents for a selection of FDC numbers. The DDC numbers
suggested are scattered over a wide range of locations: e.g., 307 for Rural
development, 320 for Forest Policy, 330 for General forest economics,
Deforestation goes off to 363, and and so on; this will be most unsettling for
forest professionals, unless the idea is to prefix a 634.9 or a 333.75 in front
(which is not a permitted improvisation in Dewey, although concatenation of
numbers using the colon : is available in the Universal, UDC). </span></div>
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<br /></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-7456830872470310772014-11-19T23:24:00.000-08:002014-11-20T06:27:43.758-08:0013 Building the Dewey Forest by numbers!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">As I said in the last post, DDC is rather
sparse in its development of 634.9, Forestry. As against Oxford Decimal’s 60
pages of numbers and subject headings, DDC 20 has hardly four. The main subheadings
are: 634.92 Forest management, which has sub-headings for Regulation and for Mensuration as well;
634.93 Access and safety features; 634.95 Silviculture (includes Afforestation,
Breeding, etc.); 634.96 Injuries, diseases, pests; 634.97 Kinds of trees;
634.98 <st1:place w:st="on">Forest</st1:place> exploitation and products;
634.99 Agroforestry etc. Compared with the development of 630 to 633,
Agriculture, this is very limiting. Indeed one wishes they had provided for
development of Forestry on the same lines by ‘adding numbers following 63 in
630-633’ as is done in many other places in the DDC. Even the subject
immediately preceding 634.9, Orchards and fruits (634 to 634.8), has more
possibilities for systematic development. As most of the headings have the
provision to add the posterior (end) digits numbers from diverse ranges under
Agriculture. Rather grudgingly, 634.9 Forestry does have a couple of entries
with an “add” instruction from the Agriculture range: there is a provision of
adding to the number 634.96 Injuries, diseases, pests from the appropriate
range under 632, and under 634.97 Kinds of trees, topics from ranges in Forestry
itself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Mapping numbers from ODC (the most detailed
systematic development for Forestry), we obviously have to fall back on
different devices to create subject numbers. ODC group 1, for example, has a
series of headings for “Factors of the environment, Biology”. One obvious way
of catering to these subjects would be a liberal use of the “standard
subdivision” with connector -015-, which allows attachment of all the Science
numbers (500-599). This can cover application of climate science, soil science,
physics, geology, chemistry, zoology, botany, ecology, and so on. Indeed there
is already a provision under 634.97 Kinds of trees to add the numbers following
583 for Dicotyledons, or following 584 for Monocots. The suffix -015 allows
adding numbers from any heading in the range 500 to 599!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Another suggestive entry is 634.90688
Management of distribution (Marketing). This obviously uses “standard subdivision”
connector -068, which actually provides a range -- 0681 to -0688 covering management heads
parallel to those under 658. Thus, -0681 Financial management mirrors 658.1
Organization and finance, -0682 Plant management mirrors 658.2 Plant management
and so on; -0688 Management of marketing
thus parallels 658.8. One wonders why this is not extended throughout the
range, so that subheadings under 658.x can also be appended. Well, sometimes I
do cheat and do this to reach specific headings; consider this my local
extension of -068x! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<st1:place w:st="on"><span lang="EN-GB">Forest</span></st1:place><span lang="EN-GB"> economics seems to present some special problems, because different
choices can be made. For a start, if we want to stick with 634.9, we could
create a number with standard subdivision -0681, maybe even extending it
further to subtopics under 658.1 as suggested above. Of course, one may like to
put it under 634.92 <st1:place w:st="on">Forest</st1:place> management, thus
634.92’0681; Dewey (20) recommends putting “comprehensive works on management
in forestry in 634.9068”. Another possibility, however, is a totally different
number in Economics, such as under 338 Production economics (specifically,
338.1749 Products of forestry) or 333.7 Natural resources, specifically 333.75 <st1:place w:st="on">Forest</st1:place> lands. The Notes in Dewey 20 explain that 333.75
is “primarily concerned with forest land and uncut timber as present and future
resources”, whereas 338 numbers are “primarily concerned with cut timber as a
product to be sold”. The tendency seems to be to put discussions on forest
resources in general in 333.75, whereas timber (lumber, logs, and other
products) would go under 338. This of course will make the forester mad and
stomp his boots, so it may be better for everyone’s sanity to put forest
products under 634.9 with or without the suffix -068x, keeping 333.75 and its
subdivisions for books of forest land policy, such as the discussions on how
much forest is required, on how to manage with the community, etc. The question
remains, where would standard books on “forest economics” go? My own hunch is
that older texts, which look at it mainly from the business management point of
view (like the classic Duerr), are best put under 634.9’068, while 333.75 and subdivisions are suitable
for more recent ones, which deal with social and political (economy) issues,
including indigenous peoples’ rights, community management, forest conservation
policy and strategy, incentives for conservation, and so on. </span>In fact the ‘centered
entry’ >15-17 under 333.7-333.9 introduces “Management and control”, with
the instruction “Class here citizen participation, planning, policy”, which is
appropriate for things like joint forest management (JFM). There is regrettably
no separate number for JFM or participatory management; below >15-17 are
three subheadings, 15 Development, 16 Conservation and protection, 17 Control
of usage. It is anybody’s choice which of these three is best suited to house
JFM: I tend to use 153 Reclamation, rehabilitation, restoration, thus giving
the number for JFM 333.75’153. <span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another bugbear (for me) has been
classifying agro-forestry, social forestry, forestry projects, etc.: they could
go under 634.99, but what a jumble! I finally improvised a
number-cum-alphabetical system to separate different projects and geographical
jurisdictions. Of course, let me also make a note that we have not even started
to consider other products technology numbers, such as 676 Pulp & paper
technology, 674 Lumber processing, wood products, cork, 684.08 Woodworking (and home workshops, i.e.
DIY stuff), 691.1 Timber under 691 Building materials, 694 Wood construction
and carpentry, and other products groups that will have an interest for
professional foresters.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-698474027647373962014-11-17T09:57:00.001-08:002014-11-18T01:58:47.668-08:0012 Lost in the Dewey woods: Forestry 634.9<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
As a forestry professional (recently
retired!), I’ve naturally collected a lot of books and reports pertaining to Forestry and Forest Products, in their various manifestations. My struggles with
classifying these documents started with the Oxford Decimal Classification
(ODC) system, which was my first introduction to this delectable pastime!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span lang="EN-GB">I’ve finally relocated my copy of the ODC, from
one of the hundred boxes that I brought back from <st1:city w:st="on">New Delhi</st1:city>
to <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Bangalore</st1:place></st1:city> on
retiring, so let me share something about this classification system just for
Forestry. Its original version was devised in large part by Swiss forester
Philipp Flury, a member of the Bibliographical Committee of the International
Union of Forest Research Organisations (IUFRO) by 1933, and assigned the
decimal notation 634.9F to distinguish it from the head 634.9 in the Universal
Decimal Classification (UDC). One of the Chairmen of the Committee was Prof.
R.S.Troup (<st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Oxford</st1:place></st1:city>),
which establishes a strong Indian connection, Troup being one of the best known
British Indian foresters and author of many volumes on Indian Silviculture from
the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun. A completely revised version of the ODC was
prepared by a post-war Committee, largely by P.G.Beak, Assistant Director of the
Bureau, and presented by Ford Robertson, Director of the Commonwealth Forestry
Bureau, Oxford in 1948, and after discussions, was adopted in the IUFRO
Congress in Rome in September 1953.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The ODC groups the field of Forestry into
ten broad classes, starting with 0, for "General works on forests, forestry and
the utilisation of forest products", through 1 (Factors of the environment,
Biology), 2 (Silviculture), 3 (Work Science, harvesting), 4 (Forest injuries
and protection), 5 (Forest mensuration), 6 (Forest management), 7 (Marketing,
economics of forest transport and wood industries), 8 (Forest products and
their utilisation), and 9 (Forests and
forestry from the national point of view, social economics of forestry). The
application of sciences like genetics, botany and ecology are covered under 1.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">An interesting aspect is that the UDC
(Universal Decimal Classification), the European version of the DDC, now uses 630
for Forestry (rather than Dewey’s 634.9, which fits between 634 Horticulture and 635 Gardening),
and recommends the use of ODC numbers (with an interpolated asterisk) to form class
numbers: thus, 630*1 for "Environmental factors, forest biology", 630*2 for "Silviculture", and so on. (My source for UDC numbers was the International
Medium Edition, FID publication no.571, BS 1000M: Part 1: 1985). This
combination of two systems provided fairly detailed heads, but there were
confusions still, especially for general works on forest economics and history,
which are somewhat repetitious in the ODC.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">An interesting feature of UDC is the provision
for making <b>composite numbers</b> from
two different numbers or concepts, using the colon (:) as the connector or <b>concatenator</b>. This is a neat device
that enables you to create new categories to your heart’s content. Thus if you
want to make a new heading for the effect of climate on forests, you can just
take the numbers for Forestry and for Climate, and join them with the colon. I found this especially useful in
joining Forest Management to Community Participation for documents on Joint
Forest Management (JFM), thus 630*6:364.462 – the first number is UDC 630 with
ODC 6 for “<st1:place w:st="on">Forest</st1:place> management”, the latter
number UDC 364.462 referring to “Participation of the people in
decision-making. Democratization. Grass-roots democracy”, which fits exactly. Instead
of 630*6, we could use 630*9, the 9 from ODC representing “Forests and forestry
from the national point of view. Social economics of forestry”. </span>There’s no separate category for JFM in the
UDC or the DDC, as it is something that has developed only in the last two
decades. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The possible downside of this creative license is that each person can
form their own new categories, and standardisation is lost. Dewey doesn’t allow
this freedom. Any synthesis of numbers from different parts of the DDC has to
be done only where expressly permitted, and then as per the instructions
provided. Yes, there is one provision in the Standard Subdivisions, applicable
to more or less any number from 000 to 999, which lets you relate the subject to
to any scientific aspect by adding 01 as a connector, followed by the number
from the Sciences (510 to 590). Thus, "Application of the
principles of plant genetics to forestry" 634.9’0158115, from 634.9 Forestry
and 581.15 Genetics, under the number 581 Botany (we are talking about DDC 20 here; the
corresponding number in DDC 22 would be 581.3, Genetics and evolution, under 581
Specific topics in natural history of plants). Unfortunately this nifty trick
isn’t provided for with subjects under Technology (600’s), as 016… introduces "Indexes", not application of 600 subject heads; and 019 is "Psychological
principles", not the subject in relation to "Geography and travel"! </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">There are a few numbers to which the entire
gamut of subject headings 001 to 999 can be added, such as 338 Production
economics, which allows any subject to be related thus. Also, the Standard Subdivisions do provide a
general rule for appending reference to "Place" from Table 2 to any subject number, with the
connector ’09: ’094 is Europe, ’095 Asia and so forth (the apostrophe is just a
mark to group digits, and need not be shown in actual numbers). This is
probably the most widely used mode of subdivision of a topic, and neatly groups
documents by continent and country. In some numbers, the 9 need not even be
added, as it is already provided in the main number: for instance, Standard Subdivision ’060’3-9,
for Organizations in different countries, leaves out the
connecting 9, thus 634.9’0604 Forestry organisations in Europe, and so on.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">All such aids are welcome, for the DDC 634.9
Forestry is woefully underpopulated compared to ODC. Further, forestry subjects
are scattered between 634.9 (forestry), 639.9 (biodiversity
conservation), and 333.75 (forest lands), not to mention "forest ecology" under
577.3 (DDC 22). I will present some of the compound numbers I use to
gerrymander forestry topics into the DDC mode in the next section.</span></div>
</div>
Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2674581464530277964.post-475995624042450792012-04-01T06:09:00.001-07:002012-04-01T06:28:08.973-07:0011 Down the Dewey pathway…<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><span lang="EN-GB">The way The Family does it…</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQHNlNj0-xhV7_XrYyqwPsEWr0Vh5lUtVW4_NWzElsa5uZcharCUWSa7DQ1PtIIRe8sQS4zknb5cDX76ylLr442k4tNRxzVHn9oXy43YGPeqJ-8MVEJSMgqgBwQ3Xz-mynoA3rf9hCci8/s1600/25032012439.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQHNlNj0-xhV7_XrYyqwPsEWr0Vh5lUtVW4_NWzElsa5uZcharCUWSa7DQ1PtIIRe8sQS4zknb5cDX76ylLr442k4tNRxzVHn9oXy43YGPeqJ-8MVEJSMgqgBwQ3Xz-mynoA3rf9hCci8/s320/25032012439.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN-GB">…and down the Dewey pathway:</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtizEzg32bcPYRDwm6ZEXZ4ARxy7pteNjGv17MgUt_V9e08No_PwFkOBFnRjeMrTm7FRfcAcAdpT0qMFLRMTq3pCP9VHLgmPjX7oJFY-pqqOkRow_F7RKnwd8tMKQoH6raTFDL9Yka4tY/s1600/25032012438.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtizEzg32bcPYRDwm6ZEXZ4ARxy7pteNjGv17MgUt_V9e08No_PwFkOBFnRjeMrTm7FRfcAcAdpT0qMFLRMTq3pCP9VHLgmPjX7oJFY-pqqOkRow_F7RKnwd8tMKQoH6raTFDL9Yka4tY/s320/25032012438.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f"> <v:stroke joinstyle="miter"> <v:formulas> <v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"> <v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"> <v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"> <v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"> <v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"> <v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"> <v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"> </v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:formulas> <v:path gradientshapeok="t" o:connecttype="rect" o:extrusionok="f"> <o:lock aspectratio="t" v:ext="edit"> </o:lock></v:path></v:stroke></v:shapetype></span><span lang="EN-GB">My collection of wildlife conservation, management, photography, music, history & geography… </span></div>Dilip Kumar PJhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17390278418601144242noreply@blogger.com0