24 Dewey versions and changes – DDC 19 to 23

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^th edition is already in the offing. Interestingly, the 1876 publication has been uploaded at the Gutenberg site (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12513/12513-h/12513-h.htm). This is the official OCLC Forest Press blog (025.431: The Dewey blog):

http://ddc.typepad.com/ , which may be of interest.

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:

“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 http://www.lisr.ro/en13-niculescu.pdf. If you want a simple account, read on!

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^th (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:

https://archive.org/details/deweydecimalcla01dewe (and replace 01 in the tag by 02, 03, 04 for the other volumes). And here is DDC 19: https://archive.org/details/decimal19v1dewe

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^st 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.. 

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!

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^th 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”.   

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:

·         new provisions in 004–006 Computer science and elsewhere to reflect changes in technology

·         updates to provisions for the Orthodox Church and Islam in 200 Religion

·         improved provisions in 340 Law for legal systems based on civil law

·         updated provisions for food and clothing

·         updates to 740 Graphic arts and decorative arts

·         a new location and expanded development for cinematography and videography at 777

·         significant expansions throughout 796 Athletic and outdoor sports and games

·         significant expansions in Table 2, with parallel provisions in 930–990, for the ancient world, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam and Canada

·         updated historical periods throughout 930–990.

A long article is available at: https://www.oclc.org/content/dam/oclc/dewey/versions/print/new_features.pdf

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 http://dewey.info/. 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.

And check out the colour scheme – DDC 22 came in spring green, now DDC 23 is dressed in autumn colours.

21 Dewey on the wild side

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.

Say you just got  a copy of a lovely book on the Wildlife of the Indian Subcontinent, 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.

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, Forest 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.

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 Africa”, 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 India” would go under 599, rather than 590 or 578, which could be for books dealing with their ecological relationships.

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).

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 Sanctuary 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.

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.

18 Why classify when “Everything is miscellaneous”?

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 classified 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?

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 “Everything is Miscellaneous – The Power of the New Digital Disorder”, 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 Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center 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.

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 metadata (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.

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”.

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 Bangalore, 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).

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.

17 Classifying recorded music with Dewey

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.

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.) after 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. 

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!).  

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!).

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 about recordings (like the various guides to recorded music),  but Dewey is suggesting that we use the latter part of these numbers for 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).

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.

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 khayal and thumri, 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.   

12 Lost in the Dewey woods: Forestry 634.9

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!

I’ve finally relocated my copy of the ODC, from one of the hundred boxes that I brought back from New Delhi to Bangalore 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 (Oxford), 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.

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.

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.

An interesting feature of UDC is the provision for making composite numbers from two different numbers or concepts, using the colon (:) as the connector or concatenator. 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 “Forest 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”. 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. 

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"!

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.

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.

09 Books of a feather flock together...

Sometimes one can simply not decide whether a particular book should go here... or there. One of the problems with the Dewey scheme (and one suspects, the others too)  is that the same general topic occurs in different places with different nuances. Let’s take a simple and popular case: that of “Wildlife”. Sticking to the DDC “thousand” which are downloadable from the OCLC site, there’s 508 “Natural history”,  570 “Life sciences”, 577 “Ecology”, 578 “Natural history of organisms”, 581 “Specific topics in natural history”, then a whole series of numbers for botany and plants, 590 “Animals (Zoology)”, 591 again “Specific topics in natural history”, then a whole series for various groups of animals from invertebrates to vertebrates, culminating in 598 “Birds” and 599 “Mammals”. You’d think that’s all there is to it, but then unexpectedly under the 600s (Technology) we get 639 “Hunting, fishing & conservation”. Many of these categories, from DDC 22 (or 23), are new to me, as I have stuck to good old DDC 20. But I happen to know that under 639 there lurks (or used to lurk) 639.9, “Conservation”, which includes wildlife management, wildlife reserves, conservation of animals, plants, and so on. There’s also 799 “Fishing, hunting & shooting”, if not also 712 to 719 dealing with “Natural landscapes”.  Where would we put the book “Wildlife in India”, or “Wildlife of India”?

Falling back on our trusted ally, the Library of Congress www.loc.gov, I got 333.95/16/0954 (under Economics!) for books titled “Wildlife in India” and “Conserving wildlife in India”, M.Krishnan’s “The handbook of India’s wildlife” got 915.4/0453, which as we know is “Geography & travel”; “A chronicle of India’s wildlife” got 599.756/0954, which is “Mammals” with the Place added on; and Schaller’s famous “The deer and the tiger” was under 599.05 (“Mammals-ecology and behaviour”). And not a single entry for 639 yet, before the site froze on me.

Thus it’s clear that there can be many choices. Ultimately I fall back upon a simple common sense approach: when there are too many ambiguous different categories, I tend to group all my books which share a subject together, not worrying about strict rigour. As I said before, ‘Doing the Dewey’ tends to get dogmatic if carried too far. It’s more important to put the pitiful few books you have on a certain subject together, rather than have them sprinkled through your shelves in a devotion to Dewey doctrinalism. So I would choose one of the above categories, or at the most two, and bring together all my books place-wise. I chose “Ecology” (which used to be 574 but is now 577) for general books on nature, such as “Forests”, “Deserts”, and so on, and 639.9 for wildlife reserves, wildlife management (where the emphasis is on the applied technology rather than the theoretical models of ecology). Parallel to this, “Trees” goes under Botany, whereas “Forestry” as an applied technology goes under 634.9, next to “Agriculture” 630-633 and “Horticulture” 635. Books on specific groups like apes, tiger, dolphins, birds, go by their respective numbers under “Mammals”, “Birds” etc. I keep 333 for books which emphasise the economic aspects of conservation, such as Forest Economics, as well as Participatory or Joint Management.

There are many groups with problems like these, and in fact Dewey has a whole volume with guidelines on choosing between alternatives. So it’s not always a robotic exercise, and I think you have the right to be a little different, as long as you don’t mix together American Indians, Indian Americans, and ... American Indians!

08 Skimming Dewey numbers off Web catalogues

DDC is a classification scheme, and a list of items arranged according to this or other scheme, would be called a catalogue. Very often you may not be sure where a particular book should go (more on that anon), so one easy short-cut for us lazier types, is to follow whatever they have done in our favourite large library. With more and more libraries going on-line (they put their catalogues on-line, not the book contents!), we don’t even have to physically visit the library to check their classification. So we can even do our work without the benefit of the original manuals of the DDC.

Let’s take yesterday’s example of Birds (Aves), which as you can see is a special favourite. I have a book with me called “A Pocket Guide to Birds of Gorumara”, which is a small wildlife sanctuary in the northern part of the state of West Bengal in India. From the last post, we recall 598 is the DDC ‘hundreds’ code for Birds, freely supplied for our use by the OCLC on its web-site. The subdivision for geographical areas is 09, and we know 0954 is for South Asia and India (from 954 History). 598.0954 is as close as I can get, therefore, without additional help.

This is where the on-line catalogues come in use. First, I could try searching for “Birds of West Bengal”… getting it from the British Library, www.bl.uk (wonderful things come in simple packages!). Searching for ‘birds, bengal’ didn’t yield much, but ‘history, bengal’ yielded a book with Dewey number 954.14, which hints at 095414 as a possible code for Bengal. So at a first guess, we could settle for a number 598.095414 for my little book. I can do a sort of counter-check by searching for ‘birds, india’ and scrolling down... I get 1,150 results, and I would expect Bengal to come up fairly early down the list since the Dewey number for India would be ...954.. and Bengal comes up in the first subdivision, ...9541... Unfortunately for the best-laid plans of mice and stingy librarians, the general catalogue doesn’t yield too many Dewey numbers: a Birds of Goa has 598.2954799, Birds of Sikkim gives 598.295497, which hints at the use of 598.29... for birds of a region, as well as tells us the Dewey numbers of place for Goa 0954799 and Sikkim 095497. I didn’t find any numbers for Bengal, or Calcutta (only a few of the catalogue entries have DDC numbers), but I did find a Birds of Delhi 598.095456, and Birds of the Western Ghats 598.09547, which gives us Dewey codes of place for the two regions, as well as confirming the alternative of using 598.09... for regional birds. So I guess I’d settle for 598.095414 for my book on the Birds of Bengal.

Another source is the Library of Congress www.loc.gov , which seems a bit faster and to have a higher proportion of records with Dewey numbers (just my impression). This one also yields a book on Islam in Bengal 954.14, confirming our Place number, and Birds of North India 598.0954, Birds of Southwest India 598.09548, Birds of Sikkim 598.295497. Thus numbers of Place are consistent, and again both conventions are used: 598.29... and 598.09... You may take your pick... I probably would settle for staid old 598.09..., as it falls into a predictable pattern when you don’t have the manuals at hand.

The on-line catalogues also yield up other interesting numbers, allowing us to build a picture of the structure without help from OCLC. Just searching for “birds” yields 28284 records in loc.gov, and it’s only by the 10^th page (each with 50 records) that we get off just “Birds” as the title (all DDC 598), to something titled “Bird life” with DDC 598.2. This is followed by “Sea birds” 598.2924, which tells us that 598.29 is a special category that has not only geographical names from 598.294 onwards, but also special connotations under 598.292, and possibly 598.293. “Bird watching and bird behaviour” is given 598.2 (which doesn’t look convincing), and “Birds’ nests”, 598.2564. And thus it goes...

Why this elaborate exercise? It gives us ready-made numbers, and it yields us new numbers when we don’t have access to The Book. One really tedious thing is that the records don’t display the DDC number up front... you have to click on each book and call up (display) the individual record. And even then most of them don’t even have the Dewey number entered!

PS: I just discovered Dewey offers a book-by-book service in their site www.classify.oclc.org... check it out! You have to click down to a single book record to see the suggested DDC 'class number' (it also gives the LC number for that book).

05 The DDC thousand Sections (subject heads)

The DDC thousand Sections are on their own page (see the tabs on the top of the screen).

The following links give the Dewey summaries:

http://www.oclc.org/dewey/resources/summaries/deweysummaries.pdf

http://www.oclc.org/dewey/resources/summaries/default.htm#thou

http://www.oclc.org/dewey/resources/summaries/default.htm#hun

http://www.oclc.org/dewey/resources/summaries/default.htm#ten

The summaries are also available on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dewey_Decimal_classes

Life can never be as simple as it looks, and as far as the DDC is concerned, there are revisions every couple of years which needs a fresh ‘release’ or version. I myself still use the DDC 20 version, which mainly had a major revision of the Music sections. There have been quite a few major changes since then, especially in Computer subjects (000s) and in the Natural Sciences (500s). The latest is the 23^rd print version, DDC23 released in 2011; the following list (taken from the DDC website) refers to the DDC 22 version released in mid-2003; DDC 21 was released in 1996 (more of versions in a later post). All copyright rights in the Dewey Decimal Classification system are owned by OCLC. Dewey, Dewey Decimal Classification, DDC, OCLC and WebDewey are registered trademarks of OCLC, oclc@oclc.org.

The following links will take you to downloadable pdf documents from the OCLC site, providing an introduction to the DDC 22, a glossary, and a guide to the major changes from DDC 21:

http://www.oclc.org/dewey/versions/ddc22print/intro.pdf

http://www.oclc.org/dewey/versions/ddc22print/glossary.pdf

http://www.oclc.org/dewey/versions/ddc22print/new_features.pdf

The following links will take you to similar pdf’s for DDC 23:

http://www.oclc.org/dewey/versions/print/intro.pdf

http://www.oclc.org/dewey/versions/print/relocations_discontinuations.xls

http://www.oclc.org/dewey/versions/print/glossary.pdf

http://www.oclc.org/dewey/versions/print/new_features.pdf

http://www.oclc.org/dewey/versions/print/errata.pdf

Here’s a link to the OCLC blog: http://ddc.typepad.com/025431/

In my experience, classification can become a puzzling affair if taken to the extreme; one has to draw the line somewhere comfortable, and choose whatever number gives a close enough fit until further research is feasible (or look it up in their blog!). There are ways to cheat a little, like looking up your book (if it’s a published one, or else a close alternative with a similar title) on any of the public library websites; my favourite is the British Library (http://www.bl.uk/)!

Apparently, the numbers up to the Sections (3 digits, before the decimal point) are freely available on public media, but the detailed classification scheme to the right of the decimal point, would require you to purchase a copy of the manual (or its web version, of course).

04 The DDC hundred Divisions

Before we go on to list the thousand Dewey subject numbers and subject headings, let’s take a look at the broader structure. The DDC groups all subjects in TEN broad CLASSes, each starting with a round ‘hundreds’ number:

000      Generalities (Computer Science, Information, and General Works)

100      Philosophy and Psychology

200      Religion

300      Social Sciences

400      Language (and Linguistics)
500      Natural Sciences and Mathematics

600      Technology (Applied Sciences)

700      Arts (and Recreation)

800      Literature800 Literature

900      Geography and History (and Biography)

So these are the ‘Hundreds’. All the 900s – that means the numbers 900 to 999 - cover the field of Geography and History, and so on. Each of the Hundreds Classes is subdivided into ten DIVISIONS each (900 to 909, 910 to 919, and so on), each Division into ten SECTIONS. Ten Classes, into ten Divisions, into ten Sections each: totalling up to 10 X 10 X 10 = a 1000 Section numbers, a thousand subject heads.

I've put the hundred Divisions on their own Page...see the tabs at the top of the screen.

So where does the ‘Decimal’ in the DDC come in? That’s because the subdividing doesn’t stop here; the process goes right on, except that a decimal point is put after the 3-digit number. Thus 910 can be subdivided into ten sub-classes (910.0 to 910.9), each of these could be further divided into ten sub-sub-classes (910.90 to 910.99), and so on… to as many levels as we wanted. Strictly, the numbers ending in zero after the decimal point (like 910.0) are not given separate mention, so the total number of subdivisions may be 9, not 10 for each level. Each number is associated with an individual subclass of the main subject. This is usually set down in detail for each number, as each subject will be broken down in a domain-specific manner, but there are some broad conventions, such as .01 refers to the ‘philosophy’ or ‘theory’ of the main subject. There is in fact a Table of Standard Subdivisions, which we will describe later.

03 The Dewey Decimal scheme: playing by numbers

Now we can address the core problem, which is: how to arrange our non-fiction (the ‘subject-matter’) books in a meaningful manner. The basic premise is, of course, that we can identify one main subject of each book or report in our hands. Dewey has done half our job by listing out a thousand main subject names, starting not from 1, but 000, to 999, in a remarkably prescient manner which conforms neatly to the usual practice in our own computer age (all the numbers are 3-digit ones, hence can perfectly fitted into a fixed field in a database structure).

For the first round of classification, perhaps this is all that we will need to arrange our books subject-wise. Within each subject, naturally we will be arranging our books by the alphabetical ordering of author last-names, thus (Richard) Dawkins would come after (Charles) Darwin. If you had two books by Dawkins, you would arrange them by their date of (first) publication. These three fields: DDC three-digit code number, Author name, and Year, would suffice to order your books in a perfectly predictable sequence.

The whole structure depends on the expectation that any new subject could be ‘adjusted’ under these thousand heads. If you did have a subject that didn’t fit into a single one of them, of course you’d have a problem…then there would have to be a sufficient number of ‘empty’ numbers to cater to these eventualities. In practice, most subjects could be fitted as a sub-category under the thousand main categories provided by Dewey.

One great feature of this system is that if you walked into any library or looked up any catalogue that also followed the same classification scheme (the DDC in this case), you would expect to find your favourite books and authors in the same sequence. If you were interested in say Physics, you would zero in on the 500s; if in History and Geography, on the 900s. These are the Dewey 'hundreds', which bring together related subjects in groups. A little down the line, you will be glibly talking in numbers rather than in names. Unlike bookshops, where each manager devices an individual scheme of arranging the subjects, in academic and public libraries, all of them follow the same. This is spoilt to some extent by the fact that there are two or three main systems; fortunately, the second most common, the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) closely follows the DDC, and the hundreds numbers are all quite similar.

02 Let’s first get some simple schemes out of the way…

Let’s first get over some elementary, basic approaches to classifying and cataloguing your books. I have a certain brilliant friend, a genuine manager bureaucrat, who once was in charge of a premiere research institution, who wanted to know why they didn’t just ‘colour-code’ the books in the library and be done with it. He may have been kinaesthetic, or panaesthetic, or any of a number of novel, unusual ways of dealing with sensory stimuli. But for large collections, we will usually have to go for fairly structured approaches that depend on the most convenient pattern of arrangement for us in our workaday lives.

For a small personal collection, often nothing more elaborate may be called for than a simple Fiction/Non-fiction divide.  The Fiction is the easier portion, as most people don’t really want to divide it up into sub-categories, unless it’s by nation and language (English, English-American, French, Russian, German and so forth). Since the Indo-Soviet culture centres used to distribute amazingly economical volumes (cheap is not a nice word to use for them), I happen to have a middling collection of old Russians like Pushkin and Chekhov. If you have a large collection of, say, English literature, maybe you would like to group them by what is known as ‘genre’, like prose, drama, poetry, criticism, essays, and so on. Or, you could group them by periods… Ancient, Classical, Romantic, Nationalistic, modern, post-modern, and so on (I don’t know much about this, perhaps you would have specific classes in each nationality’s literature, depending on the watershed events in their history and evolution). Within such a category or sub-category, you would group them by author’s name, like Shakespeare, Wordsworth and so on (usually in the order of the surnames or family names, not by the first names, although we will come back to this in a later post). You would have one set for classical works (Literature or belles-lettres as it’s termed), and another separate series for modern fiction (popular stuff, pulp, romances, and so on). The dividing line is a bit vague…where would you put Agatha Christie, for instance. Maybe you could just do post-World War II and pre-WWII and be done with it.

This is more or less the scheme in the Dewey system, too. The same could be extended to all Non-fiction as a whole, if you have very few in this category. Personally, I feel that sooner or later this will become too limiting, so I would much prefer to start dividing them up by at least some major subject categories right from the beginning…at the minimum, say Humanities and Sciences. Within each, of course, you would arrange the books in alphabetical order of the author names.

There are some other plausible criteria for dividing your collection. For instance, big hard-bound picture books and encyclopaedias could go into a shelf of their own, within which they would of course be arranged in the order of the author names. In libraries, this may be called the ‘Folio’ section referring to the big size, which anyway calls for special shelving, or maybe the ‘Reference’ section to denote their high value, so this is not as daft as it may sound.

Another scheme would be to separate His, Hers, and the Kids’ books. That will avoid recriminations. In fact, I would strongly urge each person to only fiddle around with their own collections, and not touch their spouses’ or their kids’ books and records…you have been warned.

01 What this is about

How do we manage our acquisitions of books, papers, magazines, tapes, CDs and other things we just can't bring ourselves to give away? These are the things that in a way define our life experience, our travel through the world. They've kept us company through happy days and sad, through exciting times and dull periods. But left to themselves, they become almost useless as they are all jumbled up, they get tucked away in dusty corners and tattered cardboard boxes in the basement, and they introduce health-threatening clutter and disorder.

This question may not loom very large at the beginning of our acqisitorial lives, but a few years down the line, a few shifts of residence, and the issue of keeping, storing, and retrieving them at our will and convenience, becomes important.

My own response was to take the bull by the horns, grasp the nettle, and organize my books and music using recognized classification schemes like the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), although there are other... especially the one I started with, the Universal Decimal scheme (UDC), and for Forestry (my profession), a modification of it called the Oxford (ODC). Let me share my experiences in the hope that it may be of some help to some blighted soul groaning under the weight of all that rubbish.... but organized even imperfectly, can be enjoyed and used by self and others...