Here’s an interesting facet of the DDC (and other such schemes of classification). Like I said in the last post, you want a row of books on the birds arranged in a sequence of the major geographical zones or areas, and likewise for books on mammals, or trees, or anything else of universal interest and prevalence.
DDC provides this in some subjects by giving a separate number for each geographical ‘jurisdiction’ (continent, country, region, etc.). If you look at the 900s series for Geography and for History, you will find a similar pattern repeating: starting with 910 (Geography and travel), we have the sequence 913 Ancient world, 914 Europe, 915 Asia, 916 Africa, 917 North America. 918 South America, 919 Other areas. This suggests the coding of numbers 4 to 9 to the continents listed. This pattern in repeated in more detail in the series for History: starting with 930, History of the ancient world, we get numbers corresponding to ancient China 931, ancient Egypt 932, and so on. This suggests that in Geography 913, we could repeat the same sequence but with a decimal point: 913.0 Geography of ancient world (though we never write the zero after a round number, so it’s just 913); 913.1 of ancient China; and so forth.
Extending this pattern, we have 940 History of Europe, followed by 941 of British Isles, 942 of England & Wales, 943 of Central Europe; Germany, and so on. This suggests for Geography & travel, under 914 (914.0) Europe, 914.1 British Isles, 914.2 England & Wales, 914.3 of Central Europe; Germany, and so on. As I said, OCLC don’t provide numbers beyond the decimal point in public media, so I shouldn’t be posting them out here without infringing their copyrights; but since the 3-digit (‘hundreds’) numbers are available free, you can build decimal numbers by analogy without their manual and without stepping on their property rights. It’s interesting to note that even worlds yet to be discovered are provided for, in 999 Extraterrestrial worlds!
But not all subjects are provided with separate numbers for geographical jurisdictions like this. Suppose you want, for instance, to arrange your bird guides: Birds (Aves) is 598 in the DDC Thousand Sections list. Now we want Birds of Europe, Birds of Asia, Birds of Africa, Birds of North America, of South America, and of Other areas. This isn’t done by adding the digits immediately after the decimal, *598.4, *598.5 etc. (the star or asterisk shall be taken to denote a wrong formulation, as in Historical Linguistics). These numbers actually stand for specific, other sub-divisions of the subject Birds, which we can get only from the official DDC book. But never fear, there is one expedient which DDC gives in any number: the provision to attach 09 followed by the geographical place marker. This gives numbers like 598.094 Birds of Europe, 598.095 of Asia, and so on. Just using the 900s numbers, we can go a little further within each continent: 598.0951 Birds of China, 598.0952 of Japan, 598.0953 of Arabia, 598.0954 of South Asia, 598.0955 of Iran, 598.0956 of Middle East, 598.0957 of Siberia (Asiatic Russia), 598.0958 of Central Asia, 598.0959 of Southeast Asia.
Of course if you had the DDC books with you, you could drill right down to country, province and even further in some cases. But we don’t want to abuse OCLC’s generosity, so you get at least a broad sequence of regions which can be repeated for almost any subject by just attaching the ‘connector’ 09 after the number, and then adding the region/country code which is a consistent series.
In doing thus, you will get a serviceable arrangement of your books by geographical region, without having to cheat on the copyright business. It may not be strictly kosher, as DDC sometimes gives a decimal number ending in 9 to which the area codes can be attached without need for an intervening zero: for Birds 598, if I remember rightly, there’s a given number 598.29 for Birds by geographical region, so that instead of *598.094 Birds of Europe and so on, it should strictly be 598.294 Birds of Europe etc. But this is a relatively minor infraction, and if you don’t have an Inspector of Libraries looking over your shoulder, you should be able to get away with it and still have a serviceable arrangement as per *DDC!
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