14 More Forestry numbers

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.

ODC had a separate primary number 6 which encompassed Forest 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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

www.iufro-gfis.net/handbook/ (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).