26 When you have too many choices in Dewey

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.

Take a simple straightforward title like America’s Wild Woodlands, 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.

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.

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 lot of titles, I feel I have to exercise a little more discretion and split up my collection judiciously.

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.

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 North America’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.

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 Forest 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 America, 578.730973.

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.

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 back, usually after the Index. I was surprised to see that they chose to classify America’s Wild Woodlands 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 American Rainforest and Rainforests of Australia, not to speak of Wild India and Silent Valley. And followed by Deserts of…, Wetlands…, Grasslands… and so on.

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).  

The reverse tack would be to ask, what do I not 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 Wild Lands for Wildlife. America’s National Refuges 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!

Similarly, books of forest management are sent off to 634.9 Forestry, even if they may be picture books or dealing with the same American woodlands. Forest 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 American  Legacy: Our National Forests, 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 Forest lands, Conservation and protection; and the previous example, Wild Lands, under 333.95’16 Biological resources, Conservation and protection. On the other hand, another NatGeo book, America's Hidden Wilderness: Lands of Seclusion, has been put in 917; so go figure!   

This is, of course, just one example. My next post will consider the Psychology-Philosophy-Self improvement gamut on similar lines.   

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.

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!