Prolegomena to Library Classification

Abstract

The First Part expounds the theory of classification. After the first seven pages, the first chap­ter, which seeks to build up the necessary scaffolding of terminology, may prove to be stiff reading for beginners. But they may skip over that portion in the first reading and refer to it whenever need is felt for definition of technical terms. The second and third chapters develop the canons of classification that belong to the general theory It is believed that these two chapters carry the analysis further than existing books on the subject. The treatment of Terminology and Notation may be found to be new. The fourth chapter which deals with the special theory of Knowledge Classification, shows the advantages, if not the necessity, of a synthetic classi­fication, when the Universe to be classified is infinite. The fifth chapter analyses the peculiar fea­tures of the special theory of Book Classification and leads to the recognition and isolation of four distinct stages in library classification. The Second Part is mainly devoted to a com­parative study of five current schemes of classifi­cation. These comparisons over limited ranges are of course only intended as models of a process that could be continued almost endlessly.