Manual of Library Economy: Third and Memorial EditionBrown, James Duff
Science
Manual of Library Economy: Third and Memorial Edition
Brown, James Duff
Libraries -- Great Britain -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.; Library science -- Great Britain -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.
“The order of the classes may, therefore, be briefly described as
expressing:
1. Matter.
2. Life.
3. Mind.
4. Record.”[8]
[8] From _Subject Classification_, by James Duff Brown, 1906, pp.
11-13; second edition, 1914.
The only serious objection which has been urged against this scheme is
the inclusion of Education, Logic, Mathematics, and the Graphic and
Plastic Arts in Generalia. This course is, however, fully justified by
the somewhat amusing circumstance, that the critics are unable to agree
among themselves as to the exact logical place of any of the series.
While one insists that Logic should be placed in Philosophy, he is bound
to admit that it ought not to be separated from Mathematics, while on
the other hand he cannot allow arithmetic, book-keeping and geometry to
invade the sacred temple of the philosophers. Education is even a
greater stumbling-block. It is variously assigned to Psychology,
Sociology, Philology and Ethnology by different critics, and Fine Arts
is equally perplexing. In actual practice in a library, there is really
no inconvenience felt in connexion with the distribution of any of these
classes, and as they do not originate naturally from any of the other
main divisions, but qualify and pervade the whole of them like an
encyclopædia, or other general work, it will be found best to retain
them where they are. The other important features of this system are
described below.
THE CATEGORICAL TABLES form an important feature, whereby a separate
series of forms, phases and other qualifying factors are provided, which
can be applied to every subject, and so relieve the main tables from
congestion. They are applicable to the very largest libraries, and give
ample means of subdividing any topic, however large it may be. They can
also be used with other systems of classification, as they are
independent of the main tables and form a series of parallel numbers by
which the classification numbers can be themselves classified. For
example, a library may have 1000 books on a subject like Architecture in
general, to all of which the simple number B300 would be applied. By
adding the qualifying numbers from the Categorical Tables, which appear
after a point, and are invariably the same when applied to any subject,
the following sub-classification would result, which has the effect of
assembling all related forms of books together:
B300 Architecture, General
B300·1 -- Bibliography
B300·2 -- Dictionaries
B300·3 -- Text-books, Systematic
B300·4 -- -- Popular
B300·6 -- Societies
B300·7 -- Periodicals
B300·10 -- History
and so on.
If, in addition to those general works, the library possessed several
hundreds of books on Building Construction, B305, these would be
subdivided in exactly the same manner, as would also any subdivision of
the same topic, such as Foundations, Walls, Roofs, etc.:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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