The mayonnaise system is definitely not the solution. Rather it has the same fundamental problem. What is needed is a faceted classification system, which provides much less rigid categories and must higher detail where it is needed.
The issues LC have are not new. Neither are the solutions. Faceted classification is over hundred years old. But the reason something hasn't been done is how costly it is to break with the system you are using. Reclassifying is prohibitively expensive, and you get a discontinuation in the catalogue. Which rarely is worth the trouble of changing.
Agree: faceted classification is far better but the cost of changing the classification system is prohibitive. But with computerized cataloguing I don't see how one could eventually move the classification meaning away from the shelves and into the software, while preserving old classifications for backward compatibility.
That way we might also (gradually) move away from the misconception that things belong to one and only one canonical classification hierarchy, a woeful notion that seems to permeate not only library classifications but our very understanding of the nature of things.
The idea that changing the LoC classification system would have any impact on thought or research seems laughable to me. But Orwell was right that one of the best ways to exert power on people’s is through the dictating the language they can use. This seems just seems like another step to try and stifle our intellectual environment by the politically hyper-sensitive left.
>Are the legacies of dead white men the only possible way to organize all knowledge?
The evil dead white men. If only anything prevented non-white living (wo)men to make something of their own without impacting the legacy of these "dead white men".
No surprise the article mentions lots of white women, who can't go a day about trying to change what white men built without coming up with something demonstrably better.
I am sure in those "scientific sexism" section they mention, there are a couple of books on how the affluent white female liberal is the vehicle of societal decay.
Ethnocentrism is far from the exclusive preserve of White Western men. That said, it’s been almost a century since Ranganathan introduced his faceted classification system not that far from tags you may be familiar with. A hierarchical classification is necessarily tied to the viewpoint of the classifier and reality seldom conforms to those neat boundaries.
6 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 23.0 ms ] threadThe issues LC have are not new. Neither are the solutions. Faceted classification is over hundred years old. But the reason something hasn't been done is how costly it is to break with the system you are using. Reclassifying is prohibitively expensive, and you get a discontinuation in the catalogue. Which rarely is worth the trouble of changing.
That way we might also (gradually) move away from the misconception that things belong to one and only one canonical classification hierarchy, a woeful notion that seems to permeate not only library classifications but our very understanding of the nature of things.
The evil dead white men. If only anything prevented non-white living (wo)men to make something of their own without impacting the legacy of these "dead white men".
No surprise the article mentions lots of white women, who can't go a day about trying to change what white men built without coming up with something demonstrably better.
I am sure in those "scientific sexism" section they mention, there are a couple of books on how the affluent white female liberal is the vehicle of societal decay.