Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- About the authors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 A Brief History of the Dewey Decimal Classification
- 2 Governance and Revision of the DDC
- 3 Introduction to the Text
- 4 Basic Plan and Structure
- 5 Subject Analysis and Locating Class Numbers
- 6 Tables and Rules for Precedence and Citation Order
- 7 Number Building
- 8 Use of Table 1 Standard Subdivisions
- 9 Use of Table 2 Geographic Areas, Historical Periods, Biography
- 10 Use of Table 4 Subdivisions of Individual Languages and Table 6 Languages
- 11 Use of Table 3 Subdivisions for the Arts, for Individual Literatures, for Specific Literary Forms
- 12 Use of Table 5 Ethnic and National Groups
- 13 Multiple Synthesis: Deeper Subject Analysis
- 14 Classification of General Statistics, Law, Geology, Geography and History
- 15 Using the Relative Index
- 16 WebDewey
- 17 Options and Local Adaptations
- 18 Current Developments in the DDC and Future Trends
- Appendix 1 A Broad Chronology of the DDC, 1851–2022
- Appendix 2 History of Other Versions of the DDC
- Appendix 3 Table of DDC Editors
- Appendix 4 Editors of the DDC
- Appendix 5 Takeaways
- Further resources
- Glossary
- Index
5 - Subject Analysis and Locating Class Numbers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- About the authors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 A Brief History of the Dewey Decimal Classification
- 2 Governance and Revision of the DDC
- 3 Introduction to the Text
- 4 Basic Plan and Structure
- 5 Subject Analysis and Locating Class Numbers
- 6 Tables and Rules for Precedence and Citation Order
- 7 Number Building
- 8 Use of Table 1 Standard Subdivisions
- 9 Use of Table 2 Geographic Areas, Historical Periods, Biography
- 10 Use of Table 4 Subdivisions of Individual Languages and Table 6 Languages
- 11 Use of Table 3 Subdivisions for the Arts, for Individual Literatures, for Specific Literary Forms
- 12 Use of Table 5 Ethnic and National Groups
- 13 Multiple Synthesis: Deeper Subject Analysis
- 14 Classification of General Statistics, Law, Geology, Geography and History
- 15 Using the Relative Index
- 16 WebDewey
- 17 Options and Local Adaptations
- 18 Current Developments in the DDC and Future Trends
- Appendix 1 A Broad Chronology of the DDC, 1851–2022
- Appendix 2 History of Other Versions of the DDC
- Appendix 3 Table of DDC Editors
- Appendix 4 Editors of the DDC
- Appendix 5 Takeaways
- Further resources
- Glossary
- Index
Summary
‘It's a big world. We’ve organized it.’ (DDC motto)
Introduction
The work of practical library classification, in essence, is to find an appropriate place for a document in the overall scheme of subjects in a given classification system. It is based on the subject content of the documents, though classification is more than content analysis and coding. Practical classification consists of two phases:
1 Subject analysis – the intellectual work of determining the specific subject of the document; and
2 the mechanism of assigning the appropriate class number from the schedules for the subject and doing number building, if required.
These two phases can be likened respectively to medical diagnosis and the prescription and dispensing of medicine. Subject analysis is the most important in the process and indeed the very essence of classifying, somewhat independent of the knowledge organization system used. A mistake at this stage will invariably percolate to produce wrong results. Determining the specific subject of a given document is an art which machines cannot do – or at least not yet. It is an intellectual work of the highest order, done by experts in the Idea Plane according to S. R. Ranganathan's theory (Satija, 2014). It sometimes requires intuitive insights which come from a wide acquaintance with knowledge and written literature. Such knowledge constantly improves with reading and experience, though one may never gain perfection in this art. Proficient classifiers know something about almost everything. Indeed, intense specialization in research and rapidly advancing frontiers of knowledge have made this task more daunting, though by no means impossible.
Determining the specific subject
The specific subject of a document may be determined by examining its title, subtitle, blurb, preface and table of contents and scanning through the text, if necessary.
The institutional affiliation of the author, the index, the series and cited references may also provide valuable clues. A classifier may occasionally read published reviews or consult some reference tools to understand the publication under consideration. If all these efforts fail, the last resort is to consult a subject expert.
Title as a subject indicator
The title is the proper name given to a publication. It is supposed to clearly indicate the subject of a nonfiction work. Often it will do so, but not always. Ideally, it will concisely indicate the subject of the document. We categorize titles into three kinds.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Publisher: FacetPrint publication year: 2023