Perhaps this NY Times editorial would be of interest, especially to
catalogers. -Andrew
August 22, 2006
New York Times Editorial
"Where the Books Are"
Knowledge, Samuel Johnson once said, "is of two kinds. We know a
subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."
The point behind every scheme for cataloging books — and there are
more schemes than you'd imagine — is to make the second kind of
knowledge easier to come by. Most experienced library users know the
Library of Congress classification system, at least in its outlines.
But the reference collection in the Main Reading Room at the New York
Public Library follows the Billings system, created by a former
director of the library and used nowhere else. It is a map on which
you recognize none of the symbols.
That is all changing, at last. The reference collection is being
reshelved according to the Library of Congress system. In the overall
history of information science, this may seem like a leap from the
1890's to the late 1890's. But a classification system is like a
shark. If it isn't moving forward, it's probably dead. Perhaps the
most delightfully named branch of the federal bureaucracy is the
Library of Congress Cataloging Directorate, which sounds oddly like an
office of totalitarian librarians. One division of the Cataloging
Directorate does nothing but keep the classification system up to
date. The same cannot be said of the Billings system, which suffered
obsolescence long ago.
This change may seem like a trivial matter to you who Google
everything. But the Reading Room at the New York Public Library is one
of those places so common in this city where the clientele is both
passionate and knowledgeable. Sooner or later, everyone who loves a
library broods about how the books are arranged. Thomas Jefferson did.
He sent 18 or 20 wagonloads of his books to the nascent Library of
Congress. He wrote a long letter about the problems of classification
and prepared a detailed catalog of his books on a system of his own
devising. He loved books and loved arranging them. But that letter is
easily his driest piece of writing.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is
distributed without profit to those who have expressed an interest in
receiving the information for research and educational purposes. The
sender of this email has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator
of this article nor is he endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
Andrew Evans, JD, MLS
Gov Docs Librarian/Legal Ref Coordinator
Washburn University Law Library
1700 SW College Ave
Topeka KS 66621
(785) 670-1787
andrew.evans@washburn.edu
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