Page 129 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Knowledge Organization: Classification and Cataloguing Theory

Notes editions of the same book; and most importantly, that people remember names, not years.
Chronological book numbers are as old as author numbers. W.S. Biscoe, a disciple of Dewey,
devised a system that the great man admired. James Duff Brown and Fremont A. Rider created
their own systems (Satija and Comaromi 1992).

6.5.2 Colon Classification Book Numbers

S.R. Ranganathan’s faceted Colon Classification (CC) is extremely detailed, precise, and
informative, as is the book number system he made to go with it. In his Colon Classification he
defined these terms:

03 The Book Number of a book is a symbol used to fix position relatively to the other
books having the same Ultimate Class.

030 The Book Number of a book individualises it among the books sharing the same class
number.
031 The Book Number of a book is the translation of the names of certain of its specified
features into the artificial language of ordinal numbers, specified and elaborated in the
rest of this chapter.
03012 The Book Number consists of an intelligible concatenation of one or more of the
following symbols: the twenty-four Roman Capitals got by omitting I and O; the twenty-
three Roman smalls got by omitting i, l, and o; the punctuation marks dot, hyphen,
semicolon and colon; and the ten Indo-Arabic numerals.
0302 The Book Number may consist of one or more of the following successive Facets:
Language Number; Form Number; Year Number; Accession Part of Book Number; Volume
Number; Supplement Number; Copy Number; Criticism Number; and Accession Part of
Criticism Number.
He also defined this formula for book numbers:
[L][F][Y][A].[V]-[S];[C]:Cr[Cr#]
[L] = language number (can be left out)
[F] = form number (can be left out)

[Y] = year (the most important; comes from a table: e.g. N=1900-1999, P=2000-2099)
[A] = accession part of year number (if more than one book from the same year)
[V] = volume number

[S] = supplement number
[C] = copy number
Cr = g indicates a volume of criticism
[Cr #] = accession part of criticism indicator
This is the most orderly book number system discussed. The language and form facets can be left
out if they are the default (e.g., English books), leaving the year of publication, which Ranganathan
felt was the most important facet, first. He believed strongly in chronological ordering.
In many of the schemes of Book Numbers the name of the author is used to individualise a book.
In the Colon Classification the Year of Publication and some other characteristics also in some
cases, are used for the purpose. For except in Literature and in the case of the classics in any
subject, where the author is made into a class in the Colon Classification, it is felt that the Year

124 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY