Page 130 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Unit 6: Concept of Call Number

of Publication will be a more relevant and helpful characteristic than the name of the author for Notes
individualising a book.

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Caution If we remember that the library is a growing organism, it is more often the year
of publication that determines the value of a book in all cases except the ones excluded
above.
The majority of readers are interested in the latest books in an ultimate class, while antiquarians
may be interested in the oldest books. Most pedestrian works cease to have value to an ordinary
reader at the expiry of ten to twenty years after publication. Any work with long-persisting
value is likely to come out again in a new edition (Ranganathan 1964).

Example: A 1987 book written in Urdu about Indian history would have call number V,
44 168 M7 where V, 44 is the class number and 168 M7 is the book number (168showing it is
written in Urdu and M7 standing for 1987) (Satija and Agriwal 1990). A more complicated book
number is 15w1K8.1g which indicates a book of criticism of volume 1 of a 1968 book of Sanskrit
verse: 15 for Sanskrit (language), w1 for form (verse), K8 for year (1968), .1 for volume 1, and g
for criticism.
As with all chronological systems, one writer’s books on a topic will not be collocated. Further,
different editions of the same book will be separated. A book published in 1968 with a second
edition in 1975 would have copies filed at K8 and L5, with many books in between. Ranganathan
said that if editions were to be kept together, it could be done by treating later editions as copies
of the first. In this example, the first edition would be K8 and the second K8; L5.
This brings together different editions of the same book, but at the same time destroys the
chronological ordering that shows the progression of knowledge. Ranganathan knew that not
everyone would like complete chronological ordering, but he felt its advantages outweighed its
faults. He liked the ordering, and ways of turning numbers into shorter coded forms, so much so
that in Colon Classification (1964) he includes two tables for doing this. One is especially for
book numbers and turns four-number calendar years into three-character letter and number
combinations.

Task Do you think that book numbers are different for each book having the same class
number and will make the full call number completely individual? If yes give reasons.

Self Assessment

State whether the following statements are true or false:
13. Book numbers are a way of organizing and ordering books about the same subject that
share the same class number.

14. Book numbers are not the part of call numbers.
15. Book numbers usually reflect the subject of a book.

6.6 Collection Number

In libraries and museums and other archives, a collection number or catalogue number is a
unique, usually sequential, number given to each new item acquired, as it is catalogued. If an

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