Page 19 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Knowledge Organization: Classification and Cataloguing Theory

Notes Faceted classification is used in faceted search systems that enable a user to navigate
information along multiple paths corresponding to different orderings of the facets.
This contrasts with traditional taxonomies in which the hierarchy of categories is
fixed and unchanging.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
10. ……………….codes can describe any type of document or object to any desired level of
detail.
11. The ………………… classification is a library classification scheme used to catalogue and
classify musical compositions.
12. A …………………can link entities either directly or indirectly, and either vertically or
horizontally.
1.5 Documents

A document is the repository of an expressed thought. Consequently, its contents have a spiritual
character. The danger that blunt unification of the outer form exercises a repercussion on the
contents in making the latter characterless and impersonal is not illusory. In standardizing the
form and layout of documents, it is necessary to restrict this activity to that which does not affect
the spiritual contents and which serves to remove a really irrational variety.
The Indian theorist S. R. Ranganathan, usually so metaphysical, took a curiously narrow and
pragmatic position on the definition of “document”, resisting even the inclusion of audio-visual
materials, such as radio and television communications. “But they are not documents; because
they are not records on materials fit for handling or preservation. Statues, pieces of china, and
the material exhibits in a museum were mentioned because they convey thought expressed in
some way. But none of these is a document, since it is not a record on a more or less flat surface.
Ranganathan’s view of “document” as a synonym for “embodied micro thought” on paper “or
other material, fit for physical handling, transport across space, and preservation through time”
was adopted by the Indian Standards Institution, with a note explaining that the term “document”
“is now extended in use to include any embodied thought, micro or macro and whether the
physical embodiment is exclusive to one work or is shared by more than one work.”
Others, also, took a limited view of what documents were. In the USA, two highly influential
authors opted for a view of documents that was only an extension of textual records to include
audio-visual communications. Louis Shores popularized the phrase “the generic book” and
Jesse H. Shera used “the graphic record” with as much the same meaning.

Did u know? Shera was gratuitously dismissive of Briet’s notion of documents as evidence.
Ordinarily information storage and retrieval systems have been concerned with text and
text-like records, for example, names, numbers, and alphanumeric codes. The present interest in
“multimedia” reminds us that not all phenomena of interest in information science are textual
or text like. We may need to deal with any phenomena that someone may wish to observe:
events, processes, images, and objects, as well as texts. If “documentation” (a term that included
information storage and retrieval systems) is what you do to or with documents you work, how
far could you push the meaning of “document” and or how far could you push the understanding

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