Page 50 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Unit 3: Notational System

forth. Rather, the CRG principles are concerned with qualities that should underlie all types of Notes
notation used in a classification system. For this reason, the CRG principles for notation will be
included in the simplified model, as well as the Canons for Synonym and Homonym, which
represent also these fundamental qualities of notation.

3.1 Purpose of Notational System

Melvil Dewey, self-proclaimed library reformer, made numerous contributions to modern
librarianship. Foremost among those contributions is the knowledge organization system that
bears his name, the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system. While the original system
“was devised for cataloguing and indexing purposes, . . . it was found . . . to be equally valuable
for numbering and arranging books and pamphlets on the shelves”. Evidence of the ingenuity
of the DDC notational system is found in its use as a tool for both physical access (as a system of
shelf arrangement) and intellectual access (as a classification system).
Entries in the library’s catalogue gave the size of each book, as well as a number, apparently for
the section in which it would be found. This information could be used to direct the searcher to
the correct alcove and then to the correct shelf or shelves (books of like size being shelved
together to reduce space requirements). Then, “unless there was some further undocumented
system, like arrangement by author’s name, it was then necessary to scan all books of the right
size.”

As we see, first and foremost, shelf arrangement was institution-specific. Where a particular
item was shelved in one institution might bear little relationship to where it would be shelved
in another institution (unless the broad subject schemes used were compatible). In deciding
where to shelve a newly acquired item or in seeking to locate an item in one institution, little or
no effort would be saved either the librarian or the library patron who happened to know the
shelf location of a copy of the item in another institution. From one perspective, this is not
altogether nonsensical. Shelf arrangement is, after all, very physical; it provides physical locations
for physical items so that people can acquire physical access to those items. Why then should
shelf arrangement not be governed solely by the physical layout of the housing institution?
Here let us draw an analogy with the OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) Model, where each
layer in the seven-layer model – with the physical layer at the bottom – provides services to the
layer above it. In the OSI Model, the highest layer is the application layer, and “the other layers
exist only to support this layer”.
Shelf arrangement is a key element of the library’s physical layer, while the uses to which the
library patron applies the intellectual or artistic content of library materials comprise the library’s
application layer. Shelf arrangement should therefore be considered from the perspective of
supporting access to and eventual use of intellectual and artistic content.
As we have seen, many fixed location systems achieved a degree of subject collocation, in as
much as the first element of their notation corresponded to a broad subject class. But often these
subject classes were too broad to provide meaningful subject collocation. Practically speaking,
the first component in the notation of such schemes indicated in which alcove, case, etc., the item
was shelved. Indeed, the entire notation of such schemes was geared toward reflecting the item’s
location. The notation in Dewey’s Decimal Classification, in contrast, has always reflected the
subject matter of the item. When used for shelving purposes, the notation only secondarily
indicates where an item is located, which it does by indicating its location relative to the location
of other items in the collection. In institutions desiring to maintain subject collocation within
their collections and using fixed-location shelf arrangement, on-going acquisition would result
in the need to revise the fixed-location notations, since in time the space reserved for given
subjects would be filled and volumes would need to be physically shifted. But a relative location
system like the DDC would avoid such a need. As new items are acquired, physical shifting of

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