Page 66 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Unit 4: Colon Classification and Dewey Decimal Classification

Notes
Did u know? The Class Number and Book Number work together to give individual
volumes a place on the shelf.
The 2nd edition of the Colon Classification standard was published in 1939, after several years
of use and testing by the public. Ranganathan referred to this as the Basic Version of the Colon
Classification scheme. In 1952, Ranganathan published the 4th edition. This included a major
new development, the introduction of the PMEST (Personality, Matter, Energy, Space and Time)
categories. The basic idea of five categories was present in the earlier edition, but was not clearly
defined. The presence of information in any of these five categories is indicated by different
punctuation, making the term ‘colon classification’ a slight misnomer. However the name
remains.

4.1.2 Components of Ranganathan’s Scheme

Ranganathan based the Colon Classification scheme on the concept of facet analysis, an idea that
was not new to library science. He believed that any concept could be built by using a term from
a basic class to start the concept at a very broad level and then adding terms that corresponded
to facets of that basic class in order to arrive at the very specific topic. This is how his fascination
with the Meccano building set came to life in classification. A Class Number was made up of a
Basic Class number (or sometimes more than one, as we’ll see later) and as many additional
facets (what he called Isolates) that the cataloguer needed to add. The Basic Class number is
sometimes referred to as the Basic Subject or the Basic Facet.

Upon examining all the facets, Ranganathan notices that there are five main groups into which
the facets fall, and he calls these the fundamental categories, represented by the mnemonic
PMEST in an order of decreasing concreteness.

Personality – Can be understood as the primary facet.
– The most prominent attribute
Matter – Physical material

Energy – Action
Space – Location
Time – Time period
Ranganathan believed that any object (for him this meant any concept that a book could be
written about) could be represented by pulling relevant pieces from these five facets and fitting
them together. All of the facets do not need to be represented, and each can be pulled any
number of times. The notation for each facet was separated by using a colon, hence the name of
the system. Arlene Taylor provides a good example that uses all five facets. Imagine a book
about “the design of wooden furniture in 18th century America.” (Taylor, 1999).
The facets would be as follows:
Personality-furniture

Matter-wood
Energy-design
Space-America
Time-18th century

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