Page 71 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Knowledge Organization: Classification and Cataloguing Theory

Notes Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
4. Ranganathan introduced the conception of ………………..planes of work.
5. A new kind of formation of subjects …………………..has been added as Canonical Division.

6. The indicator Digit is used to indicate an …………………..instead of Roman small letters.
4.3 Systems and Specials

Colon Classification, system of library organization developed by the Indian librarian
S.R. Ranganathan in 1933. It is general rather than specific in nature, and it can create complex or
new categories through the use of facets, or colons. The category of dental surgery, for example,
symbolized as L 214:4:7, is created by combining the letter L for medicine, the number 214 for
teeth, the number 4 for diseases, and the number 7 for surgery.
In Colon Classification, there are 108 main classes (previously there were 33) and 10 generalized
classes (broadly divided between the humanities and sciences), which are represented by a
mixed notation of Arabic numerals and roman and Greek letters. Each main class comprises five
fundamental facets, or groups: personality, matter, energy, space, and time. Ranganathan’s
main contribution to classification was the notion of these fundamental facets, or categories.
Instead of schedules of numbers for each topic, Colon Classification uses series of short tables
from which component numbers are chosen and linked by colons to form a whole. The book
number is an integral part of the call number, a departure from Dewey or Library of Congress
systems. Each main class has its appropriate facets and focuses; e.g., literature has language and
form. In addition, there are four floating tables that correspond to subdivisions—e.g., form,
geography, time, and language. Further expansion of the tables is allowed through colon addition
or omission (if the subject cannot be expanded). The collection of the University of Madras,
India, was utilized in the creation of Colon Classification.
Colon classification is a general scheme which aims to classify by subject all kinds of documents.

!
Caution The present work aims to interpret every rule, major or minor. Library classification
has become a vast and complicated field of study using highly technical terminology.
The word, system basic subjects, depicts a division of a major class which was elaborated after a
school Notes of thought. School of Thought refers to the succession or a group of people who are
devoted to some philosophy or cause. Therefore class number for a system is derived by the
chronological instrument.

Example:
X-NI Communism: The number stands for a system of economics that came into being in
the 1910s.
L-B Ayarveda. B is 999 to 1000 BC: A system of medicine that came into being prior to
1000 BC.
B6-M8 Hyperbolic geometry: Where B6 is geometry and M8 means the 1880s. The number
stands for a system of geometry expounded in the 1880s.

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