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Abstract

The "Relative Index" of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) is investigated over the span of its lifetime in 22 editions of the DDC as to its character as a concept indexing system, its provision of conceptual contexts for the terms it lists, and the way in which the index intersects with special tables of categories used in the system. Striking features of the index that are discussed include how the locater function of an index is expressed in it, its practice of including concepts that have not been given specific notational locations in the system, its two methods of providing conceptual contexts for indexed terms (by means of the notation of the system and by the insertion of enhancement terms that portray conceptual context), and how the index has intersected with three types of special tables of categories in the system. Critical issues raised include the indexing of constructed or synthesized complex concepts, inconsistencies in how enhancement terms are portrayed and the absence of them in some instances, the problem of equating conceptual context with disciplinary context, and problems associated with not indexing one type of special table. Summary and conclusions are extended to problems that arise in studying the index.

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Abstract

Review Essay zu: "The power to name: locating the Limits of Subject Representation in Libraries. By Hope A. Olson. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002. x, 261 pp. $103.00. ISBN 1-4020-0776-0". This work by Hope A. Olson is a much-pruned and rewritten version of her 1996 dissertation at the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Its original version is mentioned because in it she explains more fully the character of the radical feminist deconstructionist approach she brings to her task. However, the muted explanation of her perspective in the present volume does not ultimately alter the character of the work, which is both a polemic against what she concludes are male-dominated subject access tools and an apologia for a feminist understanding or approach to the tools. The central objective of The Power to Name is convincingly to characterize bias in classification and subject heading work, that is, to show that bias thoroughly marginalizes and sometimes excludes women and women minorities altogether. In the process of satisfying this objective the author also provides an etiology for the bias. Thus, the work essentially accomplishes two tasks, each of which will be examined here. Of the first of these two tasks, Olson states that her own analysis of Dewey Decimal Classification numbers and Library of Congress subject headings for eleven sample books "combines a feminist perspective with attention to particular groups of women identifying with one or more of the following: women of colour, African American women, Chicanas, lesbians, Asian American women, working class women, Jewish women, [and] North American Aboriginal women" (184). More specifically, she states that "the literature on cataloguing feminist material and materials for women illustrates that the existing standards include sexist terminology and put topics in uncongenial contexts with a sexist result. That is, they juxtapose them in classifications and references in such a way as to create a pejorative effect ... [T]hey treat women as exceptions to a masculine...