Search (2 results, page 1 of 1)

0.009492452 = product of:
  0.018984905 = sum of:
    0.018984905 = product of:
      0.07593962 = sum of:
        0.07593962 = weight(_text_:author's in 3651) [ClassicSimilarity], result of:
          0.07593962 = score(doc=3651,freq=2.0), product of:
            0.34092823 = queryWeight, product of:
              6.7201533 = idf(docFreq=144, maxDocs=44218)
              0.05073221 = queryNorm
            0.22274372 = fieldWeight in 3651, product of:
              1.4142135 = tf(freq=2.0), with freq of:
                2.0 = termFreq=2.0
              6.7201533 = idf(docFreq=144, maxDocs=44218)
              0.0234375 = fieldNorm(doc=3651)
      0.25 = coord(1/4)
  0.5 = coord(1/2)

Abstract

This paper, presented at the Ottawa Conference an the Conceptual Basis of the Classification of Knowledge, in 1971, is one of Fairthorne's more perceptive works and deserves a wide audience, especially as it breaks new ground in classification theory. In discussing the notion of discourse, he makes a "distinction between what discourse mentions and what discourse is about" [emphasis added], considered as a "fundamental factor to the relativistic nature of bibliographic classification" (p. 360). A table of mathematical functions, for example, describes exactly something represented by a collection of digits, but, without a preface, this table does not fit into a broader context. Some indication of the author's intent ls needed to fit the table into a broader context. This intent may appear in a title, chapter heading, class number or some other aid. Discourse an and discourse about something "cannot be determined solely from what it mentions" (p. 361). Some kind of background is needed. Fairthorne further develops the theme that knowledge about a subject comes from previous knowledge, thus adding a temporal factor to classification. "Some extra textual criteria are needed" in order to classify (p. 362). For example, "documents that mention the same things, but are an different topics, will have different ancestors, in the sense of preceding documents to which they are linked by various bibliographic characteristics ... [and] ... they will have different descendants" (p. 363). The classifier has to distinguish between documents that "mention exactly the same thing" but are not about the same thing. The classifier does this by classifying "sets of documents that form their histories, their bibliographic world lines" (p. 363). The practice of citation is one method of performing the linking and presents a "fan" of documents connected by a chain of citations to past work. The fan is seen as the effect of generations of documents - each generation connected to the previous one, and all ancestral to the present document. Thus, there are levels in temporal structure-that is, antecedent and successor documents-and these require that documents be identified in relation to other documents. This gives a set of documents an "irrevocable order," a loose order which Fairthorne calls "bibliographic time," and which is "generated by the fact of continual growth" (p. 364). He does not consider "bibliographic time" to be an equivalent to physical time because bibliographic events, as part of communication, require delay. Sets of documents, as indicated above, rather than single works, are used in classification. While an event, a person, a unique feature of the environment, may create a class of one-such as the French Revolution, Napoleon, Niagara Falls-revolutions, emperors, and waterfalls are sets which, as sets, will subsume individuals and make normal classes.

0.005659251 = product of:
  0.011318502 = sum of:
    0.011318502 = product of:
      0.022637004 = sum of:
        0.022637004 = weight(_text_:j in 3621) [ClassicSimilarity], result of:
          0.022637004 = score(doc=3621,freq=2.0), product of:
            0.16120142 = queryWeight, product of:
              3.1774964 = idf(docFreq=5010, maxDocs=44218)
              0.05073221 = queryNorm
            0.14042683 = fieldWeight in 3621, product of:
              1.4142135 = tf(freq=2.0), with freq of:
                2.0 = termFreq=2.0
              3.1774964 = idf(docFreq=5010, maxDocs=44218)
              0.03125 = fieldNorm(doc=3621)
      0.5 = coord(1/2)
  0.5 = coord(1/2)

Abstract

Henry Evelyn Bliss (1870-1955) devoted several decades of his life to the study of classification and the development of the Bibliographic Classification scheme while serving as a librarian in the College of the City of New York. In the course of the development of the Bibliographic Classification, Bliss developed a body of classification theory published in a number of articles and books, among which the best known are The Organization of Knowledge and the System of the Sciences (1929), Organization of Knowledge in Libraries and the Subject Approach to Books (1933; 2nd ed., 1939), and the lengthy preface to A Bibliographic Classification (Volumes 1-2, 1940; 2nd ed., 1952). In developing the Bibliographic Classification, Bliss carefully established its philosophical and theoretical basis, more so than was attempted by the makers of other classification schemes, with the possible exception of S. R. Ranganathan (q.v.) and his Colon Classification. The basic principles established by Bliss for the Bibliographic Classification are: consensus, collocation of related subjects, subordination of special to general and gradation in specialty, and the relativity of classes and of classification (hence alternative location and alternative treatment). In the preface to the schedules of A Bibliographic Classification, Bliss spells out the general principles of classification as weIl as principles specifically related to his scheme. The first volume of the schedules appeared in 1940. In 1952, he issued a second edition of the volume with a rewritten preface, from which the following excerpt is taken, and with the addition of a "Concise Synopsis," which is also included here to illustrate the principles of classificatory structure. In the excerpt reprinted below, Bliss discusses the correlation between classes, concepts, and terms, as weIl as the hierarchical structure basic to his classification scheme. In his discussion of cross-classification, Bliss recognizes the "polydimensional" nature of classification and the difficulties inherent in the two-dimensional approach which is characteristic of linear classification. This is one of the earliest works in which the multidimensional nature of classification is recognized. The Bibliographic Classification did not meet with great success in the United States because the Dewey Decimal Classification and the Library of Congress Classification were already weIl ensconced in American libraries by then. Nonetheless, it attracted considerable attention in the British Commonwealth and elsewhere in the world. A committee was formed in Britain which later became the Bliss Classification Association. A faceted edition of the scheme has been in preparation under the direction of J. Mills and V. Broughton. Several parts of this new edition, entitled Bliss Bibliographic Classification, have been published.