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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.