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Abstract

This classic paper presents the reasoning behind the research undertaken by the Classification Research Group in London, beginning in 1952 and producing, by 1955, the direction in which the Group's efforts were to go in the next thirty years. The Group's original purpose was to review the basic principles of indexing and classification without committing itself to any existing system. It began by uncovering - among existing systems such as indexes, classifications, automatic selectors, and other information retrieval systems - the steps in the process by means of which a search was performed. The Group went over this very carefully, identifying parts of the process each step of the way. At the time this work was performed systems such as UNITERMS, which did not survive, and other alphabetical coordinated indexes, mainly experimental, were a dime a dozen. Classification to most librarians meant Dewey and the Library of Congress systems, both of which have very serious shortcomings from an intellectual point of view. The Group finally came to the conclusion that a classification of knowledge was necessary for constructing any successful retrieval system. The question then became one of deciding which kind of classification system. The members identified ten unsatisfactory features of existing systems. In fact, they could not find any general class schedule that either was satisfactory or could be made satisfactory. Obviously then, a new system had to be made. The question became one of how to do this. Existing theories did not conform to the theory of logical division; dividing and subdividing an the basis of a single characteristic was not followed. Thus logical division, which is a "top down" method of analysis, was rejected. Generic relationships would have to be made by some other methodology. A "bottom-up" or inductive, as opposed to deductive, method was a possibility. The Group actually decided to use a system in which a given genus could be subdivided in more than one way, thus "yielding a homogeneous group of collateral species."