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Source

Journal of library history. 20(1985) no.2, S.157-172

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Abstract

The publication in 1876 of Rules for a Printed Catalogue by Charies A. Cutter (1837-1903) was a landmark in the literature of library science. This code provided the basis for all subsequent codes of descriptive cataloging and catapulted the dictionary catalog into the position of being the predominant form of catalog in American libraries in years to come. Cutter's rules for subject entry were the first and, in essence, still the only codification of the alphabetical subject catalog. These Rules represented the culmination of many years' experience in compiling the dictionary catalog of the Boston Athenaeum (published in 18741882) during Cutter's tenure as its librarian from 1869 to 1893. Prior to the advent of the dictionary catalog, the popular method for organizing subject entries in a catalog was the classified arrangement, in the form of either the classed catalog (usually based an a particular classification scheme) or the alphabetico-classed catalog, in which the primary objective was subject collocation. Subject entries were arranged systematically and logically according to their subject relationships. In the alphabetical subject arrangement in the dictionary catalog, an the other hand, the primary objective is what Cutter calls the "facility of reference"; in other words, subjects can be located quickly in the catalog because they are listed directly under their specific names in an alphabetical order. Unlike the classed catalog which requires an accompanying index, the alphabetical subject catalog combines the functions of the subject entries and index in one alphabetical sequence, even though at the expense of subject collocation.
Some of the advantages of the classed catalog were then reintroduced into the alphabetical subject catalog through see also references and, to some extent, by the use of inverted headings. Although never officially acknowledged, Cutter's principles provided the philosophical underpinnings for the Library of Congress and the Sears subject headings systems. His principles of common usage, specific entry, uniform heading, and syndetic structure have been reflected in the Library of Congress Subject Headings practice and reiterated by David Judson Haykin (q.v.) in his exposition of the Library of Congress system. Cutter's definition of "specific entry" has been frequently quoted as the basis of the alphabetical subject catalog. Because Cutter's Rules are no longer in print, the following excerpt contains all the rules an subject entry from the fourth edition of Rules for a Dictionary Catalog. These rules, first published over a hundred years ago, do not address all the problems encountered in subject analysis in modern times. Nonetheless, many of his ideas are still valid and manifested in subject cataloging practice in American libraries today. Moreover, as A. C. Foskett comments, "his Rules can still be read with profit (and, more unusual in such works, pleasure) today."

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Abstract

The idea of computing with concepts as mathematicians manipulate variables in equations goes back at least as far as G. W. Leibniz (1663). Leibniz dreamed of a universal calculus, an ambiguity-free language, with which scholars could communicate ideas with mathematical precision. George Boole, in his investigation of the laws of thought, contributed to the realization of this idea by developing a calculus of classes (1847). A modern visionary who saw a practical application of Boole's work and further contributed to the idea of communicating by "computing" was Mortimer Taube (1910-1965), a member of the Library of Congress staff from 1944 to 1949 who later founded Documentation, Inc. He proposed communicating with a mechanized information store by combining concepts using the Boolean operators, AND, OR and NOT. The following selection contains one of the first presentations of a technique Taube called "coordinate indexing" and what later has come to be called "post coordinate indexing" or Boolean searching. This selection is interesting an three counts. It is interesting first of all because of its early date-1950. Though the idea of coordinate indexing had been anticipated in manual systems of the punched card sort, these systems were limited, relying for the most part an repeated application of the AND operator. To conceptualize the full power that could be achieved by Boolean search strategy in mechanized systems was an imaginative step forward. Second, the selection is interesting insofar as the idea of coordinate indexing is couched, indeed nearly hidden, in a somewhat ponderous essay an the compatibility of universal and special classifications and the merits of different methods of information organization. Ponderous though it is, the essay is worth a careful reading. The perspective it gives is enlightening, a reminder that the roots of information science reach far back into the bibliographic past. The third and perhaps most interesting aspect of this selection is that in it Taube looks beyond the technique of coordinate indexing to envisage its implications an bibliographic organization. (Now more than thirty years later we are still attempting to understand these implications.) What Taube saw was a new method of bibliographic organization, which, not ingenuously, he observed might seem almost bumptious in the face of a two thousand year history of organizing information. This "new" method was, however, being proposed elsewhere, albeit in different guise, by S. R. Ranganathan (q.v.) and his school. It was the method of organizing information using abstract categories called fields or facets. These categories, unlike those used in the great traditional classifications, were not locked in procrustean hierarchical structures, but could be freely synthesized or combined in indexing or retrieval. In short, Taube's voice was among those at midcentury supporting the move from enumerative to synthetic subject approaches. The fact that it was an American voice and one especially weIl informed about bibliography and computers is perhaps what led Jesse Shera to refer to Taube as "the Melvil Dewey ... of midtwentieth century American Librarianship," one who was able "to weld successfully conventional librarianship and the then-emerging information science."

Footnote

Original in: Bibliographic organization: Fifteenth Annual Conference of the Graduate Library School, 24-29 July 1950. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press 1951. S.57-71.

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Footnote

Original in: Pettee, J.: The history and theory of the alphabetical subject approach to books. New York: Wilson 1946. S.22-25.