CLASSIFICATION RESEARCH GROUP. Bulletin No. 11
| Pages | 21-50 |
| Published date | 01 January 1978 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026651 |
| Date | 01 January 1978 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
CLASSIFICATION RESEARCH GROUP
Bulletin
No. 11*
INTRODUCTION
THE GROUP HAS continued to meet regularly since the publication of the last
bulletin and has welcomed a number of new members and visitors from both
home and overseas. Many members who joined at the beginning or very early on
in the Group's history still attend regularly, but several long-standing members
have
also
left, or ceased active participation, in the period under review. Towards
the end of 1972 Mr Wells relinquished the chairmanship of the Group, due to
pressure of work, and his place was taken by Mr Mills. Another departure, and
one that robbed the Group of one of its most active and forceful members, was
that of Jason
Farradane.
He left the country in
1974,
and the Group presented him
with a book as a memento of many enjoyable and provocative discussions
stimulated by his presence at the meetings which he unfailingly attended. It was
with great pleasure that
he
was welcomed back to a meeting while he was visiting
this country in January 1976.
At the beginning of 1977 the Group held a business meeting to work out a
policy for the future. It was resolved that five meetings would be held per annum,
on dates fixed well in advance; normally the first Tuesday of March, May, July,
October, and December. It was also decided that a subscription of £1 should be
reintroduced and
a
circular was sent to all members giving them this information.
On the basis of
this,
the mailing list was revised. At the same time, it was agreed
that at least one meeting
a
year should be
set aside
to give members an opportunity
to discuss theoretical
problems,
rather than on-going projects. It
was
resolved that
the agenda for each meeting should be circulated well in
advance.
The Group has
operated in accordance with these resolutions since January 1977.
During the period under review
a
fair proportion of the Group's time has been
taken up with discussions stemming from projects that arc being carried on
elsewhere. Members of the Group involved in undertakings such as the revision
of the Bliss Classification or the construction of the Broad System of Ordering,
for example, have found it advantageous to use Group discussions as a sounding
board for the problems they have encountered and their possible solution. Dis-
cussions of the most significant among these projects have been allocated specific
sections in the pages that follow. Members of the Group have from time to time
attended and reported on international and national meetings of direct relevance
to classification interests. Austin and Coates attended the OSTI Workshop on
Automatic Indexing in the Spring of 1974 and reported back to the Group on
matters discussed there. Austin also attended and reported on the Third Inter-
national Conference on Classification held in Bombay in January 1975.
The Group completed its deliberations on the Classification of Library and In-
formation Science, and the resulting schedules were published by the Library
Association. The discussions are reported in a later section. Mr T. Edwards, the
then editor of
LISA,
was welcomed to the meetings when this scheme was being
* CRG Bulletin
No.
10
appeared in
the
Journal
of
Documentation,
vol.
29,
1973,
pp.
51-71.
Journal
of
Documentation,
Vol. 34, No. 1, March 1978, pp. 21-50.
21
JOURNAL OF DOCUMENTATION Vol.
34,
no.
1
considered. Similarly, Mr K. Bakewell attended a meeting when the subject
under discussion was the classification of management. The ambition of the
Group to produce a new general classification has fallen by the wayside, and is
unlikely to be resurrected. But this does not mean that the many deliberations
that have taken place on this topic have been without result; in fact, quite the
reverse is true, since Austin's work on PRECIS and the framework of the new
edition of Bliss are just two examples of ways in which the Group's discussions
have been used to practical advantage. Indeed, these two major undertakings
have,
between them, very largely pre-empted the need for the production of
another general classification, at least at the present time.
During the period under consideration, November 1972 to July 1977, the main
themes that have recurred and can be presented
as
continuing trends arc Problems
of a General Classification Scheme, the Classification of Library and Information
Science, Thesauri, the Isis Cumulative Bibliography, the new edition of the
Bibliographic Classification, and the Broad System of Ordering. Each of these
topics
is
reported on in turn in the ensuing
sections.
By far the greatest proportion
of the time has been spent in considerations arising out of the Bliss revision. This
has provided a useful starting-point for many a discussion of wider significance
and has triggered off
a
number of heated discussions and amicable arguments.
Other members of the Group, apart from those specifically associated with pro-
jects reported on in some detail, also contributed to discussions on the basis of the
work with which they are currently engaged. Mayne, whose interests lie in the
field of Informatics, read
a
paper, 'Towards a new scheme for the classification of
knowledge', in which he outlined the work he began in
1967
and had pursued in
the succeeding five years. This stimulated interest and discussion at the meeting
in question, and particularly aroused Farradane's attention, since his work on
relational indexing appeared at times to be in conflict with the principles put
forward by Mayne.
The Group was delighted to see the commencement of publication of the new
edition of
the
Bibliographic Classification. The introductory volume and three
main
classes
were published in March
1977.
Two other publications that appeared
during this time were particularly pertinent to the Group's interests and featured,
directly or indirectly, in many of its deliberations; these were Austin's PRECIS
manual and Langridge's
Classification
and indexing in
humanities.
In connection
with the latter, it was gratifying to see Butterworths also produce new editions
of works by two other members of the Group, namely Foskett's
Classification and
indexing in
the social sciences
and Vickery's
Classification and indexing
in
science.
In
addition to these, a list of writings by members of the Group is appended to the
bulletin. A list of current members of the Group is also provided.
PROBLEMS OF A GENERAL CLASSIFICATION
On examination of the minutes of the Group's meetings over the period since the
publication of the last bulletin, for the purposes of compiling this present one,
there is perhaps some significance in the discovery that the main topic under dis-
cussion at both the first and last meeting surveyed was the approach to the classi-
fication of the whole of knowledge as seen by Langridgc. In 1972 Langridge is
minuted thus:
2046 Mr Langridge said that... the present classification work
was
based on assumptions
about the nature of knowledge which had never been examined properly, and this
22
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