Replies to This Forum

Permalink Reply by Mithun Raj on March 25, 2015 at 17:54

I thank Dilip Kumarji for initiating such a wonderful discussion.
If you know what exactly you are looking for then searching will do the trick (title/author approach to information). But when you have only a vague idea on what you need (Subject approach), searching still might help you, but you will never know what you have missed. Unfortunately more often we run into the later scenario.

Weinberger's thesis rightly asserts that "the power of the computer and the Internet have placed huge databases at the call of a button, and searches on key words can be made in a fraction of a second". But now the humble question is how you will find the right information suited for you among the sea of "10 million results found in just 0.012 seconds"!! Actually such huge quantity of information is as bad as "no information". And the fact is that we are not worried about what will be in these 10 million results, as we often settle for what we get from the first few pages of the search results. We do not know what we have missed. That compromise may seem harmless when we are searching for a theatre or a hotel room. Unfortunately many of researchers around the world depend on these first few pages of search results for arriving at crucial results in their articles, which might be affecting millions of people. So a searchable ' running list of items' is not going to facilitate serious research.

But the next question is "How classification can help us here?". Browsing through a hierarchically classified collection will help you to pin point the information you require. A Classified collection (APUPA) increases the serendipity in finding previously unknown information which is relevant to your need. But the problem is that, even after years of research in the fields of artificial intelligence and semantics, it still require considerable human intellectual effort to create sensibly classified information sets. That makes classification economically non-viable. Where as computer programs can easily perform indexing of petabytes of information to facilitate searching at affordable costs.

As the digital objects are replacing the physical copies, the "notional plane" of classification might become irrelevant in long run. But I am sure the idea of classification will survive. You might have noticed how the e-commerce sites are increasingly using "Facets" such as "by company" "by size" " by price" for filtering the huge no. of search results or how they have classified their products under various categories such as "Fashion" Kitchen" "Electronics" etc

So it is not like classification is not needed. It is indeed needed. But it looks like, for the time being the world is favouring quantity against quality. 

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Permalink Reply by Vaishali Vilas Vaidya on March 27, 2015 at 0:08

Sir,

I agree with your opinion. We talk a lot about computerization, automation, cloud computing etc. Automation in college libraries is one of the NAAC criteria, but still we emphasize on classification. When computers were not in use that time classification and cataloguing was must to keep similar titles together but in modern era in my opinion classification is not necessary. One more thing we have to remember that in that era college libraries were having ‘Closed Access’.  So staff used to handle lending and shelving. But in ‘Open Access’ readers take out the book but they do not keep in proper place. So here ‘keeping similar titles in one place’ does not work.  

Our ultimate aim is that readers should save their time. I believe computer is the best option for that. Today’s  generation is techsaavy.  Instead of searching a book in catalogue they will definitely select option of computer.  Those who are believe in classification they can try using computer for searching. They have to follow simple things.

1         Take few titles of different subjects .

2         Assign Keywords to those titles.  ( main keyword “subject of the book reaming as per your requirement but try to keep limited keywords )

3         Paste Acc Nos on Spine. ( keep font bold )

4         In stack room instead of classification numbers give’ main subject names’ to your cupboards.

5         Keep subject wise books in cupboards.

6         Now arrange books according to accession numbers in cupboards or shelves.

7         Whenever readers approach you for a book check subject and ask him/her to go to that particular cupboard.

8         Searching book by Accession Number is easier than by classification number.

9         If classification number is big then searching book by classification number is very difficult.  On the other hand bold Accession number will be visible.

10     Readers will get book in minimum time.

Those who are against computerization please try this.

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Siddhartha Shankar Ray on March 27, 2015 at 1:16

Dear Ms. Vaishali Vilas Vaidya,

Thank you so very much for your post and the nice analysis. However, our experience is different.

Besides being a library for higher learning, ours is also a full depository Library of The World Bank and a few other U.N/International Organizations.

As such, alongside the main stack, we maintain separate corners for publications of each those organizations as well. Since, we have shortage of professional staff (knowing Classification) we opted to keep those  materials according to Accession numbers.

We also maintain OPAC which reflects our entire collection.We have several terminals so the users can search themselves

After a couple of weeks, the users started to complain as they were unable to find the "similar materials together" in a sequence they felt helpful for them!! In our Main stack however, we maintained Classified order for arrangement.

Even the outside members (Incidentally, we have over 1500 such outside members!)  from local Universities who are mostly postgraduate students or young researchers ( we generally do not allow UG students!!) carrying Laptops& digital cameras ( as they are more accustomed with the computers than taking notes on papers!) were first to express their dissatisfaction!!

The one simple (& common) issue was that they were unable to find the "books on particular issues" together!! what I mentioned in quotation is the exact couple of words they had written in their complain!!

We had to make immediate arrangements to cluster the materials broad subject wise to tide over the crisis and later we had to hire people on contract to do the backlog classification of the materials for their satisfaction!!    

I personally feel that in case we have a collection of  a few hundred different books of a particular close subjects (meaning NOT interdisciplinary ) and where the users mostly approach on the basis of Author/Title rather than subject, arrangement of books according to Accession numbers may do.

Sincerely,

Siddhartha S. Ray, Calcutta

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Permalink Reply by Subeesh A C on March 27, 2015 at 8:01

Respected madam,

As you must know, Library Classification of a document is a process which involves identifying the core subject of the document and assigning a number which enable the Library staff/user to trace that document in the collection. It also should enable the document to stay with its related documents to enhance the aspect of visibility to the user. With the emergence new areas of research and its subsequent publication patterns we are consistently getting surprised with arrival of emerging interdisciplinary or multi-subject documents in our library. But the thing that keep us apart or sometimes above from our other information professionals is that we are trained professionals to deal with such information explosion situation. We do that primarily by analyzing and understanding those documents through various professional tools in a standard manner by using our professional intellect. It is that ability and a mentality for servicing (by understanding our users, collection and technology) counts more in our profession.

While ISBN/ISSN/DOI …etc uniquely represent the our documents in its external or physical sense, classification allows it to get an identity in the vast realm of knowledge. Here you can understand the value of classification and the role of Librarian in it. A computer professional only knows how to code his algorithms but it is us, the trained people who have to give them the inputs on those documents, for the purpose of MARC or FRBR or any other metadata recording formats. Google’s algorithm is not for this purpose right now.   So if you are saying that classification is not necessary how this is going to work?

Again madam, if you are having a big library (5^th law) and here just leave the language part, in case if a user comes and ask you about some books on the BCI’s  particular principles (Brain Computer Interface), where you will send him by using your OPAC? If you are using Accession No wise arrangement, even if you know the particular aspect by yourself, you have to either send the users or go by yourself,  to different racks to get the document one by one. And what about re-shelving if it is not what the user want?  Is it time saving in a big library scenario? No Way…. See any way we need to do a classification at least for the sake of that document itself; otherwise how we are going to give it that subject headings as you listed. In my opinion if we do things in Library (Technical) it should follow standard professional procedures so that as today it should be reusable with technology changes.

In the case of BCI, it can go to Biology, Robotics and Electronics depending on to whom the author exchanged his ideas. If we classify it and arrange it accordingly the user will love it, and again with his intended subject search, the classification itself will guide the user to his pool of ideas recorded inside the library, however big the collection/library is. If it is in the Biological ( Neuro engineering) aspect he needs information,  he will surely search like that and he will get it;  because we are doing  classification and subject assignment accordingly . On the other hand if we place it Acc No wise, and give the subject term as BCI or any general term, it will always difficult for the librarian to understand and identify the document on the basis of its subject content asked particularly by the user. Because user is always expert on his subject and the Librarian compete with him in his subject through his experience using classification systems. One more thing is that classification is not against computerization, it is  at least the base of Library computerization. So In my opinion, we Library Professionals should keep away from such mark and park type of library arrangement systems.

I am really sorry for the lengthy content and for my opinions if it hurt anybody, and please consider it as my inexperience in those aspects whether it is communication or language.

 

For a better world

Subeesh AC

Pune

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Permalink Reply by DILIP KUMAR P J on March 27, 2015 at 0:30

Hi Vaishali, 

That was a very good reply. This method of arranging by acc. numbers on the shelves and looking up on the computer database was useful most of all for reprints in the old days when we used to get actual printed copies. Nowadays there's too much stuff on the web to think of the hardcopy option!

Frankly, I still arrange my books by Dewey call numbers... but, as I have explained i my blog, sometimes it's a bit confusing when you have multiple choices. I will post some examples soon.

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