CHOICE OF SCHEME FOR CLASSIFICATION - Indian Statistical ...

library classification was that he began by thinking of what really goes on in the mind of a
person while consulting a library file. He asked himself first, "How does knowledge
arise?" He said, "It arises in a variety of ways, by assembling, by coordinating and so on."
This itself was something to which his contemporaries had not addressed themselves. He
began also to think in terms of facets. He realized that the book was not the same thing to
different people, and he talked about most favoured categories, and the like; and he
determined his famous facet formula: Personality, Matter, Energy, Space, and Time — or as
it is called PMEST. This was a tremendous step forward. He broke through, literally, the crust
of taxonomic rigidity into which classification had been poured and said, "We want very
little pigeon-holes. We will have a fluid system to emphasize certain elements depending
upon the type of curiosity" (75).
2 Harold Lancour, Dean of the Graduate Library School of the University of
Pittsburgh: "His [Ranganathan's] explorations in the organisation of knowledge have led to
the creation of a new approach to classification based on Facet and Phase Analysis.
Indeed, upon his creative enquiry into the nature of documentation, rests the structure of
modern library and information sciences" (17).
9 CONCLUSION
9.1 DC and UDC of Nineteenth Century Origin
DC and UDC are nineteenth century Schemes for Classification. DC was not only a
pioneer but also the best of its age. As Dr Shera has ably pointed out, it is a creature of the
nineteenth century ideas; it is essentially taxonomic (76, 77). UDC has been making a
heroic attempt to remove the defects of DC and to increase its suppleness. In doing so, it has
been able to retain only about one-third of the DC, as Donker Duyvis has pointed out (11).
UDC has thus become a different scheme. It is making continuous changes in the sequence of
Compound Subjects so as to receive new ones in helpful places and to bring the sequence in
conformity to the current consensus among scholars. It has begun to realise that it must
consciously design its future schedules on the faceted basis after the model of CC. See for
example, its new Schedule for Plastics and its revised Schedule for Education. Proposals
are also being made to change the sequence of the Basic Subjects and even of the Main
Subjects. This is but natural. For, the Universe of Subjects is in a state of great flux.
9.2 Role of Classification
A Scheme for Classification is but a tool in the hands of the library to organise
subjects and to serve them out in an efficient way. And the library itself is but a social
agency to help the forward movement — the flux — of the society in the vital, mental,
and spiritual planes. A scheme designed in the light of the experience of a century ago
naturally stands outmoded. DC has withdrawn itself from being of service to specialist
readers. As already stated, UDC is trying to break its nineteenth century shackles and to
change-over from difficult readjustments — now and again, and here and there — to a
change-over to a more global reshaping of itself.