THE UNIVERSE OF INFORMATION.pdf - ideals

for the second International Conference of Bibliography at
Brussels. This paper represents a good informal indication of
where attempts to develop the classification had led by that
time. 38 It dealt briefly with a number of aspects of the classification
and its use for building card repertories not publicly
discussed defore. The use of specially shaped differently coloured
divisionary cards in a repertory was touched upon also,
but no coding system was given yet for the colours of the
cards or for their arrangement. Nor was the problem of what
were now called «compound numbers and determining numbers*
39 yet resolved. The second part of compound numbers
constructed with the colon were called «general determinants*,,
or what one might more intelligibly call, «general modifiers*-
«Any classification number which completes the sense of
another, limits and determines it, is called a general modifier.*
40 Special modifiers were few in number and all were
placed between parentheses: (0) for form divisions; (2) for
divisions according to physical place; and (3—9) for divisions
according to political place. To these could be added another
kind of modifier, that for proper names — 396:Moliere, would
be used for Moliere's views on women. The use of superscript
modifiers seems to have been abandoned, and the language
modifier was now treated as an instance of the general modifier—
52(02):42, Chemistry Treatises in English. Another characteristic
of special modifiers was discussed: they could themselves
be compounded — 597(281:44), Fish in French Lakes.
The reworked tables of the classification to three and occasionally
four figures appeared in 1897 as the General Abridged
Tables. 41 The introductory discussion was short and dealt
mostly with rules for indexing bibliographies «decimally» and
for using the Decimal Classification as developed in Brussels
in libraries. Having presented a long statement of the advantages
of the classification, the introduction to the Tables did
advert briefly to the use of «symmetrical and modifying divisions*.
The form divisions were listed with parentheses removed,
and the geographic subdivisions discussed. Though the possibility
of other modifiers was mentioned, none of them received
any extended treatment. The tables themselves, however, displayed
the form divisions as appropriate in the numerical array
and indicated which numbers could be subdivided geographically
by placing after them empty parentheses. The geographic
subdivisions were listed fully as subdivisions within parentheses
of 91, geography.
In 1898 the first Manual of the Bibliographic Decimal
Classification* 2 was published. This was the detailed study of
the construction and use of the classification, the necessity
for which had become more and more evident. It gathered together,
sometimes verbatim, sometimes in a rewritten more
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