Proceedings of the International Conference on Scientific Information Two Volumes (1959) / Chapter Skim
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The Construction of a Faceted Classification for a Special Subject
The Construction of a Faceted Classification for a Special Subject
Pages 867-888
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From page 867... ...
This attitude cannot be justified, because "classification" is almost invariably taken to mean no more than one or two particularly widely used systems, namely, the Dewey Decimal Classification or the Universal Decimal Classification, and the Library of Congress Classification. There has been little or no attempt to make more than a superficial examination of these systems, D
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From page 868... ...
, whereas the classification expert knows the sort of pattern he should expect to find in a subject, and for most of the details of his analysis he can use the standard textbooks and reference works on it. Much ofthe "Sources of Hazards" facet in my classification for Occupational Safety and Health, for example, is based on the Model Code for Safety Regulations issued by the International Labour Office (8~.
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From page 869... ...
to illustrate this paper, only one, Food Technology, is based on Ranganathan's categories, because it is intended to be used as a part of the Colon Classification. The facets in the other two subjects, Occupational Safety and Health, and Container Manufacture, are based solely on the analysis of the subjects; even so, the facets in Food Technology would certainly be the same if derived by the second method.
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From page 870... ...
When the facets have been established, the next step is to enumerate their contents the individual items in them as far as possible. The advice of the subject expert is particularly useful here, but it is ultimately a more or less mechanical task, and most of it can be done by using standard reference works, whose contents lists, section headings, bibliographies, and indexes all contribute.
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From page 871... ...
Operation (sterilization, canning, gas packing, extraction) The items in the Product facet include Dairy Products, Sugar and Sugar Products, Cereals, Bakery Products, Edible Oils and Fats, Fruit and Vegetables, Meat, Fish.
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From page 872... ...
If the items in one facet comprise the end-product or result of the items in another, the former should precede the latter. In Food Technology, Evaporated Milk is the product of the Evaporation of the raw material Milk, and the sequence is Evaporated Milk - Milk - Evaporation, or Product - Raw Material- Process.
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From page 873... ...
Consider the following example: GUARDS GUARDS :HAND INJURIES:PRESSES GUARDS:HOISTING TACKLE GUARDS :PRESSES GUARDS :WINCHES Eg CgfDbbEg CbnEg CgfEg CkjEg Eg is the number for GUARDS, but information on Guards is scattered according to the type of machine guarded; the Source of Hazard facet precedes the Prevention facet. If the order of facets were different, information on Guards might be grouped, but then information on Winches and Presses would necessarily be scattered.
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From page 874... ...
destroyed for ever the myth of the superiority of an alphabetical sequence of subjects, there has been a tendency to exaggerate in the other direction and to reject alphabetical sequence at all costs and in every case. As I have already remarked, however, within a facet there is often no particular reason why one sequence should be preferred to another, and alphabetical arrangement has at least the merit of requiring no notation in a classified sequence.
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From page 875... ...
is common to all the products, the items in it vary with individual items from the Product facet. Two solutions appear to be possible: either to make an extended Operation facet listing all the processes for all products in the one sequence, or to make a separate Operation facet for each product.
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From page 876... ...
From the beginning, the Material facet included the items Metal and Paper, and a single Operation facet was used, which included the item Drawing, because drawn metal containers were often written about. At that time, the drawing operation had not been applied to paper or cardboard; but only a few years after the scheme had been drawn up, drawn paperboard containers were actually produced and became the subject of reports.
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From page 877... ...
Milk must thus stand as an item in both Product and Raw Material facets. But we can go further than this: also in the Operation facet we have the process Canning, and Canned Evaporated Milk is another product, for which Evaporated Milk is the raw material.
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From page 878... ...
This conclusion has been reached after long discussion in the Classification Research Group, which considers that such a system could now be made by the method of facet analysis. The system, by its very existence, might well solve some ofthe problems ~ have described; for example, the study of lacquers does not properly belong to the subject of Container Manufacture, though it has to appear in a special system because the literature demands it.
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From page 879... ...
Chain indexing The technique of chain indexing has often been described, and it is not necessary to do so again here. It must be mentioned, however, since an index constructed by chain procedure forms an essential part of a faceted classification, and opponents of classification often assume either that no index would be part of such a system, or that its compilation would be a task requiring much time and labour.
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From page 880... ...
Most of the recent discussions on coding have been directed towards machine sorting rather than classifying, but Ranganathan has been systematically developing his "artificial language of ordinal numbers" for many years, and some entirely new ideas have recently been suggested to the Classification Research Group by E
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From page 881... ...
Other symbols are those used in the Universal Decimal Classification and the Colon Classification, but a sequence for' them has to be arbitrarily chosen, and this definitely arouses opposition, which Ranganathan is inclined to underestimate. The notation chosen for Occupational Safety and Health, and Container ~ ~ ~ 1 ~ ·.
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From page 882... ...
Certainly some users at least expect notation to reflect hierarchy; but there is no great difficulty in comprehending a non-hierarchical notation, and it has the considerable advantage of making the notation for subdivisions shorter by one or two symbols for many terms, and by more for the more specific subdivisions. One ofthe major drawbacks to non-hierarchical notation might be difficulty of application to punched cards (for which, incidentally, a faceted classification is particularly well suited)
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From page 883... ...
The discussions of the Classification Research Group, and the writings of its members, leave no doubt that classification and indexing are sciences of considerable complexity, and this is inevitable because their purpose is to bring come order into the enormously complicated mass of modern documentation. A complicated tool will, if efficiently constructed, do a much more skilful job than a stone axe, and we do not expect complicated tools to be made without detailed specifications.
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From page 884... ...
Occupational Safety and Health Occupational Safety and Health: General Special Classes of Workers, Industries Sources of Hazards: Fire, Machinery, etc. Industrial Accidents and Diseases Preventive Measures, Protection Organisation, Administration FACET B b Special classes of workers bb bh bm bn d e ec g h v x Women and young workers Old and handicapped workers Amputees Blind Agriculture, forestry, fisheries Mining, quarrying eb Products Coal em Quarries Oil and natural gas Nuclear reactors Armed Forces Manufacturing industries FACET C c Facet A Facet B Facet C Facet D Facet E Facet F b Dangerous places in general Fires, explosions cb Fires
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From page 885... ...
FOSKErr The Construction of a Faceted Classification FACET C (CO n tin Ue4) Explosions g Industrial equipment and processes ge Machines ~ Hand tools, power tools J Furnaces, kilns, ovens jb Blast furnaces Jp Brick and pottery kilns p Electricity q Dangerous radiations Environmental conditions FACET D b Deaths bb Accidents be Injuries by Fatigue bg Diseases c Syndromes e Respiratory system eb Asthma er Pneumoconiosis p Nervous system pk Central nervous system FACET E b Provision of preventive measures, protection Alarm and detection systems Escape means g Guards, fences n Personal protective equipment n`d Clothing of Heat resistant t Training and education v Medical supervision and surgeries FACET F c p q Safety and Health Organisations Health and social problems Work problems Home work Night work Seasonal work Legal problems Notification and registration Compensation 885
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From page 886... ...
886 2. Container Manufacture Container Manufacture: General Products Parts, Components Materials Operations FACET B s sz b Metal containers bb Open Top cans m General Line cans r Non-metallic containers Cartons Bottles Flexible packages .
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From page 887... ...
Food Technology: an expansion of Colon Classification, Class F 53 PRODUCT FACET F 531 2 3 4 5 53 59 79 8 91 PARTS FACET F 53,1 2 4 5 Dairy products Sugar Cereals Bakery products Edible oils and fats Individual on's, divided like ~ 5, e.g., F53571 Olive of! F53582 Coconut oil Fats Fruit and Vegetables Fruit, divided like J37, e.g., F5372 Citrus fruits F53732 Melon Nuts Meat Fish Stalk Skin, fur Fibres Juice J MATERIALS FACET Can be taken from Class J Agriculture, and Class ~ Animal Husbandry OPERATIONS FACET F 53:1 Preliminaries, preparation 12 Delivery 16 Cleaning, washing 2 Processing 21 Grinding, milling 23 Expressing 28 Evaporation, distillation 281 Evaporation 887
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From page 888... ...
ooo coo ~eD~; If OPERATIONS FACET (~eJ) 282 Dillon 3 Prcser~ng 31 Fe~endng 33 Heat treatment 332 Sterdizing, including cawing 3323 Aseptic canning 4 Semi-preser~ng Hinge BLe F53:3)
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