In common with most readers, excepting the fanatical
culture seekers, the concept of a list of "great books, " which
every educated man or woman must read, strikes me as dreary
and dull. Despite Robert Hutchins 1 and Clifton Fadiman's exhortations,
nothing could induce me to wade through such
sleep-producers as a majority of the titles urged upon us in
The Lifetime Reading Plan and the Great Books Foundation
list.
Far more rewarding, significant, and exciting, in my
view, is to try to single out those books that over the centuries
have made the most profound impact on the history, economics,
culture, civilization, and science of our time. Admittedly,
some works of prime importance are intangible in their influence.
That is especially true in such fields as literature, philosophy,
and religion.
Most measurable in their effect are certain seminal
works in sciencethe trail-blazers, creating new frontiers,
often dramatically extending man's knowledge of the visible and
invisible universe around him. Often these books represent
the culmination of the efforts of many minds. William Harvey
on blood circulation built upon the researches of sixteenthcentury
anatomists and physiologists; Linneaus came at the end
of two centuries of systems of classifying plants. Sir Isaac
Newton, after acknowledging his indebtedness to Copernicus,
Kepler, Galileo, and other predecessors, remarked, "If I
have seen further than other men, it is by standing on the shoulders
of giants."published or submitted for publicatio

Downs, Robert B.

English

Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship Repository

The Administrator Looksat ClassificationRobert B. DownsDirector, Graduate School of Library ScienceUniversity of IllinoisA strong case can be made out, I am convinced, for the propositionthat many librarians are obsessed with classification for the sake ofclassification. With rare exceptions, investigation has revealed, li-brary users are totally indifferent to classification, so long as it doesnot actually interfere with their finding the books they want. If theyhave thought about the matter at all and were given a choice, thereaders would vote for the utmost possible simplicity in whateverscheme of classification is adopted. Logical sequences, a fetish wor-shipped by numerous classifiers, mean little to all except an occasion-al professor of philosophy.Though I would not argue for it, there is a good deal to be said forthe accession order in arranging the books in a library simply num-bering the first book received 1, the second 2, and so on ad infinitum,filling every shelf to capacity, and saving much space. Such a planappears to have worked satisfactorily in the half-million volume li-brary of the London School of Economics, but that is a closed shelfcollection and perhaps belongs to a special category.Carrying the thesis further, I would maintain that librarians,principally in colleges and universities, have been guilty of wastingmillions of dollars in elaborate and unnecessary reclassification pro-grams, using funds that could have been spent to far greater advantageto everyone concerned in building up their book resources. To bespecific, consider the cases of two of the most poverty-stricken uni-versity libraries in the country: The University of Mississippi andthe University of South Carolina, both of which have expended tens ofthousands of dollars in recent years, changing over from one standardsystem of classification to another. Meanwhile their book budgetswere at about the level of a college library without any university pre-tensions. Here is almost incontrovertible support for such critics asLawrence C. Powell, when they charge that librarians are more con-cerned with housekeeping than with books and reading.What exactly does the library patron scholar, research worker,student, or general reader have a right to expect of library classifica-tion? One thing he should not expect, because it is a practical impos-sibility, is to find all the materials on any given subject grouped to-gether. This was, of course, convincingly demonstrated by the Kelleystudies.1 A characteristic of the literature of virtually every modernfield is that it cuts across subject lines. There are no longer anywatertight compartments if there ever were. The physicist, to illus-trate, is interested not only in the strictly physical literature, but inbiology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, and other related areas.The lawyer is concerned not simply with legal treatises, but withpsychology, medicine, political sciences, economics, sociology, andnearly everything else under the sun. Every classifier is familiarwith innumerable cases of border-line books books that could just aslogically be placed in one classification division as another, or per-haps several others, with the final decision usually resting upon theinterests of the particular institution.No less responsible for the scattering of materials on a specifictopic is format. Even if it were possible to group together all theseparately-printed monographic titles, vast quantities of referenceson most subjects must remain scattered in periodicals and other serialpublications, government documents, newspapers, collections of es-says, reference works, and bibliographical compilations.We can only conclude, therefore, that the most perfect system ofclassification ever devised by man, or likely to be invented, can be butpartially successful in any aim to bring together all related materialson whatever subject. It follows logically, therefore, that the users oflibraries must anticipate supplementing the undoubted values of clas-sification with catalogs, periodical indexes, documents indexes, essayindexes, printed bibliographies, and similar tools. The deficiencies ofclassification can be partially offset by expert cataloging, with whichclassification must always remain interdependent, but even the com-bination does not provide a complete answer. Eventually, perhaps,some form of automation, indexing every idea dealt with in the li-brary's collections, may furnish an adequate solution.When people enter a library to find a book, I suggest that they willordinarily use one of three approaches. If there is a specific title inmind, it will be located through author or title in the catalog. Thisapproach is characteristic of the scholar who, in most instances, willknow or is presumed to know exactly what he wants. The only signi-ficance of classification for him is as a finding device. The studentand general reader, on the other hand, are often uncertain about theirrequirements, except that they are interested in a subject. They mayattempt to solve their problem by going direct to the shelves (assum-ing there is an open stack system), or through inspection of subjectentries in the card catalog. Of these two approaches, the catalog isalmost invariably more reliable and more complete, though that methodlacks the psychological satisfaction of seeing and handling the booksthemselves.Whether the library collection is to be arranged for the convenienceof the specialist or for the generalist, simplicity of classification is tobe preferred. Here is another spot where the librarian is frequentlytempted by art for art's sake, stringing out the classification symbols,whether letters or numbers, to interminable lengths. It may be mis-taken judgement to fix an arbitrary limitation, but it seems to medifficult to justify a subject classification of more than six charactersfor any book, and if author and title symbols are added, these tooshould not be allowed to exceed a half-dozen. Anything beyond thatnumber complicates location and shelving problems, and increases thelabor and expense of classification.But, assert perfectionists among the classifiers, scientific and ex-act classification often requires carrying numbers out to eight, ten,or even more places. This, to me, is comparable to the value of pi inmathematics. No matter how far it is extended, it is still imperfect,and for ordinary purposes I am willing to settle for 3.14 instead of3.14159265 or pi extended to infinity.As an old New York Public Library alumnus, I recall how simple,yet generally efficient, is the scheme developed over sixty years agoby Dr. John Shaw Billings for that great research institution. Here, inone of the world's largest libraries, three letters are usually sufficientto classify any book in the collection. The principle of the classificationis so clear that a new stack attendant can readily grasp it in a fewminutes' time. Cutter numbers and minute subdivisions do not clutterup or confuse finding a book on the shelf. This also is a closed-stacksystem, though that fact I think does not destroy the validity of myargument. Given the class number, any intelligent person can quicklylocate a specific title.When life can thus be so uncomplicated, why should college librar-ies of less than 100,000 volumes adopt, as dozens of them have done,anything so detailed and complex as the Library of Congress classifi-cation? Some are apparently under the delusion that they will even-tually reach the size of Harvard or the British Museum, and conse-quently they must be ready for the future. Meanwhile, as the price ofpreparing for that unlikely contingency, their students and faculty forgenerations to come must struggle with a system too involved for themto understand or appreciate, a scheme they have not met in high schooland will probably not find in any public library they may use later, andwhich puts unnecessary obstacles in their way in using the college li-brary.It is not proposed here to weigh the respective advantages and dis-advantages of the Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal classifica-tions. That has been done ad nauseam and by experts. According toEaton's investigations2,less than two per cent of the academic librar-ies in the United States use anything other than one of these twoschemes, and the percentage is at least as high for public libraries.As a practical matter, it would be difficult to justify adoption of anyclassification other than Dewey or L. C. in an American library, ex-cept perhaps for an occasional highly specialized collection. These twoare the only schemes for which any provision has been made to keepupdated, and both possess the important advantage of having their clas-sification numbers printed on Library of Congress cards. Despite theiracknowledged defects, the Dewey and L. C. have proven themselves inthe fire of several generations' experience.From the point of view of an administrator, the chief question in mymind is this one: Having adopted one scheme, either L. C. or Dewey,for a library, is it wise to change? Assuming classification has beenin the hands of competent personnel, and has been applied as efficient-ly and expertly as human frailties permit, can the librarian make areasonable case for reclassification? My candid opinion is that hecannot.According to Maurice Tauber, who has studied the matter more ex-haustively than anyone else, to my knowledge:Most of the reasons for reclassification have been based oneither or both of two assumptions: (1) That the use of the newclassification achieves a grouping of the books in the collectionthat is of greater educational significance and shows to the usersthe currently accepted relationships among the branches ofknowledge more effectively than did the system being replaced,and (2) That the adoption of a new classification will reduce thecosts of technical processes.3Tauber believes that there has been considerable rationalizationamong librarians who have attempted to justify reclassification. Thereis little concrete evidence that the hoped-for benefits actually ma-terialize. We do know, however, that the cost involved in complete orextensive reclassification runs into large sums of money, that it fre-quently extends over decades of time, and may seriously interferewith the use of the library while the work is in progress. Anotherconsideration brought out by Tauber in a further study is whether aninferior classification system and catalog appreciably handicap libraryusers. His findings cast substantial doubt on the matter, from whichhe concludes:The burden of proof rests upon the librarian to show that theoutmoded classification and the antiquated catalog interfere withthe use of library materials or increase the cost of preparingthem for use. It is not possible to answer definitively the ques-tion of whether a particular library should reclassify or recata-log. If its present status is such as to interfere greatly with theproper functioning of the library in its service to scholarship,then a change is indicated; otherwise, changes should be madewith considerable caution. Only as greatly improved service canbe seen to result from reorganization may the tremendous costsinvolved be justified.4A case study of the difficulties of reclassification was described byHarriet MacPherson. 5 The project was to transfer about 4,000 vol-umes from the 650 class in Dewey to a special classification developedfor the Columbia University School of Business Library. This wouldseem a rather small operation. Yet the reclassification involved theremoval, frequent remaking, and the refiling of 4,000 shelf list cards,and the actual handling of all the volumes. The last step meant veri-fication of the books with the cards, frequent recataloging of the books,fitting the books into the new classification scheme, and labeling thevolumes with new numbers. The entire process required the servicesof two people for more than two years. Their work was continuallyhampered and retarded by delays in locating the books, caused bysuch factors as many books being charged out to readers, some vol-umes being on reserve in departmental libraries, professors on sab-batical leave having carried off a few volumes, some books being inthe bindery, and others having been lost. Here in microcosm are theproblems confronting a large library in even more aggravated formwhen it decides to reclassify.The question of whether a library afflicted with an obsolete andwholly inadequate classification should reclassify poses quite a dif-ferent problem from the decision to change from, say, Dewey to L. C.or from L. C. to Dewey. About a dozen years ago, I was a member ofa survey team for the Cornell University Library. We were calledupon to advise on the retention or abandonment of a homemade plan,the Harris classification, adopted in 1891. Some 800,000 volumes atCornell had been arranged by this curious scheme, based on the oldBritish Museum system of press numbers, a fixed location device.The surveyors agreed that there was no alternative to discontinuingthis outdated, inflexible, and inconsistent arrangement, which had forall practical purposes broken down, and replacing it with the Libraryof Congress classification. Under such conditions, there was noquestion that reclassification was essential, even though it involvedthe Library in estimated expenditures of $600,000, and fifteen totwenty years of disruption.Undoubtedly, more studies are needed of the way people actuallyuse library catalogs and classification, as a basis for administrativedecisions. We then might be able to operate more on fact than ontheory. Paul Dunkin, who, as Head Cataloger at the Folger Shake-speare Library for a number of years, had an excellent vantage pointfrom which to view scholars at work, offered some observations onhow, specifically, an Elizabethan scholar proceeds with his researches.Such a scholar, reports Dunkin:works with Elizabethan handwriting (palaeography), FrancisBacon (philosophy and law), Elizabeth and Essex (history andbiography), 'rogues and vagabonds' (sociology and economics),and Thomas Cartwright (religion), as well as with the plays ofShakespeare (literature).6Comparing their basically different approaches to classification,Dunkin pointed out that, "The librarian's classification is, so to speak,vertical; the scholar's, horizontal." Perhaps the twain are destinednever to meet.In the Classics Library at the University of Illinois is a prime ex-ample of the scholar's horizontal classification, achieved mainly byignoring the librarian's classification. Discarding the literature clas-sification in Dewey for the Classics, all Latin authors are arranged inone large alphabetical group under a single class number, and similar-ly all Greek authors are in a straight alphabetical sequence underanother number. There have been assembled here philosophy, churchfathers, economics, the languages, the arts, the literatures, antiqui-ties, history and biography, without any effort to subdivide by specifictopics. The basic concept is to bring together books according totheir use. This scheme, which was devised fifty years ago, for a li-brary of 35,000 volumes, is apparently exactly what the scholar wants,and generations of them have expressed their satisfaction with it. Theessential idea has been incorporated into the L. C. classification'streatment of the classical literatures.As a general rule, however, tinkering with a classification arrange-ment creates more problems than it solves. If one has adopted theLibrary of Congress or Dewey scheme, it is best to adhere to it andnot attempt to introduce innovations to meet what may be regarded asspecial situations. As a keen critic of classification, Berwick Sayers,remarked, "Librarians are seldom able to leave their classificationalone." Mr. Sayers added that "the moving about of classes to suitthe convenience of the furniture arrangements, the adjustments madewith biography, fiction, other literature, and in music, occur to oneas often causing difficulties .... changes are often unskillfullymade and the advantages they give are not always so great as theirauthors imagine." It is the adoption of special, homemade schemesof classification and radical modifications of standard classificationschedules that have more frequently brought about the need for re-classification than has dissatisfaction with an established plan. Theamateur usually fails to realize the complexities of classification,when he starts changing it.In trying to represent the point of view of the administrator in thispaper, my aim has been to consider those aspects of classificationthat involve administrative problems and relationships. Chief amongthese are costs, efficiency, the convenience of the reading public, andthe relation of classification to the library service as a whole. Thoseare considerations that concern every professional- minded librarian,and not merely administrators.Classification means different things to different people. RobertGraves in his book 5 Pens in Hand relates what he calls his favoritestory about nomenclature:An old lady was taking a pet tortoise by train in a basket fromLondon to Edinburgh, and wanted to know whether she ought tobuy a dog-ticket for it, as one has to do in England if one takes a6cat by train because cats officially count as dogs. "No," saidthe ticket inspector, "No mum ! Cats is dogs, and rabbits isdogs, and dogs is dogs, and squirrels in cages is parrots, butthis 'ere turkle is a hinsect. We won't charge you nothing,mum!" 8Notes1. Grace O. Kelley, The Classification of Books, an Inquiry into itsUsefulness to the Reader (New York: H.W. Wilson Co., 1937)2. Thelma Eaton, Classification in Theory and Practice, a Collec-tion of Papers (Champaign, 111.: Illini Union Bookstore, 1957), pp.29-42, 45-58.3. Maurice F. Tauber, "Subject Cataloging and Classification Ap-proach the Crossroad," College and Research Libraries, III (March,1942), 153-54.4. Maurice F. Tauber, "Reclassification and Recataloging in Col-lege and University Libraries, Reasons and Evaluation," LibraryQuarterly, XII (October, 1942), 845.5. Harriet D. MacPherson, "Reclassification of College and Uni-versity Libraries," College and Research Libraries, I (March, 1940)160.6. Paul S. Dunkin, "Classification and the Scholar," College andResearch Libraries, in (September, 1942), 336.7. W.C. Berwick Sayers, "Failures of Classification Considered,"Library World.XUV (March, 1942), 129.8. Robert Graves, 5 Pens in Hand (New York: Doubleday, 1958)pp. 333-34.

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