Phase relationships

[Claudio Gnoli]

Hello all,

I do some research in classification, so also have some experience of other systems, but we use DDC in my library. I wonder how can phase relationships be handled in Dewey. These are general relationships between classes in different parts of a scheme, such as "pollution control" and "politics" (the subject of a real book I had to classify), that are often expressed by a colon in the Universal Decimal Classification: #628.5:54. It occurred to me that there could be a quite simple way to express these in DDC too...

Many thanks,

Claudio Gnoli

Science and Technology Library

University of Pavia, Italy

[Violet Fox]

That’s a great question, Claudio. Dewey handles that type of classification challenge through the use of number building, especially using Table 1 (the standard subdivisions). For example, works about music education are classed at 780.71, which is created by using the number for music, 780, and adding T1--071 (that is, the Table 1 designation for education). The Synthesized number components box in WebDewey demonstrates the meaning of each component of the built number.

For your work about pollution control and politics, Dewey doesn't have anything directly comparable to UDC’s politics facet, or LCSH’s “Political aspects,” so sometimes you have to do some searching to find a way to express multiple ideas in one number. One possible option would be to start at the number for environmental problems (363.7) and follow the directions at that number to “Add to base number 363.70 notation 362-363:1-8 from table under 362-363.” Those building directions allow you to create 363.70561, a number representing governmental policies around environmental protection issues.

Violet

[Claudio Gnoli]

Many thanks Violet. Yes, what you have nicely illustrated is the way Dewey works in specific cases. Now, I wonder why not also having a device equivalent to UDC colon allowing to combine any two classes. 

In your very example of 780 music, 780.0001-780.0999 seems to provide just for this kind of combination, so that e.g. 780.032 would be music and politics. However, I have only found instructions for this within 780. What about, say, pollution control (628.5) and politics?

One inspiration may be T1--015 scientific principles, that can be divided by any subclass of 500, so that 628.50154 is pollution control and chemistry, as used by librarian in the Italian union catalogue [https://opac.sbn.it/bid/UBO3825804].

However, T1--015 is only valid for subclasses of 500. I suggest that one could conceive a similar mechanism for 001-999. It should be somewhere in T1--01 as, according to Ranganathan's theory, phase relationships have to be filed just after the corresponding basic class (they are so in Colon and UDC). For example, T1--010 appears to be free in WebDewey (as are T1--013, T1--017 and T1--018), so one could define T1--010001-999 as phase relationships, and e.g. 628.501032 would mean pollution control and politics, 628.50102 would mean pollution control and religion, etc.

Well, this is my proposal :-)

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Dewey Contributors" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to dewey-contribut...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/dewey-contributors/0cdce26e-42c5-4490-8974-3ef9c3788a0c%40googlegroups.com.