Re: Special vs general schemes

Travis,

I admire your work. I also find your observations provocative. They
indicate to me several layers of misunderstanding about Ranganathan's
work, and whether or not he ever insisted on a rigid five facet universe,
thereby imposing a straight-jacket upon the applicability of facet
analysis (which is a tool) or faceted classification (which is a practial
application of theory). 

Ranganathan was aware of, and supported work by the CRG in finding other
more useful formulations than the PMEST facet formulation (Personality,
Matter, Energy, Space, Time) you, and many others have not found to be
fully useful. A number of other permutations have been put forth as
discussed earlier on this list, but to the best of my understanding none
of these pretends to be exhaustive encapsulations, but are instead
presented as scaffolds or frameworks for further work.

If you'd give us a bit more context I would most certainly appreciate it.
I'd find that especially enlightening for example, to know why you
state the following:

> Ranganathan was really not concerned with disciplines outside of
>biology. 

In actuality, Ranganathan's first application of the principles of facet
analysis was in the context of the embryonic Colon Classification. After a
stint in London, he returned to India with notions of how such a system
might work and he moved beyond the vacuum of pure theory by re-classifying
the university library at Madras. In so doing he found a practical means
to both refine the tool of facet analysis and explore the practicability
of a new universal classification just as Bliss had done with the Bliss
Bibliographic Classification. (Bliss spent his entire life classifying the
City College of New York library using the BBC). 

The principles set forth by these men are not confined to library use or
library contexts. In fact, if Ranganathan was influenced by any
discipline, it would be Mathematics since this was his first love, and the
area in which he received the deepest level of education. He believed that
the art and science of classification should adhere to rules, laws and
formulations.

Thanks to all of you for stimulating and provocative discussions.

Kathryn


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