Ranganathan

I have been watching this group for three or four months now and find it
interesting to watch people take a great man's ideas and make them work.

I have just completed a manuscript for a book called Thinking for a
Living, which will be published by Saur this Fall in which I have a
short piece on Ranganathan.

I would welcome any comments on what I say -- I am sure there many who
are far more familiar with his works than I am.

If anyone would like to look at more of the book...or discuss any of the
ideas, please let me know.

The excerpt from the book is follows:


Faceting

More than half a century ago, in the world of library science,
Ranganathan, the brilliant Indian theoretician and practitioner,
recognized the impossibility of effectively laying out hierarchical
structures to manage information.  

Ranganathan, working from the Hindu tradition, saw that information must
be "organized" and described by "facets" rather than hierarchical
systems.  His theory provides a way for us to understand how information
in the knowledge age can be organized and accessed by and through
communities, each of which sees the same information from a different
perspective.

Making information accessible requires identifying not just how the
creator of information uses it.but also how the user of information will
use it.  As Ranganathan defined what he called the five "Laws of Library
Science": 
	
.	Books are for Use
.	Every Reader his Book
.	Every Book its reader
.	Save the Time of the Reader
.	Library is a Growing Organism

Information must be seen and organized from and through communities of
users.and communities of producers of knowledge and information.  There
is no one single way that information or knowledge can best be
organized.  We cannot even predict, with certainty, the value of
information at the time it is created.for that will be determined by the
users.  The meaning of information comes from the users, not from the
creator.  A creator may think of possible uses for information, but many
of the most important discoveries come from using information in the
most unexpected ways.

As use of information changes, the meaning of the information changes as
well.  The body of knowledge grows and develops and cannot be classified
once and for all.  This is the same process that we see in spiral
development - the outcome is not known and, indeed, the outcome may
change as a result of the work done in the spiral process.  Meaning
grows out of context.and the classification of information in knowledge
stores must reflect these changes.  Ranganathan envisioned a way in
which we can dynamically "organize" knowledge stores.

Ranganathan understands information in an historical and social context.
He, to use a word from another tradition, "thinks historically" -- or we
might say he "thinks socially" about information and its uses.

It turns out that the way Ranganathan understands how to organize and
make information accessible is particularly valuable when it comes to
understanding how to make digital information accessible to those who
need it to do their work. 

Previous methods of organizing information were developed in nineteenth
century schema best embodied in the Dewey Decimal system and its
derivative, the Library of Congress Subject Headings.  These systems
fail on many accounts, primarily because they do not account for the
richness of user needs.  These methods are based on a librarian's
decision describing what a book or article is "about" and then storing
the book physically next to works that are "about" the "same thing."
These methods were devised to make more efficient displaying of
information.  The goal of "organizing" digital information for retrieval
systems is to enable us to find surprising information.

Everyone who has ever browsed a library shelf knows that this schema of
organization can be very powerful.  As we browse a library shelf (either
literally or through an "on line" catalog), we discover new and unknown
sources of information.  But we know that our ability to find unexpected
useful information depends on the ability of the catalogers to
anticipate our needs.

The arrival of web-based work enables us to do the "linking" of one
object with another much more efficiently and quickly.  A web , as
opposed to a hierarchical form of organization, allows multiple accesses
to the same information and does not require the creation,
implementation and management of a pre-conceived set of hierarchies that
are imposed on the material.

Indexing by key words is now enhanced by the ability to search the full
text of documents and collections.   The best retrieval systems combine
the best features of indexing with full text searching, for often what a
document or item is "about" is not contained in the text of the
document.

The hierarchical systems of organizing information require that each
object be about one thing - because, at least in the paper world, an
object can only be stored in one place.  It also assumes that there is a
single classification that can handle all human knowledge.

Ranganathan understood that what a book or article is about depends, not
just on what the book or article says, but how it is used.  The
meaning/purpose/content of the book or article is a result of the
interrelationship of a reader and a book.  Every book has its reader and
every reader its book.

Ranganathan's method of describing and organizing information called
faceting.  The practical implications of the theory are mostly of
interest to those who are responsible for organizing large bodies of
knowledge and large collections and make them accessible to readers.
His extensive body of works shows how to lay out non-hierarchical
information systems.  Faceting focuses on the use of a book (its reader)
to determine its meaning.  A book (or article or any other body of
knowledge) will, therefore mean very different things to very different
people.   Determining what something is "about" is a complex activity
rooted in the use of information that grows out of communities and may
be used by very different communities.

Ranganathan's work is best known to information scientists who focus on
the use of his faceting theory to describe a book or object.  This is an
important, but only a part of his work.  What he calls the laws of
library science, taken together, provide us with a way to understand how
we can manage knowledge:

.	Books are for Use.  Organizing knowledge around use, rather than
the content of the knowledge, shifts the entire focus for capturing,
storing and retrieving knowledge.  The customer-centered focus is
essential for knowledge work. Knowledge is about how it is used.  Its
meaning comes from use.

.	Every Reader his Book.  This principle replaces one that was
once held by many librarians and information managers - "Books are for
Preservation."  Knowledge is linked to the reader, the user, not the
object containing the knowledge.  Meeting the needs (which sometimes
coincides with what someone wants) focuses knowledge development on the
needs of a community.

.	Every Book its Reader.  This principle replaces one held by many
that "Books are for the Chosen Few.  Knowledge without readers is
meaningless.  Knowledge serves a purpose-to answer questions that grow
out of the work done within communities.

.	Save the Time of the Reader.  The customer of information is
king.  Everything in the organization must be done to meet the needs not
the needs of those who work there.  Ranganathan's book is a manual full
of specific suggestions to improve library services.  A similar approach
is instructive to any organization.

.	Library is a Growing Organism.  The knowledge store is organic.
It grows, ages and dies.  It requires nurturing and use.  Knowledge
grows with use.  Information access is the key to knowledge work.
Without access and use, the store withers away.

Information is rooted in communities -- not in the information itself.
That means, for example, that different communities will use information
in very different ways - there is no one, single meaning that enables us
to categorize our information and knowledge.  
Ranganathan's theories and understanding are rooted deeply in the Hindu
culture and in his desire to build and create a literate and
knowledgeable India.  He was not only a theoretician, but also a
political leader dedicated to creating a modern society out of the ruins
of the British colonial empire.  He points the way for us to "organize"
information for use and orients us properly for knowledge work.

A colleague, on reading this description asked how a Hindu library would
be organized.  Are there shelves to browse?  Where are the books kept?
Ranganathan's books give a great deal of guidance on these questions and
introduced many practices that are now common in libraries that are open
to readers.  The answer to the reader's question is, I think, that it
depends on the temple one is in - the perception and needs of the users
of the books determine their arrangement.  And this arrangement may be
very different for different communities.  In the digital world, where
we are freed from books and shelves, "arrangement" is no longer a
physical task, but an activity that enables us to identify different
facets that may be of interest to different communities.

Toward a New Theory

Thinking spirally is adapting a set of organizing principles to act in a
work world in which the future is not set, but is created in the process
of doing work.  It takes as a given that things will change and sees the
process of change.

This way of thinking is at the heart of systems theory, but it is also
found in many other disciplines.  Even though Ranganathan, Peirce, and
Gadamer come from totally different disciplines, cultures, and
traditions and they did not know each other's works, they have insights
that help us understand the nature of knowledge work.  Even though they
don't use the term, they all "think spirally" - not serially.   They see
knowledge in context - developed out of, through and by communities.
They see making knowledge to be a creative act of thinkers in a
community.  They help us understand the nature of knowledge --- how it
is created and how it can be accessed and made available.  We take what
they have created and apply it in an integrated digital environment.

Thinking spirally, rather than serially, is key to the new culture of
work.  It is a way of thinking that enables us to do our work move
effectively.

The concepts of work, knowledge, and communities of practice grow
directly out of these very disparate traditions.  The concepts in this
book are, we believe, extensions of the ways of thinking of the thinkers
who have come before us.

If what we say is true (and is therefore knowledge), knowledge can come
out of very different traditions and be understood in very different
ways.  It is in the exchange of information and knowledge that our
understanding (and knowledge) of the world we live in grows.


Ken Megill
[email protected]
http://mysite.verizon.net/ken.megill 



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