[WikiEN-l] Re: Categories and NPOV: Libraries?

[Laura K Fisher]

On Jul 1, 2005, at 11:46 AM, Geoff Burling wrote:

> In fact, the research of book cataloging systems was a dead science 
> until
> Yahoo came along some ten years ago; one friend who is a book 
> cataloging
> geek (he actually tried to convince me to let him assign catalog 
> numbers
> based on his own scheme to my personal library), sadly remarked no new
> research had been done since the 1930s. It's a case that in the
> English-speaking world, both the Dewey or LC systems are "good enough"
> for their needs. (Those that don't use one of these either follow a
> home-brewed system created in the 19th century, or, as in the case of
> the British Library -- avoid the issue of cataloging, & simply assign
> a shelf number to their books.) And migrating to a new system is an
> unnecessary cost most libraries -- which are perennially short on
> funds -- want to avoid.


I've been in libraries that organized their books by date of 
publishing.  While I'm sure that made their lives easier as new books 
simply got added to the newest set of shelves, it made finding any 
related books a pain.  There's definitely some poorly thought out 
systems out there still because no one has the funds or motivation to 
do a massive reorganization.


Laura