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From: cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Classification; it is difficult
Message-ID: <1722@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 18 Nov 89 15:43:55 GMT
References: <36339@apple.Apple.COM> <10119@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu> <36343@apple.Apple.COM> <1989Nov11.002535.21243@world.std.com> <255F14A9.16035@ateng.com> <1989Nov15.160912.8148@world.std.com> <3969@sbcs.sunysb.edu> <1989Nov17.173402.21820@world.std.com>
Reply-To: cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department
Lines: 42

In article <1989Nov17.173402.21820@world.std.com> bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes:
>
>From: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
<>> The Library of Congress probably has
<>> hundreds of thousands of subject classifications and I haven't heard
<>> anyone calling the nation's library systems useless.
>>
>>Because most books are put into the right sections. In other words, the
>>official subject divisions are easy to understand and widely respected.
>>USENET groups don't work that way.
>
>I bet you'd never get a librarian to agree to that statement. It's all
>ultimately a fuzzy, humanist endeavor. Which is fine.
>
>Cataloguing is a very difficult specialty, and worse, where something
>seems to fit changes over time (not that it gets changed, but it can
>seem very out of place twenty years later, where would you go to find
>early books on cognitive modelling? Psychology? Neurobiology? Math?
>Physiology? Philosophy? Computer Science????)

I would agree that most books are put into the right sections, but not
boast about it.  Also, I know of no library catalog system which has
cross-classification.  Posting to multiple newsgroups, or something 
like that, is necessary.

Suppose that I want to look through our library to find the books to put
on reserve for a graduate course in mathematical statistics.  There are
the standard classifications for probability and mathematical statistics.
But many of the books are in the social science statistics section (and
many of them have no social science whatever, and are straight mathematical
statistics).  There are also many engineering texts which are mainly
mathematical statistics.  There may be good ones under economic statistics
or medical statistics.  The ones in engineering and medicine may not even
be classified under the statistics subsection of those fields.

Suppose that a librarian gets a book entitled "Elementary Theory of 
Cylindric Algebras" to catalog.  What are the chances it will be catalogued
under mathematical logic?
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet, UUCP)