Classifying toward an Ensemble of Works: an essay on the centrality of classification in organizing knowledge

Classifying toward an Ensemble of Works: an essay
about the centrality of classification in organizing knowledge

by Gwen Williams, April 2004
email: seealso@me.com

In a 2001 interview, when asked about the tasks for future catalogers
and those who educate them, Kathryn Luther Henderson replied,
As I have observed the transition from card/book catalogs to the
online catalog, it seems to me that we no longer are as concerned
about “the making of a catalog” as a whole tool—a tool of
integrity. Today, emphasis seems to be on grabbing a record and
putting it into a database without much thought about the
influence of that record upon the whole catalog.1

As we have learned in our cataloging classes, Cutter’s objects of the
card/book catalog are the basis for four broad functions of the catalog:
identifying or finding known items, collocating or gathering together every
manifestation of a work, enabling catalog users in evaluating or selecting
specific manifestations of a work, and locating desired items through class
number assignment. One might say that the first three functions of the
catalog work together in facilitating discovery of works, and that the fourth
function facilitates desired actual possession of catalogued works, serving as
it does as the conduit between the catalog and the actual works shelved.
Patrons must, one imagines, approach the catalog with two things in
mind—to find what they can get, and where they can get it—that correspond
rather well to the functions of the catalog: for discovery and eventual actual

1 Mark Jacobs, “Cataloging and Classification Standards and Practices, Library and
Information Science Education, and a Student Legacy: An Interview with Kathryn
Luther Henderson,” Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, vol. 33, no. 1 (2001),
p. 12.

Copyright 2004 Williams. This work is covered by a creative commons license. Attribution-
Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ 1

possession of works. We cannot, of course, know absolutely what patrons
are thinking, for as Robert Holley has succinctly observed, “more patrons use
the online catalog than ask a reference question.”2 But we can be reasonably
certain that they want to ultimately know “where are all the books.”3 If we
believe Holley’s assertion, than the construction of the catalog is of primary
importance for patrons and for libraries. I would go so far as to say that it is
the primary public service tool that libraries can offer their patrons.

I believe that conceptualizing the catalog as a whole tool—as
something beyond grabbing individual bibliographic records and submitting
them to a database—relies upon an appreciation for and understanding of the
classification scheme that brings (or can bring) all works in a library into an
ensemble of works. For class number assignment is not just labeling an item
with a shelve-locator number, but rather class number assignment determines
how the entire ensemble of works are placed in relation to each other, and in

2Robert P. Holley, “Cataloging: An Exciting Subject for Exciting Times,” Cataloging
and Classification Quarterly, vol. 34, no. 1/2 (2002), p. 44.
3 A question asked of me during the Spring 2004 University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign Library Welcome Desk by a student. Well actually he said, or sort of
exclaimed, or sort enunciated each and every word except for the article, while
glancing around at the 1st floor t-junction in the Main Library, “So, Where Are All
the Books?”


relation to the whole library.4 As Ranganathan once observed, Dewey’s work
in decimal classification marked a crucial moment in the classification of
books because books were no longer placed in relation to location on
shelves, but in relation to other books vis-à-vis subject contents.5 Moreover,
if shelf-location were the raison d’être of class number assignment, than the
organizational schemes of pre-nineteenth century libraries and of current
archives, museums, and library acquisition department records, would have
surely sufficed in that such organizational schemes indicate shelf-location
quite well.
One may ask, so what would be the point in examining library
classification schemes, the differences between subject-arrangement of books
on shelves and shelf locator arrangements, or how class number assignment
influences construction of the catalog as a whole tool of integrity? Some

4 A related line of inquiry, which I will simply mention here, would be to examine
explicitly the historical emergence of library and book classification schemes in the
late-nineteenth century against the backdrop of the emergence of public libraries
and open stacks in various countries. That is, Anthony Grafton suggests there exist
a connection between open stacks and closed stacks, noting that, “In Germany,
unlike the United States and England, the books in large university libraries are
usually stored in order of acquisition, not in systematic subject groupings. The
stacks, which remain inaccessible to readers, serve only as storehouses.” Grafton,
The Footnote: A Curious History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1997), pg. 11. The library-specific shelf-location/classification schemes of The
Research Libraries, The New York Public Library, as discussed by Karen Hsu,
supports the claim that ‘shelf-locator-classifications’ of books are often adequate for
closed stacks arrangements, but inadequate for open stacks: “The Research Libraries
(RL) is privately funded and is a closed stack, non-circulating library. It generally
collects one copy only of each title. The readers are not allowed to browse the
stacks, and every item requested by readers is paged by the library staff.” Hsu, “The
Classification Schemes of The Research Libraries of The New York Public Library,”
Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 3/4 (1995), p. 134.
5 S.R. Ranganathan, “Library Classification on the March.” Essays in Librarianship:
in memory of William Charles Berwick Sayers. Ed., D.J. Foskett and B.I. Palmer.
London: The Library Association, 1961: 72-95.


might even suggest that classification has seen its better days, solved by the
late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century devisers of classification
schemes, and superseded by the plethora of automated tools built for search
and retrieval of character strings of information, including information from
bibliographic and holdings records pointing toward bibliographic items held
in any given library. As a recently graduated librarian, I would concur with
what Michael Gorman and others writing about library education have also
made clear in the literature: the course offerings and program requirements
for many library and information science schools suggest not only the
devaluation currently accorded to cataloging in general, but also the
devaluation of various related concepts and techniques such as the
classifying of library resources. So classification seems irrelevant, and
therefore a futile subject for an essay on librarianship. Certainly Ellen Waite,
Vice President for Academic Services and University Librarian at Loyola
University, in her article many of us are aware of, “Reinvent Catalogers,”
maintains as much:
The reality of classification is that once a library reaches a critical
size, the classification of books is not too meaningful. Once a
library opens a branch, the classification becomes even less
relevant. Furthermore, the more interdisciplinary the book, the
more inadequate and immaterial the subject headings and
classification. Even the uniqueness of the call number is less
important now that barcodes are applied to each and every book.6
Waite also assures her readers that she knows of what she speaks by the mere
fact that she once was a cataloger. Let us grant Waite two things: she was
once a cataloger and she is now the top administrator of library expenditures
at a university library. Insofar as her opinion on classification and its integral
role in the organization and management of library holdings, we should

6 Waite, Ellen, “Reinvent Catalogers,” Library Journal (November 1, 1995), p. 37.


consider it carefully and should be able to easily see how faulty, and thus
crucial to know, her opinions on classification are.7

Regarding the relation between ordering large numbers of things and
classification
Waite offers this statement—seemingly based on a peculiar
interpretation about the theory of the law of large numbers—as evidence that
classification schemes in libraries are irrelevant: “The reality of classification
is that once a library reaches a critical size, the classification of books is not
too meaningful.”8 This statement reveals much, including a lack of
understanding of the classification of things in general, and of the
classification of books in libraries in particular. I, and perhaps many other
persons interested in libraries and the production of books, would claim the
opposite. That is, as the number of things collected increases, the need for a
sound classificatory arrangement increases.
Perhaps an analogy would reveal the questionable nature of Waite’s
assertion. Let us imagine a very large library with a very large numbers of
things: say, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library and its
reported 10 million volumes held. Let us then imagine a task much larger
than, and involving infinitely more persons than, the classification of 10
million volumes in a solitary library: let us imagine the very large numbers of

7 In the spirit of most sound rhetoricians, I think a good strategy (beyond the
accompanying use the footnote apparatus) for refuting Waite’s claims would be
through the deployment of the following tactical sequence: considering her
statements, parsing them, mulling them around, examining the assumptions on
which they are based, and then proceeding with refuting such shaky assumptions,
and thus of her general overall opinion. This is what I shall aim to do, and along
the way I hope to accomplish my overarching aim for this essay: to examine how
class number assignment by the cataloger influences the construction of the catalog
as a whole tool of integrity.
8 Waite, p. 37.


death of persons worldwide. By Waite’s logic, the classification of deaths, for
just a solitary year, would seem to be an impossible and worthless task. Of
course, as we know, the WHO, medical practitioners, mortality rate
calculators, insurance companies, and criminal prosecutors would differ—as
would Bowker and Star, researchers that explain the functions and purposes
of the International Classification of Diseases and its connections to the
classifying of deaths. 9 Yes, the classification of deaths has assured that it is
illegitimate for a coroner to record the cause of death of any person as “dying
of a broken heart,” or “death by fright,” or “death by the tiredness associated
with old age,” or “he was simply worn out.”10 Moreover, epidemiologists
would maintain that the classification of deaths, on a worldwide scale (enter
the WHO), is crucial for the implementation of isolation and quarantine
procedures that ones imagine most everyone would believe desirable for
identifying highly communicable fatal diseases.
To return to Waite’s observation about a library reaching “a critical
size,” it seems she could also be suggesting a tipping point, if you will, that
when reached, indicates that bringing books into order via a classification
scheme is useless. I might venture to guess that Waite is perhaps confusing
evidence of the inadequacy of certain classification schemes for certain
libraries. She is perhaps confusing the use of somewhat illogical
classification schemes with the necessity for classification, by perhaps

9 Bowker, Geoffrey C. and Susan Leigh Star, Sorting Things Out: Classification and
Its Consequences, Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press, 2000.
10 Likewise death by wolf bite, death by drowning in a bath tub, death by fast
living, death by spontaneous combustion, death by order of the king, and death by
the street, have all fallen out of favor for classifying the manner in which persons
die. Moreover, all such phrases have also fallen out of common everyday speech
for discussing the manner in which persons die: it appears illegitimate for persons
gathering at the funeral home to discuss the deceased as dying “from simply being
worn out,” or “from spontaneous combustion.” The discussions in funeral homes
concern the very specific and legitimate terms (the controlled vocabulary) as
determined by the International Classification of Diseases and its typing of the
causes for mortality. Ibid.


referring to ample evidence provided by other library practitioners that
various general classification schemes oftentimes do not serve to sensibly
order books for an entire library.11 For example, as Winke points out, many
libraries have intentionally deployed multiple classification schemes for their
holdings:
The institutions that have intentionally adopted multiple
classification schemes can be categorized as falling into one of
the three major groups. The first is composed of libraries that
choose to shelve their government documents or technical reports
by preassigned numbers. The second includes libraries that retain
DDC for some materials, and LCC for other materials. The third
category is comprised of libraries that implemented additional
schemes when it became apparent that the existing classification
scheme in use did not adequately cover the library’s needs.12
Waite’s observation about an abstract tipping point may also perhaps be a
reference to the spectacular disorder that can result from increasing the
number of books inadequately classified, a situation for which the literature
on classification and critiques of existing classification schemes are replete
with examples of the inadequacy of various classification schemes, such as

11See Langridge, Derek W. “Alternative Starting Points in Classification,” Cataloging
and Classification Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 3/4 (1995), p. 7-15.
12Winke, R. Conrad, “Intentional Use of Multiple Classification Schemes in United
States Libraries,” Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, vol. 19, no. 3/4 (1995), p.
159.


DDC and LCC, for soundly and deeply handling some broad classes of
knowledge.13
To sum, the assumption that collecting and ordering large numbers of
things (e.g. books) in one place (a library) will reach eventually reach a point
where classification is meaningless is faulty. Rather, classification schemes
enable the meaningful collecting and ordering of large numbers of things
(e.g. books, deaths, economic industrial measures, educational curricula, and
biological flora, fauna, and creatures to save from extinction, and etc.).

Regarding the multiple branches or dispersed rooms case and the
classification of books: or, a red herring by any other name
Waite makes an assertion that seems so common among many
librarians and library educators as to preclude the necessity for quoting her,
but in the interest of academic honesty, let me quote: “Once a library opens a
branch, the classification becomes even less relevant.”14 This assertion seems
to be based on conceiving of a bibliographic classification scheme as solely

13See Bliss, Henry Evelyn,The Organization of Knowledge in Libraries and the
Subject-approach to Books, 2nd ed. (New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1939);
Bliss, .A Bibliographic Classification, Vol. I (New York: H.W. Wilson Company,
1940); Kelley, Grace O., The Classification of Books (New York: H.W. Wilson
Company, 1937); Ranganathan, “Library Classification on the March”;
Ranganathan, Prolegomena to Library Classification, 2nd edition (London: The
Library Association, 1957); and Richardson, Ernest Cushing, Classification:
Theoretical and Practical, together with an Appendix containing an Essay towards a
Bibliographical History of Systems of Classification, 3rd ed. (New York: H.W. Wilson
Company, 1930).
14 Waite, p. 37.


and entirely a shelf-location scheme. 15 Certainly the fourth function of the
catalog, as previously mentioned, enables patrons to locate desired items
through class assignment, serving as it does as a conduit between the catalog
and the actual works shelved. However, assignment of class number for a
book differs in theory and should differ in practice from the assignment of a
shelf-locator number. As the classificationists have maintained, assignment of
a classification number places books in relation to each other by virtue of a
subject-approach to books, rather than a shelving-location approach to
books. Moreover, the CIP data on a multitude of books published in many
countries around the world includes the suggested assignment of DDC and
LCC class numbers: I imagine that if the class number be solely a shelf-
locating number that this practice would be entirely without utility, as
obviously multiple libraries might base class number assignment on this data,
despite idiosyncratic arrangements of bookshelves in their own facilities.
Furthermore, the use of classification schemes to enable meaningful
online browsing structures for library patrons suggests that the assignment of
class numbers to resources facilitates something beyond merely providing a
shelf-locator number. For example, as Broadbent points out, “classification
or call number browsing in the online catalog can serve as viable search
options.”16 She further suggests that a possible use of classification numbers
and subject headings would be the utilization of chain indexing, by “linking

15 A phenomena that is not without its challengers. For one of the latest, see
Langridge, “The American method is satisfied with much broader classes, for shelf
arrangement only, and it leaves precise specification of subjects to alphabetical
headings in the catalogue. . . American pragmatism contrasts with a more
rigorously systematic approach common in the European countries. Europe looks
to a philosophic foundation for classification schemes. Such a basis is not
considered important in America though study of American classification in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries will show that this was not always the case. . .
[Bliss] was a prophet without honour in his own land,” p. 9.
16 Broadbent, Elaine, “Classification Access in the Online Catalog,” Cataloging and
Classification Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 2 (1995), p. 127.


controlled subject headings—topical, name, geographic—to an appropriate
classification number,” essentially creating a classified catalog for patron
searching and browsing. 17 Koh suggests similar possibilities for using
classification schemes in electronic environments, exploring in depth the
possibilities for system designs and user searching options:
Theoretically and technologically there are good options
available for the use of a classification scheme online in effective
information system design and in conjunction with subject
heading and keyword searching. Using an online classification
system as a subject searching tool can turn the catalog into both a
classified catalog and a dictionary catalog, and thus the library
can have the best of both worlds. This supports the recent
emerging consensus that the most powerful retrieval method is a
combination of controlled alphabetical vocabulary, classification,
and uncontrolled keywords.18
Koh also discusses the use of classification schemes for enhancing retrieval of
not only bibliographic records, but also of “virtual reality,” or digitalized,
resources in various multi-media formats. 19 Witten and Bainbridge,
advocates of the open source Greenstone digital library software, call
attention to one of most attractive features of this particular software: the pre-
programmed capability provided to collection-builders (librarians, or
otherwise) for incorporating the use of classificatory structures to order the

17 Ibid, p. 124.
18Koh, Gertrude, “Options in Classification Available Through Modern
Technology,” Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 3/4 (1995), p.
208.
19 Ibid, p. 203-206.


digital objects collected and to thus enable patron-browsing of such
classificatory structures.20
The use of classification schemes to enable meaningful online browsing
and searching structures for library patrons is evident in many interfaces
designed to facilitate searching of electronic periodical literature. For
example, the following interface is provided for all who would venture to
search the JSTOR database of full-text articles. This interface includes a
listing of disciplinary branches of knowledge—a listing that appears
remarkable similar to a general knowledge classification scheme, at the level
of the main classes. Whatever main classes are omitted, Physics, for
example, attest to the fact that the discipline of physics does not have
literature represented in the collection JSTOR has amassed.

20 Witten, Ian H. and David Bainbridge, How to Build a Digital Library (Amsterdam:
Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2003), p. 116-118, 336-341. I have used
Greenstone in a digital libraries course, Spring 2003, GSLIS, UIUC, to build a
digital collection of English Emblem Books, and can therefore attest to the flexibility
of its browsing structure capabilities (classified and alphabetical). See Sandhu,
Tahir and Gwen Williams, The English Emblem Books Digital Library: A Final Report
(2003), http://www.scribd.com/doc/19461499/The-English-Emblem-Books-Digital-
Library-a-Final-Report


In short, the claim that physical dispersal of a library’s holdings into
separate spaces (a branch, or different room) somehow alters the class
number assigned to the subjects of the books seems to be confusing (a) the
spatial arrangement of classified objects with (b) the succinct and codified
assignment given by an abstract assessment of the branch of knowledge to
which books (or digital objects, or periodical literature) are subordinated by
classification schemes.


Regarding the ‘problem’ of classifying the ‘interdisciplinary’ book: or, are
we talking about a unicorn?
One of the truly most pleasurable times during my library and
information science studies was the time I spent studying the work of Henry
Evelyn Bliss. Not only was the Bliss Bibliographic Classification fascinating
to read—yes, one could read the schedules, as well as use the schedules—it
was a joy to read. Beyond the development of his systematic classification
scheme, Bliss also researched, thought, and wrote about the history of the
classification of knowledge, assessments of other classification schemes,
matters such as “the subject index illusion,” and the firm belief that librarians
would have to know that the cataloging and classifying of books was apt to
change and that such change should be anticipated and planned and carried
out. He also wrote about the necessity for librarians to work collaboratively,
advocating cooperative descriptive cataloging classifying and subject
cataloging. One of the fundamental principles that Bliss maintained, which
his contemporary classificationists disagreed with, was the following with
respect to devising a bibliographic classification scheme:
But even natural and scientific classifications have conceptual
elements in them. They [(bibliographic classification schemes)]
should conform as closely as possible to the classifications of
natural objects and relations that are established in the consensus
of scientists and educators in the organization of knowledge and
thought. Such comprehensive classifications are available and
adaptable to many interests and purposes. They are not only more
available to the several divergent interests and purposes, and more
efficient in serving them; but in their general classes they are more
stable and permanent, because they are more comprehensive,
adaptive, and developmental. Moreover in their special details
they tend to become more stable as the relevant theories become
better verified and as the knowledge comprised in them becomes
more definitely organized.21

21 Bliss, A Bibliographic Classification, Volume I, p. 12.


That is to say, Bliss maintained the relative stability and permanence of the
organization of knowledge, as determined by the disciplines themselves, over
time. In other words, Bliss was the classificationist with the most penetrating
look into the past, in order to determine the present state of knowledge for
which he labored to devise a systematic bibliographic classification scheme.
I suspect it not chance that where so many of his contemporary
classificationists saw a chaotic vastness of knowledge seemingly ever shifting,
ever changing, Bliss saw relative stability and permanence in the order of
things.
Enter the observation by Waite, and admittedly, others: “the more
interdisciplinary the book, the more inadequate and immaterial the subject
headings and classification.”22 I should note that with respect to subject
headings—and the necessity for revisions in this particular type of controlled
vocabulary—is a point well taken. Since subject headings are not the subject
of this essay, let me conclude my remarks on this by conceding agreement
that subject headings can become irrelevant over time and can thus require
revision as knowledge alters and produces different expressions of subjects
proper. But subject headings are vastly different than a classification scheme.
And Bliss would reply to the supposed problem of classifying the
interdisciplinary book thusly:
But new subjects do not spring whole from the waves like the
goddess Venus. They usually grow out of prior studies, problems,
and organizations of knowledge and thought; they are
developments; and accordingly they are developmentally, if not
logically, subordinate. They may usually be adjusted to preexisting
classes and sections. Later the new names many supplant the prior
names. Classifications develop by adjustment, or adaptation, and
by branching, rather than by addition of new insular, self-

22 Waite, p. 37.


contained specialties; they grow by division and subordination
rather than by difference and coordination.23
At the risk of seeming to pull out the big guns against our Loyola University
Library administrator, in the event that the work of Bliss does not persuade
the reader, let us defer to the work of Gaston Bachelard, from whence
proceed philosophical groundings, in large part, for the later works by
individuals knowledgeable about the classification of things, such as François
Jacob, Michel Foucault, and Ian Hacking.24 Bachelard argues that the
organization of knowledge is not very accurately characterized as a chaotic
vastness seemingly ever shifting and ever changing, launching into the
atmosphere new goddesses from its waves. Rather, the nature of knowledge
is characterized by its relative stability and permanence, if not outright
normalization:
The scientific border is not so much a limit than a zone of
particularly active thoughts, a domain of assimilation. . . It is
moreover very easy to prove that the scientific thought is by
essence a thought on the way to assimilation, a thought that
attempts transcendences, that supposes the reality before the
known and that knows not that it is a realization of its
supposition.25

24 Jacob, François, The Possible and the Actual (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1994); Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse
on Language, translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books,
1972); and Hacking, Ian, “College de France—Enseignment—Sciences
philosophiques et sociologiques—Philosophie et historie des concepts scientifiques
—Ian Hacking,” online 21 April 2004, http://www.college-de-france.fr/site/phi_his/
p998922592913.htm
25 Bachelard, Gaston, “Critique préliminaire du concept de frontière
épistémologique.” In Études (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1970), p. 80;
translation is mine.


A quick visit to the website of the National Academy of Sciences, or a
discussion with nearly any professor or student of the humanities—for which
the canonical is a fundamental concept for ordering knowledge, scholarship,
and teaching—should only confirm that the troublesome problem of
classifying the interdisciplinary book appears to be an object visible mostly to
librarians, rather than to practitioners of the disciplines themselves.26 In other
words, should we heed the advice of Bliss and look toward the “consensus of
scientists and educators in the organization of knowledge”27 —in the
organization of books in libraries? Should we take patron-centered mission
statements as serious as that?

Regarding the sad state of affairs when a former cataloger ponders dumping
the call number for the barcode number
This hardly seems a secret, but Waite’s opinion about the classification
of books seems to rest on a basic assumption that equates a call number with
a shelf-locator number. Let us, for the sake of examining the perhaps most
absurd statement of the regrettable and unforgettable four, agree with this
assumption. For a moment, let us imagine that yes, a call number is
exclusively a shelf-locator number.
We can even imagine workers in a library somewhere, affixing shelf-
locator numbers to books flying before their very eyes. This shelf-locator
system corresponds, strangely enough, with the large shelf-unit-identifiers
stenciled on the shelving unit ends—sensible shelf-unit-identifiers such as

26One imagines that the perceptions of patrons on the overall organization of
knowledge in libraries should be of interest, if not of central, concern for patron-
centered librarians. For a unique perspective, that of a doctor of education, on the
possibilities of designing classification schemes for libraries, see Short, Edmund C.,
“Knowledge and the Educational Purposes of Higher Education: Implications for
the Design of a Classification Scheme,” Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, vol.
19, no.3/4 (1995), p. 59-66.


N1, N2, N3, N4 (the N being mnemonic for perpendicular to the north28)—as
well as with the large shelf-identifiers stenciled on each individual shelf. An
example of an individual shelf-locator number affixed to an individual book
is: N34:27. Short, sweet, much shorter than DDC and LCC call numbers,
many anonymous library administrators murmur.29 The shelf-locator-number-
system log clerk does not share the administrators’ sentiments as he struggles
to keep the sequential, unique number assignment log, not very short at all,
in proper order and up to date; and dreams of ways to try to persuade Human
Resources to change his job title from The Keeper of the Log.
Then one day an enthusiastic librarian and even more enthusiastic
salesperson enter the Log Room, rolls of barcodes hanging from their wrists
like sassy bangle bracelets, barcode-scanners perched on their shoulders. In
no time at all, the cheerful two explain and demo the method of barcoding
books, the automated linking function from scanner to bibliographic record,
the ease with which the stickers can be applied. Better still, the Log Room
workers are told, the barcoding of books will replace the tedious shelf-locator
number system, because just like the shelf-locator number, the barcode is a
unique identifier. Over the din a voice from an unknown cubicle hollers out,
the ISBN is a unique identifier, too, why not shelve books by that?
Undeterred, the cheerful two descend upon The Keeper of the Log, to deliver

28 Alas, the deviser of this perpendicular to north schema neglected to realize the
shelves are actually perpendicular to the south, while still another enterprising
library employee—a patron-centered library employee—astutely observed one day
that patrons are actually facing due east or due west when browsing the shelves for
shelf-locator numbers affixed to books and proposed the shelves should really have
been identified by Es and Ws.
29Not any shorter than a Bliss, a disgruntled library worker scrawls in lipstick
across the library bathroom mirrors. This is, coincidently, the same library worker
who likes to rip sheets of scrap paper up loudly and a bit dramatically, just to see if
her co-workers will come running, alarmed at the sound of paper being ripped
inside a library. They never do.


the good news: his position will be upgraded, his title will be changed, and
he will get a new locker because he is being transferred to the reference desk.
The soon-to-be reference desk worker looks at the rolls of barcodes and
asks the salesperson a question: what’s the significance of the 14 digit string
of characters making up a barcode? Nothing much: the last nine digits in the
string are randomly assigned—never repeated of course. The Keeper of the
Log frowns and then asks: how are we to order the books, uniquely identified
by the barcodes, on the shelves? By barcode number order, of course. So the
barcodes are produced in sequential, running number order, even though the
last nine digits are randomly assigned? Oh my, no—we were wondering if
you could devise, before you transfer to reference next Tuesday, a sorting
operation of the barcodes of some sort, or some sort of shelving/sorting
operation where books newly barcoded could be matched with its place in
the sequence of books already shelved, you know, just some simple
procedures of a sort. Finally, the Keeper of the Log asks, probably thinking
ahead with newly discovered optimism to his new assignment: So the
barcode will display in the OPAC? Urr, humph, well, we will add that to next
month’s meeting agenda on next fiscal year’s budget—jot that down, could
you, thanks.

In the end, there is finally this most amazing Grace
In a moment of temporary stupidity, fueled I am certain by a mild
outrage, I had forgotten entirely about Waite’s article, “Reinvent Catalogers.”
I had, so it seems, relegated her article to the landfill section of my memory
overflowing with forgettable readings forced upon me by various
circumstances. She was probably sandwiched somewhere between readings
defining in excruciating detail the ready reference question and Samuel
Richardson’s Pamela. But when I initially proposed this essay—or something
like this essay—my teacher, Linda LaPuma Bial, reminded me to look into
Waite again. The barcode reference clinched it and I decided that Waite’s
simple sentences would make the grounds for my essay, for she had
composed in prose, short, sweet, the fundamental reasons for why I seemed


compelled to write about classification in the first place. Waite had
encapsulated much of what I discovered existed throughout the literature on
libraries—mainly, unfounded and unknowing declarations about the
classification of knowledge in general and the classification of books in
libraries in particular. And I also came to believe that her opinions on
classification were evidence of that which Mrs. Henderson had observed, that
concern for the making of the catalog as a whole tool of integrity appeared if
not diminished, then at least diminishing, among librarians and library
educators.
Best of all, the focus on Waite’s opinions allowed me to return once
again to not only Bliss, but also to one of his favorite interlocutors, Grace
Kelley. After slogging through the four statements by Waite, it seems
appropriate to end on a pleasurable three:
As I pondered thus upon the unified nature of library service, I
discovered that classification could be thought of only in relation
to the part it contributed to a final goal. Again it resumed a kind
of central position; but this time, instead of resuming also its
separate entity, it seemed to radiate throughout the structure shafts
of illumination, lighting up and strengthening all library service. It
seemed to me that classification could be made to reinforce the
framework of our service and prevent the whole from collapsing
into a formless and undirected tangle.30

30Kelley, “The Classification of Books in Retrospect and in Prospect: A Tool and a
Discipline,” in, William M. Randall, ed., The Acquisition and Cataloging of Books
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940), p. 164.


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