5 ms·

Librarians have been classifying the world's knowledge since forever, and they developed faceted classification systems (Ranganathan, 1933) to deal with these i

• sethammons 5y ago
  https://johnnydecimal.com/ https://johnnydecimal.com/ After discovering this on HN, I've wanted to put it into action. Seems like a streamlined and simple way to mimic Dewey.
• maratc 5y ago
  Dewey Decimal System has only one (often-misunderstood) task: organizing bookshelf space. It does not have a task of classifying world information. The reason that fairly narrow "Presbyterian, Reformed, Congregational" topic has one DDS code and an extremely wide "Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikkhism and other religions of Indian origin" topic has one DDS code is simple: an average library has similar book-width for both topics.
  • tobr 5y ago
    An average American library, you mean.
    • maratc 5y ago
      Of course, and while we are there, an average American Public library as of the end of the 19th century. In the last century, DDS has seen its adaptations for China, Japan and other countries which are based on the same idea but are rather different.
  • karaterobot 5y ago
    > Dewey Decimal System has only one (often-misunderstood) task: organizing bookshelf space. It does not have a task of classifying world information. How is this distinct from organizing world information? If the goal is to shelve books in a way that adds value to the information-seeker, you have to arrange them according to some definition of similarity. That decision about what makes one thing similar to another encodes a view of the world.
    • TheCoelacanth 5y ago
      The physical shelves in a library only serve a single, small geographic area, not the whole world.
      • PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
        inter-library loans beg to disagree.
        • remexre 5y ago
          Does the shelving system of the library that owns the book matter to the library requesting it?
          • StringyBob 5y ago
            Perhaps only in that books are sometimes lost for years due to being put back in the wrong place! ‘Defragmenting’ the shelf space in a public library is a long and painful task, both for when there is a lack of room and for when things get out of order!
            • paulmd 5y ago
              has anyone considered adding a series of color bands to the labels for coarse/medium/fine grained placement information? For example "coarse" is nonfiction, "medium" is travel, and "fine" is Bermuda, or whatever. If you see a book with a red label in the blue section, or whatever, you know it's misplaced. If the labels are placed on the book at a similar location, then any book that is out of its proper would be significantly more obvious without having to resort to reading the label of every single book. Of course the techie solution would be to barcode every book and then have a robot on each shelf that scans the barcodes after hours...
  • kybernetyk 5y ago
    I bet in Indian libraries it's the other way round. I don't like the trend of interpreting malice into everything nowadays.
• ifethereal 5y ago
  One example of a data structure implementing faceted classification would be the multitree [0]. Unfortunately multitrees seem to receive far less support than 2 other data structures it intermediates: trees and DAGs. k-d trees [1] are close but use cases seem to predominantly target data with inherently ordinal (rather than nominal) dimensions. Further abstraction could lead to the knowledge graph [2] or graph databases. In all cases, the availability of "low-code" tools (in the domain of single-user personal information management, at least) seems sparse. I have been looking for some time, but the search continues. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitree [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-d_tree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-d_tree [2]: https://github.com/JeffreyBenjaminBrown/hode https://github.com/JeffreyBenjaminBrown/hode
  • chrisweekly 5y ago
    Graph-based PKMS have recently exploded in popularity and sophistication. Athens Research (the OSS counterpart to Roam), and especially ObsidianMD (with its plugin ecosystem) are a couple examples of systems that might suit your purposes well.
  • jimmySixDOF 5y ago
    rea.ch is a new Graph based PKMS that addresses some of the same issues so everything from File tagging to notes association as part of a second brain/zettelkasten schema. [1] https://rea.ch/ https://rea.ch/ Edit: I should also give a shout out to Treeview for Twitter which let's you select between different tree visualization of Tweets. [2] https://treeview.ml https://treeview.ml
• Nzen 5y ago
  It's no substitute for a librarian, but I am interested in eventually trying out the Johnny.Decimal system [0] to build my own taxonomy based on what I use most often. (Basically choose 10 categories, and then subdivide those ten more times, by usage. These get numeric prefixes, to simplify navigation.) It's not for everyone, but the author says [1] he's used it for years. [0] https://johnnydecimal.com/ https://johnnydecimal.com/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25412267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25412267
  • pantulis 5y ago
    With enough discipline Johnny Decimal can work wonders, specially if you organize your work in the same way across different apps (say email, files, or productivity app) Once you get the habit of using it, the most frequently used codes stick into your mind so it's effortless. And in case you don't remember it, there is a clear, fixed path to find the required resources. Still, coming up with a taxonomy is hard and essential. Should I keep my home bills under home/invoices or invoices/home ? The answer does not matter, but you need to stick to it across all your areas of interest.
• HKH2 5y ago
  > Unfortunately, most of us do not have access to the services of a librarian to develop a taxonomy that corresponds to our own point of view then classify our files accordingly Zettelkasten?
• gcanyon 5y ago
  Emo Philips on subdivisions of religion: Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
  • skinkestek 5y ago
    For those who don't know: This is funny but for most Christians wildly incorrect (I'll add another funny one that used to be somewhat correct in my case towards the end.) As a Christian I'll more or less want to save anyone who is in danger, no questions asked, as long as it doesn't put anyone else in danger. The reason is simple: besides being the obvious right thing to do as a human it also means we'll either have a good person living here for a while longer or a bad person will get another chance to change their ways (and have a very powerful reminder to do it). I believe this is true for most of us. As promised, an actual funny joke that used to hit home with me : As someone enters heaven they go past multiple groups and the tour guide say: here are the righteous from this group and here are the righteous from that group until suddenly he tip toes past a door, saying: "here's <x> group and they think they are alone here". (That said I'm still afraid many will be up for a rude awakening whatever group they feel they belong to if they aren't don't actually walk the walk.)
    • oleganza 5y ago
      Captain Obvious suggests that Emo Philips was not joking about throwing anyone off the cliff, but about the very fact that political subdivisions in religions pretend to be about which moral values are more correct, instead of being dirty power games of self-proclaimed authorities covered up by thick layers of ideology. Our imaginary gods do not care either way and there is no evidence that we should care either.
• OJFord 5y ago
  And no doubt if he'd been in India designing a system for an Indian library, there'd be more distinction between Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh sects (nevermind those the not lumped together) and Christianity, especially denominations not usually found in India, would be the 'handful of afterthought headings', the ones with few books, and the books themselves doing more lumping together having less focus and depth on one niche.
• cyanydeez 5y ago
  itll only work with a round trip duplication, where files can be both and in multiple places. this is more a filesystem deduplication problwm.