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If anything, the history of libraries show you can get really really far by applying a sytematic organizing principle, even if it's WRONG(TM). Librarians may f
by couchand 3y ago
If anything, the history of libraries show you can get really really far by applying a sytematic organizing principle, even if it's WRONG(TM). Librarians may fret that some books are hard to categorize, but library patrons successfully find stacks of books on their own every day all around the world. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing!
- dredmorbius 3y agoBook classifications ultimately need to assign a book to a location. So long as that goal is achieved, the rationality or consistency of that assignment is a strongly-secondary consideration. If the book has a place, and can be located, where it happens to be relative to other related works, or unrelated ones, really doesn't matter. Searching for works based on similarities or relationships is a problem of the indexing system. I should be able to find works on a similar topic, which reference or are referenced by another, by author, by institution, perhaps by publisher, by publication date, etc. That information would be carried within a catalogue, but need not determine the location of the work within a physical archive.