Recall the classic essay, Ontology is Overrated - https://web.archive.org/web/20191117161738/http://shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html https://web.arch

Recall the classic essay, Ontology is Overrated - https://web.archive.org/web/20191117161738/http://shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html https://web.archive.org/web/20191117161738/http://shirky.com... Book classification systems take on the the shape of the books being collected, and the books collected have the shape of the curator, who typically has the shape of the society they live in. It's quite conciveable that any one classification system, designed for one person's idea of "all knowledge", massively biased to knowledge they and their society hold dear, is terrible for cataloguing another society's or sub-group's knowledge. The classic examples given in the essay include the first top-level category in the Soviet library system: A: Marxism-Leninism A1: Classic works of Marxism-Leninism A3: Life and work of C.Marx, F.Engels, V.I.Lenin A5: Marxism-Leninism Philosophy A6: Marxist-Leninist Political Economics A7/8: Scientific Communism and the Religion classification in the Dewey Decimal System: 200 Religion 210 Natural theology 220 Bible 230 Christian theology 240 Christian moral & devotional theology 250 Christian orders & local church 260 Christian social theology 270 Christian church history 280 Christian sects & denominations 290 Other religions See the issue? Christianity has 220, 221, 222, 223 ... up to 289. Judaism has 296 alone. Islam has to share 297 with Bábism and the Baháʼí Faith. Buddhism doesn't even get a fucking category. GUESS THE PREDOMINANT FAITH IN THE SOCIETY WHERE THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM WAS INVENTED. Ultimately, the essay rejects singular classification altogether. The only reason it exists is because bookshelves are linear, and you want to put like books with like. That's it, that's all. And you have to squint a lot, because many books don't kindly stick to a single topic. So, whatever classification system these Kiwi libraries make up, don't worry about it, it'll be just as bullshit as the Dewey Decimal System, but it'll be better-shaped for the books it's classifying, and it'll be useful as an overview of the collection, and a way to discover and explore it. A more helpful index would use tagging, and an even more helpful index would be a full-text search engine.