AN INTRODUCTION TO LIBRARY CLASSIFICATION

With Readings, Questions and Examination PapersIn order to meet it I have reproduced here, after an exhaustive and somewhat wearisome revision, a series of lessons which I prepared some eight or nine years ago at the suggestion of the late James Duff Brown for the use of students working for the examinations of the Library Association. This original purpose determined the plan of the book, and I have thought it advisable to retain it, in Spite of the fact that it leaves the work full of repeti tions which may be irritating to readers who have some knowledge of the subject. Throughout I have tried to be as rudimentary and as lucid as possible. I assume that my readers are beginners without the most elementary acquaintance with either logic or classification. Necessarily, in so small a compass, I have not exhausted any of the problems of classi fication every chapter could have been expanded tenfold, especially in the second half of the book, but I believe that the essential themes are all touched upon in a way that will lead students to appreciate their meaning and significance. One or two paragraphs are repeated from earlier books Of mine, as I thought it would be affectation to attempt to rewrite what I had written as well as I was able.The simple hypothesis that underlies all I have written is that a general classification is primarily a schedule of the field of knowledge that it is possible to assume an order in knowledge, and that the order most clearly indicated by modern scientific method is the historical order. A general book classification in its essentials is identical with a knowledge classification, and only differs from it in the provision of general and form classes and divisions, and such practical auxiliaries as a notation and an index.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-