(Contains the best bibliography.)
Sayers, W. C. Berwick. Introduction to Library Classification. 1918. Grafton.
—— Canons of Classification. 1915. Grafton.
—— Short Course in Bibliographical Classification with reference to the Decimal and Subject Systems. 1913. Library Association.
For articles, see Cannons, H 1-108, Classification.
CHAPTER XVI
SYSTEMATIC CLASSIFICATION SCHEMES
235. General.
235. General.—Quite a large number of classification schemes have been devised by Continental, American and British librarians, in which books are systematically arranged according to related topics, and marked with a notation which enables any book or subject to be distinguished by its number, for purposes of shelving, charging and cataloguing. All the best known of such schemes are described in Brown’s Library Classification and Cataloguing, London, 1912, and Richardson’s Classification, 1912. It will be sufficient to name the methods of Harris, Perkins and Smith, of America; Edwards and Sonnenschein, of England; Bonazzi, of Italy; and Hartwig, of Germany, which, with the well-known French scheme of Brunet, make up a very interesting collection of international contributions to the classification of books. None of these schemes has been adopted in more than one or two libraries, so that their influence is not sufficiently widespread to make any further description of their details necessary. It will be much more helpful to librarians if the chief systems of classification are mentioned which fulfil every requirement as regards notation and general adaptability to library work, and have been put to the practical test of application in a number of libraries. The systems in question are the Decimal, Expansive, Library of Congress, and Subject, the last being English and the three others American. They have all been extensively adopted, and each exists as a separate printed work, with an index; a vital part of any method of classification. Unprinted schemes, or those of merely theoretical interest, have little practical value, and though every librarian has his own ideas of classification, and generally manages to graft them on to the scheme of some other person, and even to nibble away at his original, it is the best and wisest course to adopt a complete, printed and accessible scheme with as little modification as possible.