Mr. H. E. BLISS, librarian of the College of the City of New York, read a paper on
SOME PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING CLASSIFICATION FOR LIBRARIES
I
The letter inviting me to take part in this conference echoes to me now across the busy field of the past month with notes something like this: "Come, if you will, and talk to us and with us, but please be practical." Perhaps I have elsewhere in-adroitly given the impression that I believe classification for libraries should be a matter of science or of philosophy. I did indeed say in print, some months ago, that "To be practical today and tomorrow, man must be scientific." Upon science, that is verified and organized knowledge, practical common sense is becoming more and more dependent. To be practical without knowledge is in most matters to be ineffectively practical. How practical should we be in classification for libraries, and how should we be practical effectually?
Those who have had to do with classification only in small collections of books for popular use may regard it as a comparatively simple and unimportant thing. They do not see why there should be so much trouble and fuss about it. This we may term the naïve view, to borrow a phrase from recent philosophical literature. But some of those who have undertaken to maintain a classification for a large university or reference library know that it is one of the most difficult and complicated of our problems. They apprehend furthermore that it has not yet been solved satisfactorily. This may be termed the critical view. It may vary from moderation to extremes optimistic or pessimistic.
Not a toy librarians want but a tool, as we say. The mechanism of a library, however, is not operated by merely mechanical hands. There should be somewhat in library service beyond mere statistical and technical economies. Our arrangement of books should not be inconsistent with the organization of knowledge, lest we fail in an inestimable service to the seekers and disseminators of knowledge.
II
Is it feasible economically to adapt this instrument, classification, to that higher service? There are three answers to this question. There is the pessimistic negative. Books are wanted in all possible and impossible arrangements. You cannot make a classification that, even with the customary transfers of charging-systems, will serve all these ever-varying needs. This argument leads to the virtual negation of the very principle of classification. If this were wholly true, it were futile to provide a place for bacteriology, for the books would be wanted now under botany, now under pathology, or sanitation, and again perhaps under agricultural science.
Shall we separate such branches or not? The pessimist says: "Whichever you do, classification fails." The optimist answers: "Good classification serves the average or prevailing demand." To more special subjects the pessimist then turns, such as crystallography, eugenics, child-psychology. These he says are claimed in their entirety by two or three different sciences. These arguments, launched against so-called "scientific classifications," are no less hostile to the worthy undertaking of a practical system in such conformity to the consensus of modern science as the conditions permit. But most librarians have not accepted this pessimistic negative. They continue to classify books for average demands, and the interest in the problem increases.
Contrasted is the more prevalent optimistic view. We have good classification. The Decimal Classification is an admirable, successful, at least serviceable system; it is the established, the familiar, the most practical. With all its faults, we love it still. Is not that naïve? Then, a consistent, scientific system is an impossibility. The relations and interests in science are ever changing, always complex. The thing would not continue for a decade to be satisfactory.