Exercises in the 20th Edition of Dewey Decimal Classification

Description

This book aims to introduce students to the process of assigning and especially synthesizing class numbers by the 20th edition of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). The chapters and the examples have been graded to some extent. No background whatsoever has been assumed on the part of the students. It provides a complete course to train them in the techniques of number building involving the use of auxiliary tables and multiple synthesis. The graded process of number building will show the students the increasingly faceted nature of the system and its advancing steps towards bibliographic depth and classification. To avoid verbosity, the number building has been depicted through equations and facet formulae.

The examples chosen are, as a matter of necessity, largely imaginary, though not far from the realities of (lie literary . warrant. The aim is to be amply illustrative and to step by step introduce the new concepts and methods.

Though the book is based on the 20th edition of the DDC, students using the DDC-1$ and DDC-19 should find no difficulty in using it.

Authors Biography

John Phillip Comaromi earned his Ph.D. in 1969 from the University of Michigan for his work on the history of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). He is now a distinguished alumni of the University of Michigan. He was principal investigator of the DDC Survey conducted in the USA and Canada ( 1975) and Chairman of the Editorial Policy Committee of the DDC ( 1976-1979). Since March 1980 he is the Chief Editor of the DDC at the Library of Congress.

Dr Comaromi taught for thirteen years in the library schools of the Universities of Oregon, Michigan, Maryland, Western Michigan and California at Los Angeles. He has travelled widely conducting workshops on the DDC and supervising the work on its language editions. The 20th edition of the DDC has been prepared under his editorial supervision.

Mohinder Partap Satija, currently on the teaching faculty of the Guru Nanitic Dev. University, is a librarian of 20 years’ experience. He is thet2lithor of about a dozen professional books and a score of papers published in Indian and foreign library journals. Mr Satija is a life member of the Indian Library Association, the Indian Association of Teachers of Library and Information Science and the Indian Society for Information Science. He is Indian Coordinator of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO), West Germany. He is on the Editorial Board of the Outlook on Research Libraries (Elsevier, the UK).