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Essential Classification. By Vanda Broughton. New York: Neal Schumann, 2004. 324pp. $55 paper (ISBN 1-55570-507-3).
In 1964, Barbara KyIe published an excellent little book in the Teach Yourself series, Teach Yourself Classification (London: EUP, 1964). This is a clear exposition of the basic essentials of classification for those unacquainted with the discipline. Some forty years later, Vanda Broughton has done likewise for the twenty-first century with the publication of this basic introduction for those who have no background in classification, a discipline that Barbara KyIe commended as a compulsory school subject. Essential Classification is primarily concerned with library classification and other methods of subject retrieval. Despite the title, the work also handles such retrieval methods as subject headings and thesauri, which, although they have strong links with classification per se, are not really classifications in the strict sense. This book is based largely on the authors experience in teaching subject retrieval and has strong affinities with a programmed text, containing exercises scattered throughout with answers and explanations. It is written in an informal style and will be easily digested by those who have little acquaintance with classification.
The book begins by looking at the basic principles of classification and briefly reviews other forms of classification before proceeding to bibliographic ones. Enumerative, analytico-synthetic, and faceted classifications are distinguished, and matters of main class order, literary warrant, and notation are looked at before the main problems, those of document description and the translation of that description into the terms of either a classification scheme or a subject headings list or both, are discussed. The systems used in the Library of Congress...