Comments on Ranganathan for IAs

Anand Pandey — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:10:19 GMT

Its interesting to find ideas of Ranganathan among IAs. The story is really nice.

@Anil Menon
Brother, he was not a crack…mind your langauge. He was a great philosopher and his ideas are still rocking in the digital age.

enan enan — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 18:42:41 GMT

У чувака интересная фотка
мне понравилась ;)
—-
download movies

devadason francis — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 02:45:38 GMT

My guru Dr.Ranganathan not only designed the Colon Classification he also contributed (wrote books on) almost all aspects of librarianship of that time. Edition 15 of Dewey Decimal in two volumes was about 3500 pages, but the colon classification Edition 5 (only the schedules part) was only 128 pages and could construct class numbers to all those provided in the DDC 15 as well as much more. He wrote books on “Book Selection”, “Library Administration” (which could all be transformed in to flow charts), :Cataloging “Classified Catalogue Code with Additional Rules for Dictionary Catalogue”, “Reference Service”, “Documentation” – the forerunner to the current so called knowledge management, Planning of Libraries, of course his monumental “Prolegomena to Library Classification” (three editions), and much more. He also developed a system of indexing called “Chain Indexing”. A small write-up “Ranganathan had SEVEN Facets and not FIVE : Facet Analysis and Semantic Web” is available at <http://www.geocities.com/devadason.geo/FASEMWEB.html> I would appreciate you views. You can ask me anything about Ranganathan I have recently immigrated (legally) to USA. F.J. Devadason

Anil Menon — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:10:57 GMT

Ref: “S.R. Ranganathan was the greatest librarian of the 20th Century. No one else even comes close.”

Hmmm. A bit too sweeping perhaps. That knocks out Melvil Dewey, Archibald Macleish, Jorge Louis Borges and other philosopher-librarians. Ranganathan was a book fiend alright, but he was also bit of a crack. I’d say his five laws are about as useful for library science as the three laws of robotics are useful for automotive engineering.

But I enjoyed the facet stuff. Some of the design patterns stuff, popular in object oriented programming, might be especially useful.

MV Seetaraman — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:52:22 GMT

very nice learning process on possessing info

Piers Young — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:42 GMT

If you can’t face the library (!), the Facet 101 article Victor’s talking about is here:

http://aifia.org/pg/a_simplified_model_for_facet_analysis…

And nice article btw

Cheers

DrWeb — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:42 GMT

Great article, and nice to see some attention for Ranganathan and the 5 Laws. In my own Web-related work, I’ve often referred to them in terms of the users and usability to techies, geeks, business “types,” and so on.. and most of them “get it” in that short, powerful list.. thanks for the article, Mike.. I’m linking to it from my blog…

Victor Lombardi — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:42 GMT

A very good introduction to creating faceted classifications is Louise Spiteri’s “A simplified model for facet analysis: Ranganathan 101”. Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science 23 (April-July 1998): 1-30. Unfortunately I can’t find it online, you’ll have to make a trip to the library.

Tanya Rabourn — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:42 GMT

Y’know, Karl, that definition of facets isn’t that bad. Maybe you’re hiding something worse behind that elipses, but I read it and thought “wow, that pretty much sums it up and covers all the bases.”

Sometimes a paragraph full of $3 words that you have to read twice is more precise and satisfying than five paragraphs attempting to explain it using a more common vocabulary.

Just my, uh, 2¢.

Adam Greenfield — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:42 GMT

Well, “NoU” *was* a link, but it doesn’t render that way. Stupid Movable Type!

Andrew — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:42 GMT

And if you’re puzzled by Adam’s comment above, I can’t reccommend the band Nation of Ulysses.

Adam Greenfield — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:42 GMT

Hmmm, it must run in the Svenonious family – as I’m sure any NoU fan could attest.

Karl Fast — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:42 GMT

The Svenonius book is thorough, but it’s not an easy read. Lots of dense, academic prose. For example, consider her definition of facets:

“Facets are grouping of terms obtained by the first division of a subject division into homogenous or semantically cohesive categories…When a facet is semantically cohesive, terms in it are related by the paradigmatic relationships of synonymy and hierarchy, and the totality of facets used in the subject language is mutually exclusive.”

The book is excellent, but as the title suggests, intellectually heavy. If you’re puzzled by the above then I can’t really recommend it.

—karl

Sam Hunting — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:41 GMT

Elaine Svenonius’s book, The Intellectual Foundation of Information Organization, is a wonderful exposition/generalization of library science.

PeterV — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:50:41 GMT

An XML language for exchanging hierarchical, faceted metadata was published today: XFML Core – http://xfml.org