These proceedings cover a study conference of the Federation Internationale de Documentation, held at Beatrice Webb House, Dorking, Surrey, from the 13th to the 17th May 1957…
Abstract
These proceedings cover a study conference of the Federation Internationale de Documentation, held at Beatrice Webb House, Dorking, Surrey, from the 13th to the 17th May 1957, following a decision taken at the Brussels Conference of the F.I.D. in September 1955.
Without prejudice to the requirements of the other uses of classification, the following conclusions and recommendations are made from the point of view of information retrieval.
THERE are no motions of ultimate importance to be submitted to the Library Association Annual General Meeting this year. That which, if passed, is to provide that the President…
Abstract
THERE are no motions of ultimate importance to be submitted to the Library Association Annual General Meeting this year. That which, if passed, is to provide that the President shall be installed in office at the opening of the Annual Conference in itself is merely a domestic or internal Association matter. As we have argued in THE LIBRARY WORLD such an arrangement would give a more dramatic and dignified opening to the President's year; he would be installed by the outgoing President in the presence of the largest assembly that the members can make in body; indeed on the only occasion in a normal year in which he sees and is seen by a full meeting; instead as now rising to take charge of us and to make his most important address as unobtrusively as an ordinary member at a time when his term is almost over. It is a better entry for him and for us, as a spectacle and demonstration, than a small January induction on a cold and usually wet evening at Chaucer House attended at best by not more than a hundred members.
Should allowance for fatigue be made in Rating? The orthodox answer to this is that it should not.
New President and Vice‐President. Mr. F. C. Francis, M.A., F.S.A., Keeper, Department of Printed Books, British Museum, has been elected President of Aslib for the year 1957–58…
Abstract
New President and Vice‐President. Mr. F. C. Francis, M.A., F.S.A., Keeper, Department of Printed Books, British Museum, has been elected President of Aslib for the year 1957–58, in succession to Sir Raymond Streat. Mr. Francis has been a member of Council since 1952 and a Vice‐President since 1954. He is also Chairman of the International Relations Committee, and a member of the Executive and Finance Committee and the Journal of Documentation Editorial Advisory Board.
One of the most formidable problems in developing a satisfactory universal classification is the restriction imposed by standard forms of notation. The principal classification…
Abstract
One of the most formidable problems in developing a satisfactory universal classification is the restriction imposed by standard forms of notation. The principal classification systems, Dewey, Universal Decimal, Library of Congress, Bliss, and even Colon, have been seriously inhibited by their notations. In all except Dewey, an attempt has been made to surmount this difficulty by such devices as special arbitrary symbols, decimals necessitating a four‐line call number, Greek letters, or positional mixed notation. In none of the classifications, however, has it proved possible to add new major classes, on a par with the original ones, because of the fundamental limitations in the primary notation.
The purpose of this paper is to present the initial relationship between the Classification Research Group (CRG) and the Center for Documentation and Communication Research (CDCR…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present the initial relationship between the Classification Research Group (CRG) and the Center for Documentation and Communication Research (CDCR) and how this relationship changed between 1952 and 1970. The theory of normative behavior and its concepts of worldviews, social norms, social types, and information behavior are used to characterize the relationship between the small worlds of the two groups with the intent of understanding the gap between early classification research and information retrieval (IR) research.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a mixed method analysis of two groups as evidenced in published artifacts by and about their work. A thorough review of historical literature about the groups as well as their own published works was employed and an author co-citation analysis was used to characterize the conceptual similarities and differences of the two groups of researchers.
Findings
The CRG focused on fundamental principles to aid classification and retrieval of information. The CDCR were more inclined to develop practical methods of retrieval without benefit of good theoretical foundations. The CRG began it work under the contention that the general classification schemes at the time were inadequate for the developing IR mechanisms. The CDCR rejected the classification schemes of the times and focused on developing punch card mechanisms and processes that were generously funded by both government and corporate funding.
Originality/value
This paper provides a unique historical analysis of two groups of influential researchers in the field of library and information science.
Details
Keywords
IT would appear from a recent report in a London evening paper that for ten years there has been at least one dissentient from the interloan system that unites all the other 16…
Abstract
IT would appear from a recent report in a London evening paper that for ten years there has been at least one dissentient from the interloan system that unites all the other 16 London Boroughs. Hampstead residents who work in Chelsea are not permitted to use their home tickets there. Hampstead's appeal to the Metropolitan Borough's Joint Standing Committee to ask the other London boroughs to join her in refusing to honour Chelsea's tickets until she “comes in” has been met by the answer that such action by the Committee would be inappropriate. So Hampstead, at the time of writing, had determined herself to write to the boroughs concerned. We have not heard with what result.
I first met punched feature cards in 1956. I was working as an assistant to E. G. Brisch, whose company classified the materials and components used in industry. His method…
Abstract
I first met punched feature cards in 1956. I was working as an assistant to E. G. Brisch, whose company classified the materials and components used in industry. His method brought similar articles together, both notionally in classified codebooks and practically when the classified items were stored in their code number order. The result was an excellent aid to variety reduction, standardization, and stock control. E. G. gave me a good grounding in analytical classification; but his office held other secrets too. One of these was a sort of punched card representing a property or quality, not an object or event as with all other punched cards I had met. On these other cards, notched or slotted for hand‐sorting with needles, or punched and verified in thousands for reading by machine, the holes stood for characteristics possessed by the item concerned. The new cards were different. Since they represented properties, the items possessing these had to be shown by the holes, and so they were. E. G. named them ‘Brisch‐a‐boo’: this I found was his special variant of ‘peek‐a‐boo’, a title by which they are still occasionally known. To stack some of them in exact register with each other is to find, as a set of through holes in numbered positions, the reference numbers of all the items recorded on them which have the qualities concerned.
This paper has the aim of revisiting the works of Beatrice and Sidney Webb in the field of industrial relations and assessing their intellectual contributions to the study of the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper has the aim of revisiting the works of Beatrice and Sidney Webb in the field of industrial relations and assessing their intellectual contributions to the study of the labour market, unions and collective bargaining in Britain.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper discusses the Webbs' studies of trade union history and union organisation, policy and methods that were first published at the end of the nineteenth century.
Findings
In refuting critiques of unions in the market economy by English classical and neo‐classical economists, and drawing on the ideas of the German school of historical economics, the Webbs incorporated organised labour into mainstream economic and political thought. Their major theoretical propositions were to set out an “agency model” of trade unions and an advanced system of democracy, in politics and at work, which unions would play a major part in promoting. In justifying the collectivisation of the employment relationship, the Webbs provided the intellectual foundations of the pluralist‐institutional model of industrial relations, which was built upon by other scholars following the end of the World War II. Their prediction that collective bargaining would decline in importance, as democracy matured, and be replaced by legal regulation, has taken place for reasons unforeseen by themselves.
Originality/value
The value of this paper is its reassessment of the Webbs' contribution to theory in the field and to the British collectivist tradition of industrial relations.