Subject: Prof. S. Ranganathan - Yahoo?
Some of us in Bangalore recently had the opportunity to listen to Mr.
Yogeswar, S/O late Prof. S. Ranganathan, reminiscing about his father. He
wondered if Ranganathan's ideas could be used to improve information
access on the Internet, in the context of the enormous noise returned by
the present day web search engines and other such tools. He felt that
Bangalore in particular, given the congruence of software expertise, DRTC,
Sarada Ranganathan Endowment for Library Science and the Institute of
Information Studies, is in a unique position to make significant
contributions in this area.
In an interesting coincidence, I got an e-mail from Mr. Shrinivas
Pownikar, C-DAC, Pune, enclosing two articles: one by Allen J Mendonca
that appeared in Times of India (12 Dec'99), Delhi edition, with the title
"Rev up your search engine with Ranganathan's genius" and another by Aimee
Glassel, with the title "Was Ranganathan a Yahoo?", which was published
in March 1998 in InterNIC News.
Aimee Glassel is an Internet Cataloguer in the Scout Report project at
University of Wisconsin. I am reproducing below her article, which I hope
some of you will find it interesting. You can also access it on the Web
at the URL:
http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/toolkit/enduser/archive/1998/euc-9803.html
With best regards
- T.B. Rajashekar
(E-Mail: raja@ncsi.iisc.ac.in)
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Was Ranganathan a Yahoo!?
Aimee Glassel, Internet Cataloger
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March 1998
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This month we turn the End User's Corner over to Aimee Glassel,
Internet Scout Project's lead Internet Cataloger, for her views on the
relationship between the work of S.R. Ranganathan, the famed Indian
classificationist and librarian, and that of Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com)
the online subject directory of Internet resources. Aimee has developed the
cataloging guidelines used for the Scout Report Signpost
(http://www.signpost.org/), a browsable and searchable catalog of Internet
resources that applies Library of Congress Subject Headings and
Classfication scheme to Internet resources, while using a cataloging
structure based on a sub-set of the Dublin Core elements
(http://purl.oclc.org/metadata/dublin_core_elements). Aimee's other tasks
with the Internet Scout Project include cataloging database management and
design, scouting for humanities resources, and researching diverse aspects
of metadata as it relates to the description of and access to Internet
resources. [Jack Solock]
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While studying cataloging and classification in library school I
learned about the basic concepts of library classification and how
classification schemes are formulated. In addition to the general concepts,
specific schemes and their creators were introduced. Some of the schemes
discussed are used worldwide, and are familiar to the general public, such
as the Library of Congress Classification
(http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/lcco.html) and Melvil Dewey's Dewey
Decimal Classification (http://www.oclc.org/oclc/fp/ddchome.htm). Of course
there have been other classificationists and schemes that have been known to
the world, but for many reasons, haven't stood the test of time. And yet
just because a classification scheme wasn't widely accepted, this doesn't
necessarily mean it didn't leave a lasting impression. This might describe
the situation of Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan, a librarian from India who
introduced the Colon Classification system to the world in 1933. (That's
"colon" in the sense of the punctuation mark, not as a part of the digestive
system.)
While a student in librarianship in 1924, Ranganathan found that the
Dewey Decimal Classification and other classification schemes in use at the
time were faulty in their underlying principle of attempting to list all the
possible subjects, assign each a predetermined class number, and
subsequently fit every book into existing pigeon-holes. What Ranganathan
recognized was that the world of knowledge was growing very quickly, with
new areas of knowledge being discovered and new ways to combine existing
subjects, and that any classification that attempted to enumerate a finite
number of subjects without full capabilities for expansion to allow for new
areas of knowledge could never meet the needs of the future. (Satija, p.2)
Ranganathan wanted to classify knowledge into broad classes which were
then "broken down into ... basic concepts or elements according to certain
characteristics, called facets" (Chan, p.389). Individual facets were then
synthesized to form a complete class number which could describe in great
detail a single book. This is the underlying principle for Ranganathan's
Colon Classification. The major element that gives rise to the name of his
classification is the use of colons in its notation scheme, along with three
other punctuation marks, to distinguish between facets in a single notation
or class number.
An example of a notation formulated using Colon Classification,
provided by Chan (p.391), describes "Research in the cure of the
tuberculosis of lungs by x-ray conducted in India in 1950s":
L,45;421:6;253:f.44'N5
This notation restated using words in place of the symbols is given
as:
Medicine,Lungs;Tuberculosis:Treatment;X-ray:Research.India'1950
When expressed in words, I'm impressed with the level of specificity
that can be achieved using Colon Classification. Although Ranganathan
strived to avoid the linear in terms of classification structure, he was
forced to create a notation in which a combination of facets could be
expressed in a linear fashion so that the books being classified using Colon
Classification would have a single place on a shelf in a library. The
thought of having to shelve a book with a class number as complicated as
this is unnerving. This is perhaps why I am initially inclined to ask
whether Ranganathan was a Yahoo!?
When compared to a class number formulated using the Dewey Decimal
Classification, I don't think there is any question as to which of the two
is more intuitive and which requires a higher learning curve. If one can
interfile whole numbers with those containing decimals in numerical order,
they already understand the basic filing structure of a Dewey Decimal class
number. One look at the multi-faceted Colon Classification notation leaves
me with only questions. Does the .44 in the example above signify a decimal
number or is that dot just a place marker? Which comes first, numbers or
letters, and in the case of letters, is there a difference in the filing
order between upper or lower case letters, and if so, is it AaBbCc... or
...XYZabc...? Just thinking about the possibilities is exhausting! I am
almost relieved that the example given doesn't include any Greek letters,
which Ranganathan also integrated into the Colon Classification notation
scheme! Perhaps Ranganathan was a Yahoo! after all?
But if I set aside the Colon Classification notation and just look at
Ranganathan's principles of facet analysis, I am more likely to think of his
theories as coming from a man ahead of his time. Consider how frequently the
notion of "facet" is being mentioned in the literature today in connection
with information storage and retrieval in an online environment. This comes
full circle back to Ranganathan, who is credited with being the first person
to apply the term "facet analysis" to classification (Navalani, p.124).
According to Aluri et al. (p.132-33), there are three advantages of
faceted classifications over enumerated ones:
1.. "The schedule of a faceted scheme takes up much less space than
the schedule of an enumerative scheme with the same amount of specificity."
2.. "Faceted classifications permit far more specific classification
than do most enumerative schemes."
3.. "Even before the advent of the computer, [faceted
classifications] permitted a detailed form of indexing -- chain indexing --
which provides access to every facet of the combined notation."
As I thought about these three advantages I became convinced that
Ranganathan may have been a Yahoo!, which may not be a bad thing. Were he
still living today I think he might be pleased to see how information
agencies still appreciate and are applying his ideas, especially with regard
to the third point noted above.
Take another look at the verbal interpretation of the Colon
Classification notation above. If you replaced all the punctuation marks
with colons, where else have you seen a similar string of terms used to
describe a resource? Yahoo! (http://www.yahoo.com/) of course! If there
existed in Yahoo! a resource similar to the one described in the Colon
Classification example above, that Internet resource might be listed under
one of several strings, including:
Health : Diseases and Conditions : Tuberculosis
-or-
Regional : Countries : India : Health
Yahoo! has made its mark as a subject directory of Internet resources,
accessible primarily through a browsable hierarchy of categories,
subcategories, sub-subcategories, and so on. Some people may liken it closer
to a thesaurus because Yahoo! uses words instead of symbols for their
notation string. Yet Yahoo! is more complex than a thesaurus in its ability
to combine categories, as Ranganathan did with facets, to create a more
complex description of a resource. Each term in a Yahoo! notation string
contains individual words which have meaning on their own, but once combined
with other words into a string, a context is created, providing a deeper
meaning. In this way it is much like a faceted classification.
One important advantage that virtual collections such as Yahoo! have
over the print environment, in terms of notation schemes and their citation
order (the order in which the facets are put together), is that the order of
the facets in a string doesn't have to be set in stone. An electronic
resource isn't limited to a single physical location. In a library, a book
is only supposed to live in one place on a shelf. In the digital world, what
is to stop us from classifying a resource in multiple places within a
hierarchy? Nothing! By applying facet analysis to an online hierarchy,
Yahoo! is able to take a string of categories and subcategories (facets)
that describe a resource and by, rotating or permutating these terms, Yahoo!
is able to provide access to a single resource from a variety of branches in
the larger hierarchy. The ability to accommodate different users who may
approach the same information from different perspectives is an essential
feature for a successful information retrieval.
To illustrate Yahoo!'s ability to provide access to a single resource
from two perspectives, I tried to locate information on the University of
Wisconsin-Madison using the browsable hierarchy. I decided to start with the
Regional category, thinking I would look for Wisconsin and then universities
in Wisconsin. In the end, the category path I followed was:
Regional : U.S. States : Wisconsin : Cities : Madison : Education :
Colleges and Universities : University of Wisconsin - Madison
I then wanted to see if I could find the same information by starting
from the top of the hierarchy with the Education category. Once at
"Education: Higher Education: Colleges and Universities" the next link for
the geographic subcategory ("United States@") actually drops me back into
the Regional hierarchy, as noted initially. Yahoo! uses the "@" symbol after
any subcategory to indicate a cross reference, and also signifies that the
link will take the user to another branch of the hierarchy in order to
locate the information they seek. So in the end, anyone looking for the
University of Wisconsin-Madison by entering the hierarchy by way of the
Education category will be led to its home under the Regional category. But
the important thing to remember is that no matter which path is followed
initially, the user will end up with the information.
So, was Ranganathan a Yahoo!? Perhaps it's a matter of semantics.
Considering his complex notation scheme developed for the Colon
Classification, as well as his principles of facet analysis as applied to
the organization of digital information, I would say yes.
Works cited:
Aluri, Rao, D. Alasdair Kemp and John J. Boll. Subject analysis in
online catalogs. Englewood, Colo. : Libraries Unlimited, 1991.
Chan, Lois Mai. Cataloging and Classification : An Introduction. 2nd
ed. New York : McGraw-Hill, c1994.
Navalani, K. and M.P. Satija, eds. Petits Petales : A Tribute to S.R.
Ranganathan. New Delhi : ABC Pub. House, 1993.
Satija, Mohinder Partap. Colon classification, 7th edition : a
practical introduction. New Delhi : Ess Ess Publications, 1989.
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This article originally appeared as part of the End User's Corner, a
featured column of InterNIC News, which was published monthly by Network
Solutions, Inc. and InterNIC from May 1996 through March 1998. As of April
1998, End User's Corner will be published by the Internet Scout Project.
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Copyright Susan Calcari and the University of Wisconsin Board of
Regents, 1994-1998. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim
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under a grant from the National Science Foundation, number NCR-9712163. The
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Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed
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