The Small Library/Chapter 7
However small a library may be, it should have its contents arranged according to a systematic classification, assembling as nearly as possible in one place all the books on one subject. The advantages of exact classification extend to every department of a library's work, but to none more than book-selection, shelf arrangement and cataloguing. It has been the custom in the past in a majority of English municipal libraries not to classify the books at all, but merely to arrange them in six or ten broad divisions—A.B.C., etc., and number the books consecutively in each division regardless of topic relationship. The effect of such a plan is simply chaos, and no library so arranged can give full effect to its stores of knowledge or adequately serve its users. In recent years many new and a few of the older large libraries have adopted exact classification, and gradually all others must fall into line. Many good schemes have been devised for the close classification of books on shelves and in catalogues, and each has virtues and advantages of its own. It is manifest that the sum of human knowledge in all its departments and ramifications can be arranged in a variety of ways, and that all kinds of methods of classification can be devised to suit the basis selected, be it supernatural, physical, ethnological, philosophical, historical or other. It will be sufficient for small libraries to start with a complete scheme, fully indexed, which can be applied in a short form, and afterwards expanded to infinity if necessary. Such a scheme exists ready to hand, in the Subject Classification,[1] which was specially compiled for the use of English libraries, and from it is extracted the series of chief divisions, into which most ordinary subjects can be approximately placed. The full tables of this system provide numbered places in logical order for every subject of importance on which literature exists, but it may be thought simpler for small libraries to commence with the less-ambitious condensed table, which provides places for a majority of the subjects represented in books. By marking books with the easy symbols provided, it is possible to assemble in one place most of the books on any particular subject. Thus all cookery books would be marked I9, and al books on Egypt 04. Books on France would be numbered Ro, while everything relating to the Bible would go at Ki. The effect of thus marking a small collection of books would be to assemble all relative main subjects together, and enable any one to find by a simple number where any special subject was kept, because Page:The small library. A guide to the collection and care of books (IA smalllibraryguid00browiala).pdf/91 Page:The small library. A guide to the collection and care of books (IA smalllibraryguid00browiala).pdf/92 Page:The small library. A guide to the collection and care of books (IA smalllibraryguid00browiala).pdf/93 Page:The small library. A guide to the collection and care of books (IA smalllibraryguid00browiala).pdf/94 Page:The small library. A guide to the collection and care of books (IA smalllibraryguid00browiala).pdf/95 Page:The small library. A guide to the collection and care of books (IA smalllibraryguid00browiala).pdf/96 Page:The small library. A guide to the collection and care of books (IA smalllibraryguid00browiala).pdf/97 Page:The small library. A guide to the collection and care of books (IA smalllibraryguid00browiala).pdf/98
- ↑ Library Supply Co. 1906. 15s. net.