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Faceted classification and logical division in information retrieval
Library Trends, Wntr, 2004 by Jack Mills
Law [S]--Legal systems [SCY]--National systems [SHY]--Common law systems [SL]--Practice and procedure [SL6]--Courts & court procedure [SL6 E]--Actions, lawsuits [SL8]--Trials, hearings [SL8 S]--Trial procedure [SL8 ST]--Judicial decisions [SL9 D]--Remedies [SL9 G]--Administrative remedies [SL9 GV]--Appeal, appellate proceedings [SL9 H].
This example demonstrates several points about notation. First, it in no way determines the order of classes or the location of a particular class. The latter is determined completely by the concepts defining the class and the rules for citation order and filing order. Notation is simply a servant, using our common knowledge of the sequence conveyed by the basic ordinal symbols used to represent the classes. Second, the quite secondary function of "expressing the hierarchy" is neither necessary nor in a bibliographical system, possible, in that the burden of adding a notational symbol for every step of division in the hierarchy would be quite insupportable. That some systems (DC, UDC, and to some extent Colon) claim to have expressive notations is misleading in that their notations are expressive only up to a point. This is like saying a chain is strong except that some of its links are weak. Whether a given classmark in such systems is truly expressive is quite unpredictable. Third, a major advantage of a nonexpressive notation (often called an ordinal notation because it seeks only to serve the central function of notation) is that it greatly simplifies the allocation of notation and the accommodation of new classes. Fourth, it makes possible much briefer classmarks; this is demonstrated by the example above of Appellate proceedings in common law, in which a classmark of four characters represents a conceptual sequence of twelve hierarchical steps following the main class S Law. A fully expressive notation would require at least thirteen characters.
10.2. Qualities of notation
These are described in detail in a number of textbooks and articles and need only the briefest consideration here. The two basic qualities are simplicity and hospitality. The first depends mainly on the types of symbols used and on brevity, both considered above. The second, hospitality, is the ability of the notation to accommodate whatever number of classes demand a distinct classmark. In a faceted classification, this means the ability to assign a unique position to any compound class called for; theoretically, any class may be combined with any other class other than the mutually exclusive classes in its own array. This implies that the notation must be able to provide for all these. So, just as the conceptual structure is called analytico-sythetic, a faceted notation is called a synthetic notation (the analytico component being the preserve of the conceptual classification). The central problem now is how to provide for the linking of any class with any other while maintaining completely the conceptual order designed for the hierarchy. One way of doing this is to use explicit "facet indicators" as in UDC and Colon (e.g., arbitrary symbols like ()." ", :, -.).
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