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Faceted classification and logical division in information retrieval
Library Trends, Wntr, 2004 by Jack Mills
2.1. Subject content and imaginative content
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The latter has received attention by and large only in respect of fiction (Beghtol, 1994; Hjorland & Albrechtsen, 1999). But the well-established dichotomy between fiction and nonfiction is somewhat misleading. Fiction is only one example of imaginative content; the latter includes also other literary forms (poetry, drama), all musical compositions, and all forms of the visual arts that can form the content of a record (e.g., a folio of paintings). If fiction offers viable characteristics of division whereby it can be organized, the same characteristics, in principle, should be applicable to all of them. The folio of paintings (say) might be classified by creator or by place (French paintings, etc.) or by period (twentieth century, etc.). But the above characteristics represent logical categories that are common to all kinds of record content. Music scores are classified by instrument (vocal, instrumental, etc.) and only secondarily by creator. But some characteristics might be thought to be special to imaginative works. For example, the new Bliss Classification (BC2) (see Section 5.2) includes in its Properties facet of Class W The Arts such terms as "didacticism, parody, sentiment, realism" and in its Elements facet terms like "symmetry, rhythm, symbolism, fantasy." By the process of specification (see Section 7.3), this allows imaginative works to be classified as didactic, parodic, sentimental, symmetrical, rhythmic, symbolic, fantastic, and so on. But many of these could also characterize subject content (in individual behavior, social behavior, technological work, etc.). In practice, much of the classification of imaginative works, especially fiction, is by subject content. But iconographic art (and its opposed nonfigurative or abstract art) inevitably uses the concepts making up a subject classification itself. The Subjects of art facet in BC2, for example, makes direct use of the whole classification, which gives a comprehensive and predictable order. Insofar as the classification of imaginative works raises problems of cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural influences, it does not differ essentially from subject classification. The rules developed for the systematic handling of such relationships (see Sections 5/7) are as applicable to imaginative content as they are to subjects. Where imaginative content does present a special problem is that the categorization of a given imaginative work by some or many of the characteristics available would most likely be very subjective, and this factor almost certainly limits the degree to which they are practically feasible. But this does not mean that the rules present a rationalistic bias when applied to imaginative works, only that they are essential to the aim of achieving predictability in location, whatever the content of the record.
2.2. Common-sense view
The interpretation assumed in this paper of what exactly is classified may be described, for better or for worse, as the common-sense view of most librarians. The object of attention in library classification is the content of records; they will have embedded in them, to varying degrees, matters of fact (as Hume would say, in a famous phrase that, incidentally, begins with "When we run over libraries ...") accompanied by considerations of analysis, discussion, prediction, opinion, and other matter (much of which might be considered to fall within the category of "relations of ideas") and other less concrete matter that may or may not be deemed worthy of inclusion in the index description. But if it does appear, it will be susceptible to logical division.
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