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Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT
James Duff Brown was an influential and energetic librarian in Great Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His Subject Classification has characteristics that were unusual and idiosyncratic during his own time, but his work deserves recognition as one of the precursors of modern bibliographic classification systems. This article discusses a number of theories and classification practices that Brown developed. In particular, it investigates his views on the order of main classes, on the phenomenon of "concrete" subjects, and on the need for synthesized notations. It traces these ideas briefly into the future through the work of S. R. Ranganathan, the Classification Research Group, and the second edition of the Bliss Bibliographic Classification system. It concludes that Brown's work warrants further study for the light it may shed on current classification theory and practice.
INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
Any research field is enhanced by inquiring into its intellectual history and background, both by increasing our comprehension of the past and by refining our understanding of the activities of the present. The creation of present from past is both linear and cyclical: linear because of the passage of time and cyclical because of the potential for rediscovering ideas that were not recognized as seminal in their own time. Deepening our understanding of the past can thus help us discover practices and trends that came to fruition only in what would be the future for their original creators. This article concentrates on the thought and work of James Duff Brown (1862-1914) in his writings and in his Subject Classification (SC). (1) Specifically, it emphasizes Brown's recognition of the importance of the complicated interrelationships among subjects and the need for composite and interdisciplinary subject access, and it describes his invention of technical methods of achieving certain kinds of interdisciplinary subject specification. These ideas and methods were unusual in his day, and their idiosyncrasies and faults make them unlikely to be adopted now, but Brown's thinking about the prevalence of the complicated and varied interconnections among topics and disciplines gives him a strong claim to the respect of later classification theorists and classificationists. As McGarry suggested, the "creditors of our profession" might not have expressed their ideas in the terms we would use now, but the "embryonic ideas are there," awaiting rediscovery (1991, p. 45). On this basis, Brown can clearly claim to be one of the creditors of our profession.
Interdisciplinarity was not an accepted or even well-known concept in the intellectual world of librarianship in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (2) Indeed, only fairly recently has the concept begun to be studied in its own right and to be advocated as an end in itself (Dogan and Pahre, 1990). Modern classification researchers and classificationists have suggested various terms for the ways in which disciplines can be combined and connected. For example, Dahlberg (1994) considered cross-disciplinarity to contain four subgroups: interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, pluridisciplinarity, and syndisciplinarity. Earlier, S. R. Ranganathan had enumerated eleven methods that could be used to combine subjects: loose assemblage (two types); lamination (two types); fission; dissection; denudation; fusion; distillation; clustering/subject bundle; and agglomeration/partial comprehension (Binwal, 1992). The problems these kinds of scholarly research and activities (however they may be defined) pose for modern general bibliographic classification systems are described in Beghtol 1998. The same kinds of problems existed, although to a lesser extent, in Brown's time. With the exception of the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC), however, these problems were not commonly recognized or provided for in bibliographic classification systems. (3) Thus, Brown's thought on the issues these kinds of works created for classification in libraries is important, and his views and the techniques he invented to deal with these kinds of documents warrant study.
BROWN'S CAREER IN LIBRARIANSHIP
James Duff Brown was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and completed his formal schooling when he was twelve or thirteen. After finishing school, he became something of an autodidact who read widely, particularly on librarianship, music, and literature. He worked for publishers and booksellers until he began library work as a junior assistant in the Mitchell Library, Glasgow. In 1888 he moved to the Clerkenwell Public Library in North London. From this position, he gained considerable influence and prestige in the world of libraries and librarianship in late nineteenth-century Great Britain.
Like other influential librarians such as Melvil Dewey in Brown's own time and later S. R. Ranganathan, Brown was energetic, committed, and intensely interested in all aspects of libraries and librarianship. For example, his Handbook of Library Appliances (1892) described his and others' new inventions for library equipment, and his Manual of Library Classification and Shelf Arrangement (1898) is reputed to be the first book on classification read by W. C. Berwick Sayers (Malhan, 1978, p. 54). (4) In 1906, the same year Brown published the first edition of SC, he was also able to produce A Manual of Practical Bibliography (1906a). The second edition of SC identified Brown as the "Author of 'Manual of Library Economy'; 'Library Classification and Cataloguing'; 'Biographical Dictionary of Musicians'; 'Characteristic Songs and Dances of all Nations', etc., etc." (1914, title page). (5)
In addition to his writings on these varied topics, Brown founded a school of library architecture, designed the interior layout of the Clerkenwell Public Library, (6) set and marked Library Association examinations for aspiring librarians, founded the Pseudonym Dining Club in Clerkenwell, and started the journal Library World: A Medium of Intercommunication for Librarians in 1898. (7) He was active in the Library Association and in other professional associations until his death. He was one of the chief advocates of open access to the stacks for patrons in public libraries, and, like Dewey and Ranganathan, he strongly advocated the classified catalogue as the best method for helping library patrons find the materials they needed. Brown had strong views on every subject in which he took an interest. Through these wide-ranging activities and publications, he became one of the foremost and most highly respected librarians of his age.
THE SUBJECT CLASSIFICATION
According to Sayers (1967, p. 166), Brown's interest in library classification may have resulted from his realization that systematic classified arrangement would enhance the success of open access to library materials by patrons, for which Brown fought unstintingly. (8) Brown's first foray into library classification occurred in partnership with J. Henry Quinn, his assistant at Clerkenwell. Together, they wrote the Quinn-Brown scheme (1894), but that effort was quickly shown to be inadequate. (9) Brown revised Quinn-Brown as the Adjustable Classification (1898), but, according to Sayers, this "title, alas, is a misnomer" (1967, p. 137) because the Adjustable Classification was not, in fact, adjustable. (10) The first edition of SC appeared in 1906, the second edition was published in 1914 before Brown's death, and the third was published in 1939 by Brown's nephew, J. D. Stewart. Except for some expansions and additions, the three editions of SC are essentially the same, and Brown's introduction to the second edition was reproduced verbatim in the third. The first edition was reviewed more favorably in Great...
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