Introduction

A Phoenix Schedule for the Dewey “200s”

Suggested in particular for Bahá’í Libraries

 

Introduction

 

What is the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC)?

    Melvil Dewey first proposed the classification that bears his name in 1876. It is still the most widely used library subject classification in the world.

    DDC has the great advantage over any alternative scheme of universality. It was conceived as a unified whole, by an undoubted genius, to encompass the whole of knowledge: so that it is applicable to innumerable libraries of all kinds and sizes – by no means all of them the general, popular libraries for which it is theoretically best suited. As a result it remains instantly familiar to librarians and library users all over the world.

    Dewey wished for friends for his classification. Even these friends, if they know the Dewey scheme well, must admit its many flaws: most of them are far too notorious, at least among librarians, not to be admitted! None the less it has thrived for over 125 years on its great strengths of universality and wide application.

 

What is a “Phoenix Schedule”?

    Any library classification has two fundamentally opposed requirements. The first is that it must remain eternally the same – because changes in the scheme will cause dismay, confusion, and a great deal of hard labour in the libraries in which it is employed. The other requirement is for frequent, sometimes radical, and continuous revis­ion, to keep up with the constantly changing world of knowledge, and to correct mistakes made either when the classification was first devised, or later, when it was revised.

    One of the features of the DDC that has been an important factor in its success is that somehow it has managed to strike at least a measure of  balance between these two requirements. It fact it is now in its 21^st edition, which is of course many times larger than the original (42 page) proposal. Over the years, the changes necessary to keep the scheme fairly current have been made in two basic ways.

    The first method has been to expand existing schedules to accommodate new subjects, essentially by sub-dividing existing headings. The simple “decimal” notation used by DDC is admirably adapted to this procedure, up to a point. Eventually new numbers become very long indeed, and ultimately, of course, they become unwork­able. This is most noticeable in the “500s” and “600s” (science and technology) where a great many totally new subjects have arisen since 1876.

    The other method has been to simply scrap a whole section of the classification that is palpably out of date and insert an entirely new schedule. The current DDC schedule for Music (the 780s)  is a fairly recent example – Law (the 340s) and Mathematics (the 510s) are among other sections which have been redone in this way in living memory. This kind of thing was once called a “Phoenix Schedule” (after the legendary bird born anew out of the flames): although the term seems to have been abandoned, it is so apt we have revived it here.

    What is different about this particular Phoenix is that it is NOT an official, standard, Dewey bird, but a foreign exotic; designed, at least initially, for a particular library. In spite of this, it builds on what are already the great strengths of DDC; to enhance its universality, and make it even more widely applicable, as any constructive suggestion of change to such a beloved institution must.

 

What are the Dewey 200s?

    The original Dewey scheme divided all knowledge into nine major classes (plus a tenth class for miscellaneous subjects that did nor fit easily into any of the other classes). Each major class received a block of one hundred numbers. Initially Dewey considered a thousand different subjects would be plenty, in fact his scheme was critic­ised when it first appeared for being too detailed! In practice, as libraries for the first time adopted a truly systematic arrangement by subject, the need for the division of the original thousand numbers into many thous­ands more by the use of “decimal fractions” soon became evident.

    The block of numbers between 200 and 299 were reserved for “Religion”. In comparison with the 500s (“science”) and 600s (“technology”) the Dewey 200s have NOT grown spectacularly over the years; in fact, they remain relatively close to Dewey’s original outline. And yet, time has caught up with the Dewey 200s too!

 

    In 1876, Melvil Dewey was (very properly) concerned with the needs of the particular library for which he was responsible, for other libraries in the United States, and, perhaps, other English speaking countries. In the world as he knew it, or at least in the world in which he envisioned his classification being used, “religion” meant Christ­ianity. This approach to the subject is reflected in the schedule to this day.

    In fact, in spite of praiseworthy attempts over the years by the publishers of the scheme to improve DDC’s cover­age of at least some non-Christian religions, the resulting fundamental bias, excusable (indeed inevitable) as it is in historical context, limits the value of the Dewey 200s, and thus of DDC as a whole,  not just for the Bahá’í libraries for which this schedule was originally designed, but for any library concerned with “religion” in anything but an exclusively Christian sense.

    Here is a copy of the official “Second Summary” of the Dewey 200s:

 

             200             Religion

             210             Philosophy and theory of religion

             220             Bible

             230             Christian theology

             240             Christian moral and devotional theology

             250             Christian orders and local church

             260             Social and ecclesiastical theology

             270             History of Christianity and Christian church

             280             Christian denominations and sects

             290             Comparative religion and other religions

What’s wrong with that, then?

·              Apart from the 210s (Philosophy and theory of religion) and the 290s (reserved for “comparative rel­igion” as well as well as all “other” religions, i.e. those “other” than Christianity) the numbers are all reserved for Christian topics – thus using 70% of the available base for one religion!

·              In fact there is really no specific number for Christianity at all, unless we take “230” as the general Christian number. BUT this comes AFTER “220” (the Bible), which is surely an aspect of Christ­ianity, rather than an independent subject, even though some Jewish scripture finds a place in the Old Testament. Very simply, “religion” is considered to be the same thing as Christianity, and Christianity the same thing as religion!

    Nor is this the worst of it. Because of the piecemeal way in which the schedules for the Dewey 200s have evolved there are four different arrangements used for particular religions. First there is Christianity: which, as we have seen, sprawls over 70% of the available number base, in an overall arrangement still firmly based in Melvil Dewey’s first thoughts on the subject. Then there are the schedules for Christianity’s close relatives, Judaism and Islam. These are later (in fact apparently last revised for Dewey 21) and although perhaps better arranged, they are different from the Christian arrangement, and from each other. Finally there are all the real “others” – originally lacking any kind of subdivision at all. These have been given a standard, fairly sensible, but unfortunately far from comprehensive arrangement that is, once again, different.

    To illustrate the effect of this inconsistency: here is an entry from the alphabetical index to standard DDC:

                      Prayers (Private devotions)                       291.433

                                Buddhism                                          294.344 33

                                Christianity                                       242

                                Hinduism                                           294.543 3

                                Islam                                                 297.382 4

                                    Sufi                                                297.438 24

                                Judaism                                             296.45

    “Private prayer” is indicated for comparative religion, and some particular religions as “-433” but this is far from consistent; within the schedule for Islam, for instance, it is evidently “-3824”, in Judaism “-45”. There is no way for the library user to work out where to find works on private prayer in a particular religion; and in fact even for the cataloguer it is far fiddlier than it need be!

     

To summarise the position: in “fixing” the Dewey  200s, we face two problems:

·              The basic outline of the scheme at this point is grossly biased towards Christianity. Even for a library in an entirely Christian country this is rather ethnocentric and narrow; for a country where another religion (or religions) forms an important part of the local culture it is obviously intolerable.

·              The subdivision of the different religions is inconsistent. This makes the scheme unnecessarily hard to follow for both cataloguer and user, and fails to reflect the fact that all the world’s religions ap­proach the same fundamental questions from different viewpoints.

 

How can we fix the outline?

    To be fair – the problem of Christian bias in the Dewey 200s has been widely recognised for many years. Even the Dewey people themselves (OCLC Forest Press) would never have gone so far as to say that the standard form of the Dewey 200s would be suitable for (say) a library in a Muslim country. A suggestion made in old editions of DDC to alleviate this problem was that a library serving a non-Christian community should insert a special, “private” schedule for the “home religion”. In fact, just such a schedule was once prepared for the Bahá’í World Centre Library, to be inserted before the regular 200s, at B200, and listing specifically Bahá’í topics. It should be noted that the BWC have never used this schedule themselves, preferring the Library of Congress Classification (LC) to Dewey. The great drawback of using an extra “pre-location” schedule like this is that one is still stuck with the regular Dewey 200s for all religions except one’s own, leaving most of our primary objections unanswered.

    In any case, this suggestion no longer forms part of DDC. Instead, Edition 21 proposes five different options to “give preferred treatment or shorter numbers to a religion other than Christianity”. The first of these options re­allocates the numbers reserved for Christianity – simply replacing the Christian bias of Dewey with a similar bias toward another religion. This is, of course, fundamentally opposed, not only to the Bahá’í principle of the oneness of religion, but also to the universal intent of the Dewey classification as a whole. The other options basically juggle the available number base to give a selected religion shorter numbers, without doing anything very much to attack the basic problem of balance. To an even greater extent than the old idea of the special “prelocated” schedule, these options miss the point. At best they displace, but by no means remove, the fundamental flaw in the current Dewey 200s.

    The idea of a Phoenix schedule is of course “Burn it, and let a new one be born”. This new outline follows the theories of the great Indian mathematician and librarian Ranganathan – in that it classifies by one thing at once – in this case “religious system”. Something like this:

 

          200             Comparative religion, works concerned with several religions

          210             Cults, quasi, historical religions, tribal, folk and localised religions

          212                      Anti religions, cults, quasi religions  

          214                      Historical religions

          217                      Religions of pre-literate peoples, folk religion

          219                      Ethnic and localised religion

          220             Hinduism

          232             Jainism

          238             Sikhism

          240             Buddhism

          253             Confucianism

          254             Taoism

          256             Shinto

          258             Zoroastrianism

          260             Judaism

          270             Christianity

          280             Islam

          290             Bahá’í Faith

 

    Our allocation of numbers is still not absolutely even-handed. Since there are only nine digits in our numbering system – and more than nine religions, we have to make decisions about which religions are to be defined by a single digit, which by two, and which by three or more. To have produced an absolutely unbiased outline we would have needed to avoid the necessity to make this kind of distinction – which is simply physically impossible.

     

In spite of the resulting anomalies, it is suggested that on the whole our first object is met. No individual religion takes up more than 10% of the total available base, and there is “room” for a fully detailed classification of any existing religion, as well as the insertion of new religions.

 

What about the division of each religion?

    Many topics mean something rather different in the context of the various religions – but a Bahá’í outlook (not to mention a universal “librarian-like” one) is that the different religions amount to differing perspectives on, and answers to,  the same set of questions (however much the answers may differ). One clear implication of this is that the outline, at least, of a classification of one religion can be applied to any other. It is hard to escape the conclus­ion that Mr. Dewey himself would have wanted it done this way, at the beginning of the 21st century.

    The following is an equivalent alphabetical index entry to the standard Dewey one considered above (although in our actual index it is not necessary to give so many examples). The first number, in square brackets, is not a complete Dewey number (and is never used on its own) but may be added to the base number for any religion.

 

                  Prayers (Private devotions)                [-833]

                      (for example)

                           Buddhism                                   248.33

                           Christianity                                278.33

                           Hinduism                                   228.33

                           Islam                                          288.33

                           Judaism                                      268.33

                           Sufism                                        288.588 33

    Not all topics apply in the same way to all religions – for instance, a religion might conceivably encourage per­sonal prayer very strongly, forbid it absolutely, or take any of a number of intermediate positions. Even so, a subject common to more than one religion has, so far as it is at all possible, the same number, regardless of the religion concerned; and is thus arranged on the shelf in the same relation to other topics.

    Most religions, however, have one or two idiosyncrasies that call for some flexibility. Consider the following:

 

                  Founders of religions

                      Biography                                       [-31]

                           (for example)

                                The Báb                                293.1

                                The Buddha                          243.1

                                Confucius                              253.31

                                Jesus                                     273.1

                                Muhammad                           283.1

    While most religions have one clear founder, others do not. The Bahá’í Faith, for instance, has “twin founders”, both of whom have a similar status in Bahá’í theology. The first of these, The Báb, has the [-31] number for reasons that are purely chronological – Bahá’u’lláh is 293.2. Anomalies like this have been kept to a minimum – but our helpful common outline must not become a distorting straitjacket! 

    Many other topics – such as specific holy days, scriptural books, or idiosyncratic doctrines are specific to a single religion, but almost all can still be grouped under common headings . For instance:

 

                      Scripture                                         [-4]

                        (for example)

                           Bahá’í scripture                         294

                           Christian scripture, Bible                      274

                           Hindu scripture                         224

                           Jain scripture                             232.4

                           Jewish scripture                        264

                           Muslim scripture                       284

 

    So far, so good. “Scripture”, like “Prayer” is a common heading applying to virtually every conceivable relig­ious system. But what about particular Holy Books?

 

    The Bhagavad Gita is classed at 224.65, St. Luke’s Gospel at 274.4726, The Kitáb-i-Aqdas at 294.54.K6. These numbers are NOT “common”, but specific to Hinduism, Christianity, and the Bahá’í Faith respectively. None the less a librarian or library user looking at any of the three numbers can immediately deduce that it refers to a scriptural work. The specific works of scripture of the different religions are arranged under the common overall heading, and in the same relative position to other subjects in the classification of each religion.

 

Won’t all this cause extra work - and what about “standards”?

   There are many advantages to using a standard scheme like Dewey – but it is not really suitable for most rel­igious libraries in its current “stock standard” form. It is suggested, in fact, that many religious libraries (and not just Bahá’í libraries) will probably want to customise the classification of their religious materials anyway; in fact the plethora of options that form a part of the Dewey “standard” show that this is recognised by the publishers them­selves. In this context, a new schedule to replace the Dewey 200s whole, which works “as is”, and needs no customisation, can be seen as saving work rather than creating it!

    Standardisation is a very important consideration in library work and we have tried not to be different just for the sake of it. For the Bahá’í section, for example, we have carefully considered and compared the special division of LC used by the Bahá’í World Centre library. For other sections, previous work (especially the standard Dewey 21 schedules) has had similar consideration. The aim has been, in general terms at least:

·              To include subjects covered in previous work.

·              To change the order and grouping of such subjects only where the outline and philosophy of this sched­ule demands such change.

 

What use is this schedule anyway?

    It provides a universal, up-to-date “religion” schedule for any library using DDC. (Another possible use is sug­gested on  page 14). The extensive Bahá’í schedule is a prominent feature, however the schedule for Christianity is also complete, and in many respects is more detailed than the current DDC standard. The “other” religions are al­ready much better covered than in DDC 21, even where there is still obvious room for improvement.. The logical overall arrangement, with its broadly parallel division of different religions, makes the schedule easy to follow for both the cataloguer and the user of the library.

    Christians who might feel that their faith is denigrated by the new schedule it should realise:

·              There is in this schedule an actual number for “Christianity” in a general sense (270) under which all Christian material is gathered – in a definite block of numbers (270-279). This is the same size as the base available to classify (say) Mathematics (510-519), Physics (530-539), or Chemistry (540-549). This is not to suggest that these subjects are necessarily as important as Christianity – but they do un­doubtedly generate at least as much literature, and are inherently at least as intricate and complex (from the point of view of library classification, at least).

·              The inclusion of particular subjects in a classification schedule does not mean that users must acquire material on those subjects. In fact, very few (if any) users of a classification will ever acquire material for every possible “number in the book”. “Excessive detail” in areas a particular library may (quite legitimately) not cover on principle, or consider (quite rightly) highly peripheral to its mission, are inevitable in a general scheme like DDC, and are of course by no means confined to religion.

    It is one of the principles of the Bahá’í Faith that all religions have their ultimate source in Divine revelation; but the value of a less biased schedule for religion is by no means bound to full acceptance of this idea. Nor does it follow that any library will (or should) have the same number of books on each religion, nor even that all relig­ions will necessarily be covered at all. To come back to our basic thesis: the Dewey Decimal Classification is a general, universal classification – its greatest strength has always been its suitability for a wide range of very dif­ferent libraries. It follows that a library with a very specific agenda (religious or otherwise) must either find a scheme that very specifically fits that agenda, or live with a good many pages of redundant numbers.

 

Has something been published about every subject in this schedule?

    Good question! Some classification schemes lay great stress on “literary warrant”. What this boils down to is that every subject in the schedule should have the “warrant” of at least one published work. While the Dewey scheme is also primarily concerned with subjects of works that have been actually published, drawing up tables of such subjects often implies many other subjects that might well be covered, if not in the past, then at some time in the future. The idea of literary warrant is that it sets a sensible limit to the size of a scheme of classification by tying it firmly to the real world. Funnily enough – the Library of Congress scheme (based rigidly on literary war­rant) is many times larger than Dewey (which is not), and needs more updating to cover new subjects rather than less.

    Many subjects that can be built using this schedule are in fact covered by literary warrant many times, others are logical absurdities, while others again are perfectly feasible subjects, whether they have actually been treated or not. The actually listed or “enumerated” subjects are mostly “warranted” – although some lists have been com­pleted, even if not every item on the list has been (as yet) the subject of an actual work. The basic idea is that it is much better to have a few “never used” subjects in the list than to have major crisis whenever a new subject arises. In any case, not all libraries are limited to published works!

 

Is this the whole thing?

    Ideally, all religions would be fully and carefully classified, to more or less the same degree of detail. This is very patently not the case in this edition. Even though most of the detail present in the standard Dewey 21 has been incorporated (and often extended) there is evidently a good deal of work that could be done, especially on the religions that are not well treated in standard DDC.

    Perhaps no individual could have the background to single-handedly “complete” this schedule. We have no de­sire to replicate the kind of risible error to be found in most dictionaries and encyclopaedias of religion, where, all too often, too much has been attempted by one person; or at least by too few people. There is a big difference between describing a religion and classifying books etc. about that religion, (and of course the latter task is much less demanding) but all the same, one must face one’s limitations! None the less, this schedule does need much fuller amplification at several points – it also almost certainly includes inappropriate headings and other anomalies of which we are, in our ignorance, unaware.

    The definitive schedule for Hinduism (the 220s), for instance, would ideally be drawn up by a librarian who  was also a practicing Hindu, with a fairly close knowledge of his faith – including its myriad varieties. At the very least, it needs to be tackled by someone with more knowledge of the subject than we have, in consultation with people from an appropriate background, and after a detailed study of earlier work on classifying library materials on the Hindu religion. In the meantime, the current draft for Hinduism, and several other religions, is only a tentative be­ginning – although there is a good deal more specific detail than is allowed for in the standard Dewey schedule.

    The Bahá’í schedule, on the other hand, is fairly complete – although it remains subject to expansion and alter­ation in future editions, especially as it is applied to more and more actual library collections. It must be stressed that even in its current form, it is very far from being the work of one person  – and that the process outlined above in relation to the Hindu schedule has been followed, and in fact is still continuing. In particular the assist­ance of Mr. William Collins, whose own work in this field has been shamelessly plundered, and who has also cast his eye over the result, contributing a number of helpful suggestions, must be acknowledged.

    The Christian schedule is in effect closely based on its equivalent in the Dewey 21, and although many subjects have been rearranged, and a few “consolidated”, a real effort has been made to include all Christian topics covered in standard DDC. The class numbers are often a little longer, partly because of the way the available numbers have been re-allocated, and partly because of an increase in specific detail. In a few cases, in fact, they are much longer, al­though this mostly applies to highly specific subjects unlikely to occur very often.

    This schedule is complete to the extent that it could certainly advantageously replace the standard 200s in any general library, or for that matter any religious library not  specialising in material on a particular religion other than the Bahá’í Faith or Christianity. For the benefit of “Non-Bahá’í/Non-Christian” religious libraries, there is however a need for extensive improvement and updating, especially for the sections covering the “Far-Eastern” religions (which are, incidentally, very poorly covered in the “standard” Dewey 200s anyway).

    In the meantime, a user faced with the task of classifying a particular item and “finding a place” for a subject not as yet properly covered in the schedule, either in the specifically enumerated lists of headings for the religion concerned, or in the common 200-209 table, should refer to the schedules for the religions that have been more fully classified. Commonsense comparison – in effect building up an “ad hoc” or “literary-warrant” schedule for the religion concerned – is likely in practice to produce the “correct” number in most cases.

 

Why is the schedule set out like that?

    The setting out of this schedule follows that of the standard Dewey schedules fairly closely. This is not because of a desire to plagiarise, nor because the standard DDC setting out could not be bettered – but simply because it is assumed that a library using this schedule will be doing so in conjunction with either the full DDC edition 21, or at least the abridged version. Obviously, if you’re hopping from one book to the other it helps if they have a similar layout. There are a few minor differences but these have generally been kept to a minimum.

    One feature of the standard Dewey schedules that has been carefully noted, and in general imitated, is a consider­able degree of “redundancy” in the index and notes.  Because a particular question is fully answered in one note does not necessarily preclude touching on it in several other places as well. Similarly in the relative index most “see” and “see also” references are rendered unnecessary by including full references under several different headings. These features are designed to increase the usability, as opposed to the academic purity, of the Dewey volumes. If anything, this Phoenix schedule is just a little less “redundant”, but hopefully preserves the advantages of  standard Dewey practice in this regard.

    Apart from this, the main difference that will be noted is that this schedule uses fewer “summaries” than the standard one. Especially once a general familiarity with the much more consistent and logical overall division of this schedule is acquired, it is hoped that these will prove to be unnecessary and unmissed.

 

Can we use this schedule without adopting the whole of Dewey?

  To classify a small collection of (say) books – all of them on the Bahá’í Faith (to take just one example) – it is perfectly feasible to take a section of the schedule (in this case the “290s”) and apply it to the collection without reference to either the rest of the schedule, or Dewey as a whole. In this case it would probably make sense to drop the “29” at the beginning of each number: so that “299.83” would become “983”, and “295.1576”
would be “515.76”. Another alternative “cut-down” might be if it were to be applied to an exclusively religious
library, but one in which more than one religion was to be represented, in which case the initial “2” could be left off,  with “299.83” becoming “998.3” and “295.1576” becoming “951.576”.

    In general, however, especially for all but the very tiniest of collections, the advantages of investing in (and using) a copy of either the full Dewey Schedules, or at least the abridged edition, in conjunction with this schedule cannot be too strongly emphasised. These advantages include the flexibility of a complete classification, and thus of having somewhere to put those “non-religious” works that even a purely religious library will be most likely to acquire, and the simplicity of following the usage of a standard scheme.

 

How do Dewey numbers work, anyway?

    One of Melvil Dewey’s most useful inventions was the way his class numbers reflect, or “express” the relation­ship between the various subjects. If you are familiar with the Decimal classification you may well skip the following – otherwise it may help make sense of Dewey numbers.

    Thus, to take an example, the “Year of Patience” – an aspect of the Bahá’í law on divorce – has a class number (296.55383) that can be broken up as follows:

 

     200    Religion

     290        Bahá’í Faith

     296             Bahá’í Law

     296.5               Bahá’í Social Law

     296.55                  Bahá’í Family Law

     296.553                    Bahá’í Marriage Law

     296.553 8                      Bahá’í Divorce law

     296.553 83                     Year of Patience

 

    This “expressiveness”, as it is usually called, has all kinds of advantages – in fact it is one of the reasons why the Dewey Decimal Classification has been so popular for so long. It does however have some drawbacks, so that Dewey himself compromised this step by step progression in many places. So do we (albeit rather less frequently than the standard Dewey 21 Schedule) – as can be seen in this summary of the schedule  for Jewish scripture:

 

     200    Religion

     260        Judaism

     264             Scripture

     264.1               Commentaries, studies etc.      

                             (Collections)

     264.2                    General collections

     264.3                    Special collections

                             (Specific texts)

     264.4                    Bible

     264.5                    Talmud

     264.6                    Sources of particular sects

     264.7                    Cabala

     264.8                    Legal writings

     264.9                    Stories, legends etc.

 

    Here there are in fact three divisions of our general heading “scripture” – works about scripture, collections of scripture – and specific texts. Instead of a straight step by step progression in the numbers, however, we leave out two steps altogether. We would not be using these headings as subjects in their own right anyway, and leaving them out uses the available number base much more efficiently. Numbers for specific parts of the Jewish Bible or the Talmud (for instance) are shorter than they would be if we had followed each step with its own number.

    There are many other places in this schedule (and, incidentally, in standard DDC as a whole) where a step by step progression down an orderly hierarchy is not followed, or if it is, is not reflected in the numbering. A classific­ation succeeds when works on a particular subject are brought together in the same place, and are arranged in such a way that groups of related subjects are generally not too widely separated. Rules about the con­struction of  Dewey class numbers have always been secondary to this primary aim.

    While on the subject of class numbers as such – let’s return to the idea of using this schedule in isolation.
If Dewey as a whole is not to be used, a completely different set of numbers could be applied, possibly abandon­ing Dewey-style expressiveness altogether. It should be pointed out that there is nothing particularly magical about class numbers as such – the real essence of this (or any) scheme of classification lies in the choice and ar­rangement of the subject headings, which is, as we have seen, essentially independent of the numbering system. This is not the place to go into the pitfalls of attempting a renumbering of the schedule; but if well done, it could have real advantages (shorter, neater, and more mnemonic shelf marks for instance) for a library, especially a very small one, with either an exclusively religious provenance; or a more or less exclusive concern with a particular religion.

    It might also be possible to adapt all or part of the schedule to fit into the framework of another scheme; with­out, of course, changing the subjects themselves or doing violence to the order in which they are arranged. Again, this would not be a completely straightforward task, and should not really be attempted by anyone but a profess­ional librarian with a very close knowledge of both Dewey, and the scheme concerned.

    The use of this schedule in the intended manner (as a “plug in” for the standard Dewey Scheme) is, none the less, once more strongly recommended, for all kinds of reason!

    One “obvious” point needs to be stressed. The numbers used in this schedule, for all that they are typical Dewey numbers, are quite different from standard DDC – as a result every page of the standard 200s in your copy (cop­ies) of the full or abridged edition of Dewey will need to be clearly marked with a note to the effect “Do not use this schedule – follow the “Religion” Phoenix Schedule for all subjects covered here”. You may even want to go to the extreme of sticking all relevant pages together, or cutting them out. Although the idea of vandalising any book (even a working copy of a classification) in this manner makes me shiver, personally. Do not use the index to the full or abridged version of Dewey for any religious subject either; but refer to the index to this schedule. Finally, if you use shared cataloguing, or cataloguing-in-publication data; don’t forget that any DDC numbers in the range 200-299 will need to be “translated” from the regular Dewey schedule to the new ”Phoenix” one. There is a table for this purpose at the back of this book – but this should be used with care. It will often prove to be simpler to ignore the old number and simply classify the work in question from scratch. In any case, always refer back to the schedule itself to make sure that any number you are going to use does exactly correspond with the subject of the work concerned.

 

How do I actually use this schedule then?

    Assuming that this schedule is being used as intended, as a replacement for the 200s in an otherwise standard Dewey library, the first step is to ascertain if the work to be classified is about religion. This may seem ridiculously self evident, but many topics covered in this schedule are not essentially religious – and are only relevant to this sect­ion of Dewey if they are treated in a religious context. If the work is not religious, then it will of course be classed outside the 200s, and by the standard Dewey 21 schedule. This applies even to a “religious” library.

    If you are an experienced user of DDC then there are really very few other problems. These are in any case dis­cussed in the manual pages near the back of this book. The most important difference is that we effectively avoid the use of the ordinary “standard subdivisions” of Dewey, so far as the 200s are concerned; since all subdivision in this Phoenix schedule is standardised. In other respects this schedule dovetails fairly closely in with the rest of Dewey.

    If you are a beginner (for instance, if the remark about “standard subdivisions” in the previous paragraph meant little or nothing to you) then the best way to start is to actually sit down with a pile of uncatalogued materials and try to determine what the class number for each should be. There are two possible approaches:

 

    By the first method:

1.        Determine the specific subject of the work. This is quite often reflected in the title – but titles can be un­helpful, or even misleading. Some works in fact need considerable perusal in order to determine what they are really about. Librarians have been known to take hours to determine the real subject of a particularly interesting book! All joking aside: obviously, if we don’t get this right the whole thing falls down.

2.        Look the subject up in the relative index. If it does not seem to be there – think of a broader, less spec­ific, name for the subject and look that up. It is quite likely that the subject we require (or another subject that is either basically synonymous, or perhaps a little broader) will be found in the index, and the temptation at this stage is to simply use the class number we have found. This is a BIG “no-no”. This point is stressed because it is a very widespread practice (even among experienced cataloguers who should know better) and is the direct cause of most mistakes in the use of the Dewy (or any other) classification. Step 3., which follows, is not just a counsel of perfection – it is necessary!

3.        Assuming we have found our subject, or something very like it, in the relative index, we must now look up that number in the schedule itself. While it quite often happens that you will find that your number fits the book (video, magazine, CD or whatever) perfectly, you may very well spot a more spec­ific heading, or realise that the number you were going to use is quite wrong!

    By the second method – and this is the one that most experienced cataloguers find quickest and easiest:

1.     As above! We can’t do a thing if we don’t know what the work is about.

2.   Don’t bother with the alphabetic index at all, at least not to start with. Instead mentally define the sub­ject in steps from the top down (say, Bahá’í Faith/Law/Marriage/Divorce) so that you know just where in the schedule itself to start looking. Then get to the right subject by examining relevant entries in the context of the classification.

3.    Use the index as a backup if your search in the schedules fails, or if you are not quite sure you have the right number.

    Library cataloguing and classification are ideally carried out by trained librarians or library technicians. They are not trivial or self evident tasks, especially if they are to be done well. Experience, and familiarity with the class­ifica­tion scheme and its idiosyncrasies, do however make things easier.

    The manual notes should be helpful, and the full DDC schedules also contain many useful hints, most of which apply just as forcibly to this schedule as to the standard scheme.