From Classification to ‘Knowledge Organization’: : Dorking Revisited or ‘Past Is Prelude’. A Collection of Reprints to Commemorate the Forty Year Span between the Dorking Conference (First International Study Conference on Classification Research 1957) and the Sixth International Study Conference on Classification Research (London, UK) 1997

Citation

Harvey, R. (1998), "From Classification to ‘Knowledge Organization’: : Dorking Revisited or ‘Past Is Prelude’. A Collection of Reprints to Commemorate the Forty Year Span between the Dorking Conference (First International Study Conference on Classification Research 1957) and the Sixth International Study Conference on Classification Research (London, UK) 1997", Asian Libraries, Vol. 7 No. 6, pp. 137-138. https://doi.org/10.1108/al.1998.7.6.137.3

The rather long subtitle describes the scope of this book completely: it is a collection of reprints to commemorate the forty year span between the First International Study Conference on Classification Research (1957) and the Sixth International Study Conference on Classification Research (1997). This is not a dry collection of little relevance to modern information professionals. The fifteen papers reprinted in it are important to the reader today because “past is prelude”, as the subtitle puts it: because if the lessons in them are forgotten, then information professionals are doomed to re‐invent the wheel. This point is made clearly at several points in the book. In the words of Cleverdon (p. vi), one hopes that the new generation of researchers will take note of the lessons of the past, for, to quote Michael Lesk, “Much of what was done in the 1960s was done so well that it does not need to be done again ‐ even though it often is”. E.J. Coates (p. viii) links this point more specifically to current practice: “there are signs that Internet culture is groping, albeit ponderously, in the direction to which 20th century classification theory has been pointing”; and he continues with specific reference to Web search engine developers.

This collection begins with short reminiscences about the 1957 Dorking Conference. Then follows fifteen papers about classification theory and research, and all of the names are present: Coates, Vickery, Sparck Jones, Cleverdon, Mills, Svenonious, etc. These papers have all been published elsewhere. The significance and value of this collection is that their grouping together allows us to more readily see what they contain and, much more important, to note the clear directions in which they point.

Apart from one small quibble (there is no spine title, thus hindering physical retrieval) this book is highly recommended.