CLASSIFICATION AND INDEXING IN The SOCIAL SCIENCES

Abstract

It would indeed be pleasant to be able to begin this paper with the relation of many striking and significant advances made since I last spoke on the topic to Aslib, at the 1965 Annual Conference at the University of Keele. Such, alas, is not possible; it would not be too much to say, of the social sciences as a whole, what R. B. Joynson has recently said of Psychology: ‘The present sub‐divisions of Psychology are not, for the most part, the fruit of any agreed and deliberate analysis. They are historical flotsam—a haphazard collection of topics … brashly inflated by a hand‐to‐mouth empiricism into one great blooming buzzing confusion.’ Although there are a few bright patches of orderliness, I fear that much of our subject presents something of the same confusion; while I am certain that the same hand‐to‐mouth empiricism is earnestly providing classification and indexing with more than its fair share of historical flotsam.

Citation

FOSKETT, D.J. (1970), "CLASSIFICATION AND INDEXING IN The SOCIAL SCIENCES", Aslib Proceedings, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 90-101. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb050231