The art and science of classification: Phyllis Allen Richmond, 1921-1997

Library Trends, Spring, 2004 by Kathryn La Barre

ABSTRACT

Research during the 1950s in library and information science reflected the intense intellectual foment and fervor of the time. As a master's student of library science at Western Reserve University (WRU) in 1952, Phyllis Allen Richmond found herself at the epicenter of some of the most exciting work being pursued in the field. Her academic career crosscuts diverse areas. She was a champion of library automation, of facet analytical theory, and of the history of science. She always kept the future of classification firmly at the center of her work. This retrospective of the pioneering accomplishments and contributions of a distinguished forty-year career will draw upon recollections, materials at the Case Western Reserve University Archive, and Richmond's own writings.

OVERVIEW

   The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It
   is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art
   and true science. (Einstein, 1954, p. 11)

Phyllis Richmond was both a scholar and a tireless organizer. (Refer to appendices 1 and 2 for a bibliography and excerpts from her informal essays.) She was also the first female recipient of the Award of Merit from the American Society for Information Science (ASIS, now ASIS&T). In the first twenty-five years of the award only two other women, Claire Schultz (1980) and Pauline Atherton Cochrane (1990), were so honored. In presenting Richmond with the award of merit, ASIS commended her "contribution to the understanding of the theory and practice of subject analysis, in general, and classification, in particular" (Phyllis Richmond: Award, 1972, p. 3).

With classification her cynosure and history of science her ground, Richmond's sense of wonder and imagination remained fully intact throughout her distinguished career. Whether writing about the history of science, classification, cataloging, information retrieval, or in the context of one of her many book or conference reviews, Richmond always reminded her readers that their discipline is grounded by and primarily concerned with the interrelationships among people, documents, and technology. Like Janus, god of the past and the future--of beginnings and endings--her work is at once retrospective and predictive. As such, Richmond can provide guidance to those charged with assessing the strengths, failures, and future of our systems of knowledge organization and of the field itself.

This article outlines Richmond's contributions to our field and seeks to establish the continuing importance of her work. There are many ways to take the measure of a person, and it is always useful to gain some biographical context, which is where this story will begin. Next I will look to the broader context of developments in the field before assessing the impact of her work then and now. The remnants of Richmond's personal and professional papers are held at the Case Western Reserve University Archive. These archival papers, Richmond's own writings, and oral history interviews with Pauline Atherton Cochrane (Cochrane, 2001/2002) serve as the foundation of this inquiry.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE

   The universe in which we live is apparently open and genuinely
   infinite, both infinitely big and infinitely small. Data, laws,
   methods, theories in all fields are partially and imperfectly
   known. On one hand, the possibility of discovery seems unending.
   On the other hand the use of creative imagination appears
   limitless. (Richmond, 1963e, p. 396)

Phyllis Allen Richmond was born in Boston in 1921, but she spent her early years in Rochester, New York. She decided to attend Mather College at Western Reserve University (WRU) after learning that a relative, Elijah Porter Barrows, had been a professor at the school during its early days when it was located not in Cleveland, as today, but in Hudson, Ohio (Richardson, 1983; CWRU, n.d.). Upon her enrollment at WRU, Richmond undertook a course of study in undergraduate history just as the Mather Alumnae Historical Association donated a large sum of money to support a number of lectures and seminars in the history department. First in the series was a week-long seminar on the history of science in seventeenth-century England given by Dean Marjorie Nicholson of Smith College, and Dorothy Stimson, dean and professor of history at Goucher College. Richmond enrolled in this seminar and wrote an essay, entitled "Problems Connected with the Development of the Telescope, 1609-1687," that received the Alumnae Association prize and was published in Isis (Allen, 1942/1943). It was an auspicious beginning to Richmond's academic career in the history of science (Siney, 1998). Both her undergraduate degree (1943) and master's degree (1946) were awarded with honors from Western Reserve University. In recognition of her outstanding scholarship and in support of her doctoral study at the University of Pennsylvania, Richmond was offered an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship at Cornell (1947) and a Bennett fellowship (1948) at the University of Pennsylvania. She made remarkable progress in her studies and graduated in 1949 with a Ph.D. in history and philosophy of science.