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

Library Trends, Spring, 2004 by Kathryn La Barre

In a 1957 letter to Shera, Richmond discussed her interest in locating "the publications of the ASLIB CRG [Classification Research Group] in London. Perhaps we can get something of this sort going on over here." (8) It is likely that Richmond was well aware of Shera's correspondence with Ranganathan since the late 1940s and of his familiarity with the many classification projects of the CRG members.

Shera, then an assistant professor (1947-52) at the University of Chicago's Graduate Library School, first wrote to Ranganathan in 1949 in response to Ranganathan's recommendation in support of a Mr. S. Parthasarathy's application for admission to the University of Chicago Graduate Library School. In this letter Shera also discussed Ranganathan's receipt of a Rockefeller grant to fund a series of visits to libraries and information centers in the United States. Shera advised Ranganathan on an extensive itinerary that included public and university libraries that had library schools. (9) Shortly after this, Shera sent an unpublished draft of his review of the second edition of the Colon Classification. Though the letter that accompanied it is missing, Shera retained a copy of the review. In it Shera notes that

   On this side of the Atlantic, the Colon Classification has been
   viewed with a suspicious skepticism that has largely obscured
   the many merits that the scheme possesses.... In England, by
   contrast, where the urge to classify library book collections
   came relatively late, Ranganathan's schematicism has been
   received with much greater sympathy and enthusiasm. There the
   Colon Classification has not only gained vigorous and active
   support, but it has actually been adopted by some libraries.
   But in the United States popular enthusiasm for the Colon system
   has been further impeded in two ways. Superficially, the esoteric
   terminology of the scheme has discouraged an objective appraisal
   of its merits. The serious student of library classification soon
   discovers that ...

      [H]e [Ranganathan] is actually using his terms with the
   greatest accuracy and precision.... The average American
   librarian, on the other hand, regards library classification as
   little more than a location device to guide him to the position of
   a particular title on the shelf.... Fundamentally, however, the
   real barrier to the understanding of the Colon Classification
   arises from the fact that it is founded in a philosophical
   orientation that is foreign to our own theories as to what a
   library classification should be. Early in his professional
   career, however, Ranganathan recognized that all human knowledge
   is composed of a relatively few basic subjects which may be
   arranged, combined and interrelated in an almost infinite variety
   of ways. Thus, about 1925 as a student of Berwick Sayers, he began
   to lay the foundation for a scheme that would provide complete
   flexibility, or in his own words 'infinite hospitality' ...
   Ranganathan himself has likened it to a Meccano set the standard
   pieces of which may be assembled in a number of ways to construct
   many quite different mechanical objects.... It is manifestly
   impossible in a severely limited space to do full justice to the
   scheme, [here Shera refers the reader to "The colon classification
   and its approach to documentation," a chapter in Bibliographic
   organization (Shera and Egan, 1951).] But perhaps enough has been
   said to show that Ranganathan has departed from the usual concept
   of bibliothecal classification and by freeing it from the book as
   the physical unit of classification has taken an important step
   in directing attention toward the need to examine the "concept"
   or "information unit" as the more effective basis for the
   arrangement of bibliographic materials.... The reviewer does not
   mean to imply that American librarians should immediately begin
   the relettering of their books with the Colon notation, but he is
   convinced that Ranganathan is blazing a pioneer trail along which
   future theorists of library classification must follow, and that
   if we fail to heed his markings we may very soon lose ourselves in
   the ever deepening forests of contemporary print. (10)