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

Library Trends, Spring, 2004 by Kathryn La Barre

In January of 1952, in a long-delayed letter that bears the title "Intellectual co-operation" and references "your letter of 6 Nov. 1951," Ranganathan wrote to both Shera and Margaret Egan about "Intellectual co-operation":

   Your own document explains in a way wily you have resonated
   with the Colon Classification.... Our lines of thinking have
   detached themselves away from the traditional petrifying blind
   land into which classificatory and bibliographical thought had
   been driven--after all but by a tradition of but half a century.
   I had been delaying my reply in order to complete my study of
   your memorandum of 5 June 1951.... Parthasarathy and myself are
   interested in your pleasant suggestion that our group of workers
   [in the Library Circle] and yours should keep in touch with one
   another. Anybody who reads your memorandum and my Classification
   and Communication or some of my later articles in the Abgila
   will immediately see that we are working in the same sector of
   knowledge.... I am nowadays developing the idea of
   'Research-work-in-series'. In the past, due to lack of facilities
   for communication and presented barrier of various kinds,
   research in the world has been running 'in parallel'. While
   work in-parallel can enrich research to some extent--in so far
   as it brings in the aroma of different personalities--it becomes
   wasteful and the wasteful almost amounts to the criminal in the
   great need there is today to turn research to the service of
   humanity. Your suggestion really emphasizes the need for 'work
   in series'. It is splendid.... I would be most happy if as a
   minimum we keep each other informed of the progress of our work.
   Perhaps you may be able to find even more productive means of
   co-operation. For, at your end is found Foundations which are
   generous in their outlook and care for research in fundamentals.
   You can harness some of these beneficent forces to intensify and
   make more intimate the way in which we can work together.
   [Ranganathan tells Shera about contacting Dr. Paul Hoffman, the
   leader of a delegation from the Ford Foundation then visiting
   India, to ask for help with funding library research. He explains
   that such work has no funding in India and is conducted by people,
   like himself, on a purely honorary basis.] ... [R]esearch in our
   particular field is not evaluated in our country. I do not blame
   the country for it. For our work is even more fundamental than
   the work of the fundamental sciences. Its return can only be even
   more deferred. A nation which is struggling to find money to keep
   body and soul together ... is not likely to ... look ahead to
   fundamental research ... and see the value which is likely to flow
   from work of this fundamental nature. It is in this realistic
   diagnosis that I drift with my Library Research Circle without any
   bitterness towards anybody. But there is no denying that any help
   which comes from any direction will be like drops of rain on
   parched-up earth. That is why I wrote to the Ford Foundation. But
   the only reply that I had was the laconic one that it would
   receive consideration (Unpublished letter from S. R. Ranganathan
   to J. Shera and M. Egan, January 26, 1952). (11)