In the 1930s, visionary Indian librarian Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan proposed an entirely new approach to cataloguing. He called it “faceted classification.” Instead of a single, top-down, deterministic list of subjects, such as an index, it used descriptions of works based on multivalent characteristics, or “facets”: personality, matter, energy, space, and time. He believed that these five facets could describe any piece of information in endlessly reconfigurable ways. Faceted classification was highly influential as an ideal conceptual system, but its complexity made it too hard to implement. Decades later, with the invention of modern computers, faceted classification has made a big impact on computer science. Relational databases, which are able to connect chunks of data according to multiple criteria, have finally allowed us to implement Ranganathan’s vision. Now we can type in any characteristic of a book –its title, author, year of publication, subject, ISBN number, etc. – and find our way to it based on what we know. We can also easily see works sorted and grouped according to these criteria with just the push of a few buttons.
Personality, matter, energy, space, and time