you could always hear the rub squeaking
of those two tree limbs
’til one day one of them came down
taken down by the wind
but on the one that’s still there
you can still see where the bark was
rubbed bare
it’s a metaphor
if you know what i mean
Ani DiFranco ¤ “how have you been” ¤ out of range
Today I discovered a, perhaps the, fundamental flaw in DDC. There is (practically) no concept of metaphor.
I was cataloging a German book on Metapher which had no Dewey number in the record so I turn to the Relative Index and flip to m…e…t…a…p…h…o. Uh. Huh? Wait. “m” “e” “t” “a” “p” “h” “o”. Blink. Turn away and look back. Try again. Question my sanity and/or my spelling. And slowly realize that metaphor just ain’t to be found in the Relative Index (print DDC22). Knowing full well that this concept has been around for a day or two, I fire up WebDewey to see if there is something more up-to-date. In the Relative Index I find zip, nada, zilch. Try in the Schedules. I think I got 3 possibilities, all of which are possibilities but not necessarily good ones.
Head over to ClassWeb and put the LCSH “Metaphor” into the LCSH–DDC mapper and get 10 possible numbers. Much better, although many of those were only slight variants. Looking at these actual numbers in the Schedules, in most cases, still left one with no idea they were looking for the concept metaphor.
Now, I am well aware that metaphor would (should) show up in many places in the DDC Schedules based on the way DDC is constructed. But there is practically no explicit mention of it anywhere.
While it may be possible that we could have natural language without metaphor, it would certainly not resemble anything humans know as language for the last 2 millennia or more. Nor is classification even possible without metaphor.
Yes, my claim as to the, or even a, fundamental flaw may be a tad strong, but I still find this immensely disturbing.
Another disturbing thing I noticed today was the wholehearted amoral stance DDC takes on occasion. For instance, see this sequence:
304.6 Population
304.66 Demographic effects of population control efforts
304.663 Genocide (Class here ethnic cleansing)
On what level exactly is genocide a population control effort? (except in a very euphemistic sense)
Of course, there are 1000s more of these sorts of things that are amiss, along many dimensions.
Some days and for some items DDC and LCSH work just fine. But on other occasions the utter failure of being able to adequately express a topic in one or the other (or both) is incomprehensible and frustrating.
I do love cataloging and classification. I just wish we had some better tools, much better rules, and systems that took advantage of the work we do and did amazing things to present our resources to our users after they had (reasonably) easily found them.
12 responses so far ↓
1 Kristina Spurgin // Nov 6, 2007 at 10:26 pm
I just found this about 10 minutes ago, before reading your post:
392.12 Birth customs.
– Including baptism, couvade, infanticide, namegiving.
ummm. One of these birth customs is a little more violent than the others…
It’s easy to pick on these systems that we have, but some things just jump out at you, right?
2 Irvin // Nov 6, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Hey, that’s one of the pleasures of using Dewey: deciding on the least worst of four different not-quite-right numbers.
You can always adopt that rule of classing in the closest broad number and then lobby DDC for a new narrower number. I worked at a phys ed library for several years and we had to class the (British Commonwealth) sport of ‘netball’ at 796.32 (’thrown ball sports’) because there was no specific number. Giles Martin, the Australian assistant DDC editor, got a number for it eventually. Metaphor is a bit trickier, obviously.
BTW, the 1st ed of DDC is available at Open Library:
http://demo.openlibrary.org/b/classification_library
3 Irvin // Nov 7, 2007 at 5:51 am
Forgot to say…I like the metaphorical poem. Here are two more in return:
Won’t you come and see
loneliness? Just one leaf
from the kiri tree.
—Basho
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
- ee cummings
http://www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/Welch4.htm
4 Mark // Nov 7, 2007 at 7:02 am
Kristina, it is easy to pick on our systems although, as you say, these things just jump out at you. One does not have to go looking.
Your example is pretty macabre but I’m guessing it makes some sense. There have been cultures that practiced infanticide–generally determined by lack of resources available to raise the child and keeping those already alive healthy. I don’t remember many of these where the killing of the child was wanton so I imagine there would have been rites associated with it.
If this is anywhere close to correct I bet we’ll find infanticide in a couple more places in the schedules for other aspects of it.
Irvin, yes, I play that game most every day or, at least, on those days I do monographs. That one is a pain. I could write about problems with these tools every day. Doesn’t mean they aren’t powerful and useful, but it does put the lie to those who think cataloging is rule-based.
I was struggling with a book on armed conflicts and demography yesterday, and the relationship went both ways, although I couldn’t even find a way to make it go either in any clear fashion.
We often do class broadly, but with 10 million volumes–I think about 3.5 million in our Voyager catalog–one can only class so broadly.
Another problem for us is that we have a fairly hard limit of 11 digits in our DDC #s. So, even if I can get all aspects of the subject matter covered in the class # it is quite likely I have to cut it out.
Yesterday I had a book on relations between African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans in New York city. The best I could do for a class # was African-Americans in NY (state). Broke my little anal heart, it did.
5 walt crawford // Nov 7, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Genocide is certainly a coldblooded form of population control, as it aims to eliminate one whole chunk of the population. (Bioengineered plagues and nuclear warfare could also be classed under population control, I suppose…)
6 Mark // Nov 7, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Right you are, Walt. Which is why I wrote “euphemistically.” One can certainly discuss genocide (by whatever means) as population control, and on one hand, it is. But on the other, it is much, much more. Both the term “genocide” and the phrase “ethnic cleansing” carry a lot more ethical weight than does “population control.”
Look at all the waffling that went on as 100s of 1000s of people died in Rwanda because politicians worldwide were loathe to label what was going on with either of these terms. As soon as either term was applied they would immediately incur an ethical responsibility to intervene.
Sure, I was writing in a somewhat loose sense and not presenting the entire story, if you will. And I have no doubt that books have been written on genocide or ethnic cleansing from a pure standpoint of population control. I’ve also heard similar arguments for the Holocaust and many other tragedies; they all make my skin crawl.
So, I guess my point is not that DDC is conceptually wrong on this count; didn’t claim that but I’ll be specific now. The point–which I standby–is that a whole lot more is missing if this were the only classificatory detail applied to any item on genocide.
And, yes, quite the straw man, or straw bib record, argument at the moment. Nonetheless, I think that if this is all one has to say about this concept then it is, at best, an amoral stand. Since I was not (nor am I) accusing DDC of having only this to say on the topic that is all I can accuse DDC of. But I will add that if that is all one had to say, that genocide and ethnic cleansing are simply a form of population control, then one has firmly moved into the unethical.
7 Jenn // Nov 10, 2007 at 10:11 am
This is…disturbing. Metaphor is a HUGE topic in philosophy, literature, and linguistics. Someone needs to write to the Dewey council and enlighten them.
8 Mark // Nov 12, 2007 at 7:13 am
I did and do find it disturbing. Now I have no doubt that they’ll argue that it is represented, and on one hand it is, but on the other it is almost entirely implicit.
9 Laura // Nov 20, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Wow. Just wow.
10 Carnival of the Infosciences #84 « The Other Librarian // Nov 27, 2007 at 8:36 pm
[...] Creech, the Eclectic Librarian sent in Mark Lindner’s article on DDC with this comment: “I know it’s a little old, but I found it to be an interesting [...]
11 Benjamin Hockenberry // Dec 2, 2007 at 9:04 pm
I guess I shouldn’t complain about sections for special topics in non-English literatures not getting A-Z treatments of special topics under LCC’s purview — DDC has to deal with criticisms like the lack of definition for “metaphor.”
I need to show the genocide/infanticide entries to my coworkers tomorrow…that’s just precious.
12 Mark // Dec 4, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Hey Washtub, you should (constructively, where possible) complain about the inadequacies of your tools.
They all have issues, and multiple issues. Anything and everything would/will have issues of some sort; esp. in a universal classification. But the ? is which limitations do we prefer?
Had another metaphor book today: Metaphor and continental philosophy : from Kant to Derrida / Clive Cazeaux. Need to have me a look see at this one, actually.