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.

I need to show the genocide/infanticide entries to my coworkers tomorrow…that’s just precious.

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.

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.

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