James Duff Brown
James Duff Brown (1862-1914) was a librarian and information theorist, music biographer and educationalist.
Biography
He was born in Edinburgh, but after begining his library career in Glasgow, he subsequently moved to London, and worked in Clerkenwell for the London Borough of Finsbury. He devised three classification systems: Quinn/Brown (1898), Adjustable classification (1898) and Subject Classification (1906). The latter system was for municipal libraries, and was informed by his advocacy of open shelf access of books in the UK. In 1894 he pioneered "safe guarded open access" to library stock. Alongside his classification work, he produced a standard textbook on librarianship (the [i]Manual of library economy[/i]). He further contributed to theoretical journals, he also produced correspondence courses in librarianship "upon which most British librarians depended for their professional studies until the 1930's" As Librarian in the London Borough of Islington he largely built up their collection and service.[1]
Ideas
His work in classification attempted to deal with the problem of the shelf arrangement of interdisciplinary works, and how to ensure that works on the same topic would be found in the same place. Part of his attempt to deal with this was to create synthesised notation (a rarity among classification systems in his day) to allow composite classmarks to be created.
Clare Beghtol notes [quote]He tried to bring all works on a concrete topic together notationally so that, for example, "at E917 for Coffee must be collected everything related to coffee, regardless of standpoint, form or other qualification but it must not be put under such headings as Tropical Agriculture, Beverages, Crops, Foods, Drugs, Ethics, Bibliography, Customs, or any other general head."[/quote][2]
Bibliography
Biographical dictionary of musicians (1886) British musical biography (1897) Manual of library classification and shelf arrangement (1898) Guide to the formation of a music library (1893) Manual of library economy (1903 - 7 later eds.) Manual of practical bibliography (1906) Subject classification (1st ed. - 1906 ; 2nd ed. 1914 ; 3rd ed. (rev. by J.D. Stewart) 1939) The small library : a guide to the collection and care of books (1907) Characteristic songs and dances of all ages (1910) Library classification and cataloguing (1912)
References
- ^ Robert Wedgeworth. "World Encyclopedia of Library and Information Services". Retrieved December 16.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help); Unknown parameter|accessyear=ignored (|access-date=suggested) (help) - ^ Clare Beghtol. "James Duff Brown's Subject Classification and Evaluation Methods for Classification Systems" (PDF). Retrieved December 16.
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