We've been talking a bit about the structure of scholarly information, information hierarchies, and attempts to organize the universe of knowledge. The Library of Congress Classification Outline is one of those attempts. Is it successful? Nearly all the books in all the college and research libraries in the United States are organized and located using this system. Take a look at the main class headings. Is this how you would structure the universe of knowledge? Can you locate your annotated bibliography topic within the LCC outline? How close can you get?
Tim Donahue
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4 comments:
Yes, I am able to unearth my topic from the LCC outline. I certainly am not presumptuous enough to think I'm capable of creating an alternate catalog of the UofK. I think if I were capable of even thinking of such a task I wouldn't be getting a degree in Elementary Ed. I find the LCC much more useful though, as I search for books for others, when I use the LCC online catalog-basic search>http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First>.I find this search to be invaluable as I'm researching even the existence of a book for a customer.
I was not able to find my topic of Body Modification on the LCC webpage. I tried searching a few subcatagories of my broad topic, but came up empty handed each time. Like Bill said, i am certian that i would not be able to create a better way to organize the liberary, but i was confused by the way they had the letters match up with the topics on the homepage.
I don't think anyone is able to say whether an attempt like the LCC's to organize the universe of knowledge is successful or not. It is a huge endeavor to say the least, and seems like one very well thought out way to organize everything.
The LCC probably did not structure the universe of knowledge the same way I would have, but I don't think any two people doing such a task separately would come up with the same system.
I was unable to find the exact topic of alternative fuels within the outline. I think that somewhere between the topics of renewable energy sources and miscellaneous motors and engines was where my topic lies.
I think it is a very good way to organize information. Since they have been using it for so long, it must be working well for everyone. I like the way it is structured. I could not find my topic specifically, but it's not something that would have an entire subject on it. I did help me find how to research my topic though. I also feel I now better understand the system for the future when I will want to look something up.
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