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taxonomies III
I like browsing through some of the weird categories in that famous taxonomy, the Dewey Decimal System.
Some favorites:
Books notable for bindings (095)
Prohibited works, forgeries, hoaxes (098)
Occult methods for achieving well-being (131)
With respect to kinds of persons (408)
Verbal language not spoken or written (?) (419)
Insect culture (638)
Someone once told me that 999 was the Dewey Decimal classification for "library science," which I thought was a cleverly "meta" way to end up one's taxonomy, but 999 actually belongs to "extraterrestrial worlds."
A little more searching reveals—aha—it's the Library of Congress Classification Outlines that end with Library Science. It's the government that's meta, not old Dewey after all. (Hardly surprising: let's not forget that we are ultimately governed by a self-modifying document.)
Some lovely subcategories there in Subclass Z:
Bookmobiles (Z686)
Shelf preparation (Z699.7)
Anonyms and psuedonyms (Z1041-1121) |
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
1:45 PM
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