[Koha-devel] Some thoughts about the "Dewey" field (was: What's a "Dewey"?)

[Ambrose Li]

On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 09:02:32AM -0500, Ambrose Li wrote:

[...skipped...]

> (In that case what if the library uses something else? Some
> Chinese libraries use some standard that could be translated
> as the "Chinese book classification system"; it looks like
> Dewey but is not.)

(Continuing my crazy thoughts and following up to myself...)

Some further thoughts: what if the library uses two
classification schemes in parallel, in the same catalogue? This
may seem bizzare to English speakers, but libraries that use
the Chinese system frequently class Chinese books in the Chinese
system but English books in Dewey. (E.g., call numbers for
Chinese fiction might be 8xx but English fiction, 9xx.)

Would this mean that it would make sense to extend the db to
contain more than one kind of call number (as in MARC), but
display just "Call number" in the interface? Or would it make
more sense to have the db have just one call number, but also
a "call number type"?

Are there places in the world where a library would use more
than 2 classification systems in the same catalog? :-(

> If the Dewey field is going to mean just any local call
> number, should the templates say "Call number" instead of
> "Dewey"?

-- 
Ambrose Li  <a.c.li at ieee.org>
http://ada.dhs.org/~acli/cmcc/  http://www.cccgt.org/

DRM is theft - We are the stakeholders