Faceted Categorization

contributed by Michael G. at 07:16 PM on January 29, 2004.

I put a lot of thought into the organization of content on the site. I decided to base it on Ranganathan's faceted classification system. "Ranganathan developed the theory of facet analysis because he was dissatisfied with the inability of traditional enumerative bibliographic classification systems to allow for the expression of compound subjects" (via AIFIA). Ditto.

Ranganathan developed five primary facets, which are: (via Boxes and Arrows)

• Personality— what the object is primarily “about.” This is considered the “main facet.”
• Matter—the material of the object
• Energy—the processes or activities that take place in relation to the object
• Space—where the object happens or exists
• Time—when the object occurs

I orginally thought those categories would be too restrictive, but after thinking about it, and receiving feedback from a few people, the facets I came up with for this site fit almost exactly into those main categories.

The categories here are:

• Topic (Personality) - What the entry is about
• Form (Matter) - the form of whatever the post topic is about
• Process (Energy) - the type of information professional doing the work
• Institution/Library (Space) - the institution type generating the original information
• Date (time) - When the post was added to the site

To see the sub-categories I've so far added under the main facets, you can look here. Obviously, more will need to be added, but I wanted to include enough to explain my thought-process as best as possible.

So, any feedback on this?