[Sigia-l] FW: [CCS-SAC:650] An interesting idea of classification

[Vivian Bliss]

Received this blurb from another group but thought this crowd might
enjoy pondering this unique user experience totally set in the physical
realm.

....here's a passage from _Library Relocations_, published by Book
Works, London, in ... hmm, [n.d.], p. 7:

"The library [The Goldsmiths Library of Economic Literature, University
of London] is of importance to researchers in a variety of disciplines
other than economics, and the unorthodox way it is arranged on the
shelves (chronologically by year of publication, divided into subject
areas established by [Prof. H.S. Foxwell, the donor of the core
collection]) continues to prove stimulating. It is possible to gain an
understanding of a particular period and quickly contextualise one's
reading in a way that is unique. The substantial printed catalogue also
reveals that the library has an unusual origin. Foxwell first conceived
of the collection as a resource aimed at the provision of material for a
thoroughly historical edition of Adam Smith's _Inquiry into the Nature
and Causes of the Wealth of Nations_ (1776), probably the single most
influential work of political economy published in Britain. So as you
walk around the Goldsmiths Library, you are in a sense inside a vast
scholarly edition of the book, designed at least in part to question the
influence of Adam Smith and consider matters he did not. The books on
the shelves can be seen as arguments, footnotes, revisions and
appendices to a text that, read or unread, continues to exert
considerable influence and to stand for a strain of thinking about
economics, markets and society."


Vivian Bliss
Natural User Interface Solutions
Microsoft Corp.
425.703.3212