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Last modification date: October 1998
S.R. Ranganathan (1892-1972) was the great Indian library scientist who developed the influential Colon Classification system for organizing large research libraries. Trained as a mathematician, he became the first librarian at the University of Madras and also taught at other major Indian universities. Recognizing that a classification had to be able to grow organically, in order to keep up with an always-expanding growth in knowledge, Ranganathan's classification system breaks knowledge down into broad classes, which are further subdivided into single dimensions of information called "facets." The entire collection of individual facets can be expanded to provide a unique description of a networked information resource. Conceptual scales provide a principled approach to faceted classification. In fact, we identify facets with realized conceptual scales.
The mathematical theory of conceptual knowledge processing discusses several types of conceptual scales: abstract, concrete and realized. These types are arrayed along an intentional-extensional spectrum.
The mathematical theory of conceptual knowledge processing discusses several kinds of conceptual scales: nominal, ordinal, hierarchical, universal, etc. These are primarily based upon methematical considerations. The most common kinds are "nominal" and "ordinal". Nominal scaling refers to names that are members of an unordered set, whereas ordinal scaling refers to subranges of a totally ordered set. Conceptual scaling kind is concentrated in the arguments of the various relations which are associated with the scale.
From the practice of conceptual scaling come several methods of conceptual scaling. These pragmatic methods are closely, but not completely, related to the mathematical structure.
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