So says the early 20th century British librarian, William Charles Berwick Sayers, in his influential, Manual of Classification for Librarians and Bibliographers (first published in 1926). Classification, as Sayers eruditely points out, is a fundamental technique of human understanding. Perhaps the fundamental technique. Broadly speaking, classification can be seen as the process of organizing knowledge in a systematic way. Central to this process is the act of grouping objects together into classes based on having certain shared characteristics and dividing those which do not. These groupings can then be further divided in the same manner to achieve a system of knowledge, elucidating relationships between the objects (Chan, 2007, p.309). This process of classification has been used throughout recorded history to reveal the “natural order” of things and help humanity gain a deeper understanding of the world. It is so ingrained in our way of thinking and viewing the world that as children we learn about it in television shows and books, while, as adults, we use this process to organize our homes (Olson, 2001; Weinberger, 2007). Given this dependence on classification throughout history, it seems a logical step for librarians to have utilized such a powerful organizational tool to make accessing library resources easier
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