The CCO Guide to describing cultural works and their images has been generating a lot of interest (see earlier entry) ahead of its publication by the American Library Association in 2006. One of the aims of the Guide is to specify best practice in the provision of subject access to cultural objects, and the discussion over tea and scones in the drawing room at Dewey Manor has inevitably turned to the question of how general classification schemes may be used to enhance such access. The DDC, for instance, allows for the collocation, at 704.9 Iconography and elsewhere, of works about the treatment of (and works comprising collections of images of) a specific iconographical subject in visual art. It also allows classifiers to group together works about art dealing with a specific theme or subject, or displaying a specific quality of style, mood, or viewpoint, by adding notation from Table 3C (Additional Notation for Arts and Literature). The DDC is currently applied to a broad range of resources. What about using it to provide subject access to cultural objects, such as artworks and the images of those works that are often stored digitally? Which of the three levels of meaning (description, identification, interpretation) distinguished by the CCO Guide and its predecessors could (or should) DDC numbers capture? And what benefit can classification provide beyond that already provided by conventional subject indexing? We’d be especially interested to hear about the experiences of any DDC users who are currently assigning DDC numbers to cultural objects.
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