We’ve received a number of queries lately about the “disappearance” of records under certain spans in WebDewey. This problem is associated with unbalanced spans (spans in which the notation at each end of the span is not at the same level of the notational hierarchy). In each case, the records are still in WebDewey, but don’t appear in the hierarchical display because of a clash between the hierarchical display algorithm and the unbalanced spans in the underlying data. For example, if you display the record for the unbalanced span 709.012-709.05, you won’t see the individual records associated with this span in the downward hierarchical display, but the records are indeed still in the database. The easiest way to see a list of the individual records is to hit the browse key associated with the record for the span, which then displays all the records in a sequential list in the browse window.
An unbalanced span is an example of a convention that works in the print presentation of Dewey table and schedule entries, but is less effective in the electronic presentation of the data. The browse trick is a temporary workaround. We do not plan to do more work on the WebDewey display algorithm itself in order to address this problem, which affects some (but not all) of the unbalanced spans in the system. Instead, we plan to undertake a project shortly to eliminate unbalanced spans in the underlying Dewey data.
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