Rachel:
may I only pick only on the proposal to use Dewey

> 9.1 Purpose:  X4L value space for discipline: mandatory:
> Dewey - this
> was raised in Manchester at the JORUM meeting and the point that a
> common system for all users is essential as a core 'glue' was well
> argued by Lorna. However the Dewey is for some subject
> areas (with my
> medicine hat on) particularly dysphoric with the discipline's
> worldview. For instance medicine is under 'technology' and not
> 'science' and is in different categories from bioscience and other
> health-related areas - this lack of conceptual sense is likely to
> disenchant and disenfranchise those who have to negotiate it. Either
> this is relatively hidden from users or a better system is going to
> be needed. I don't have an answer but it is an issue that is
> concerning us ... magic bullets anyone?

This about a compromise.
Any classification with small classification base such as Dewey
has to 'subsume' large amount of disciplines, the whole
of knowledge, under the very small number of categories
in what is called a 'roof' or base of  classification.
I understand that this may be a bit odd from your point of
view dealing with medical science only and using probably
NLM classification which works with alphabetical, non-decimal
notation .... where on can start with 26 classes instead of 10.

Every general classification has the problem of scientific
and educational consensus when ordering disciplines.
I would like to mention an example of broad knowledge structure
that solved the problem of obsolete classification
base by following, what is known as, integrative level
in sequencing of sciences. This is only to illustrate
that you were right complaining about Dewey's compressed
structure.
The system is called the Broad System of Ordering
created by FID&UNESO in the seventies, to serve as a switching
language between classification systems such as Dewey, LCC, UDC
BC, CC etc.. However, although it is
freely available it came too late to be widely applied in information
services(you can have look at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/fatks/bso/), and
too early to be properly supported by technology.
I put last year the whole classification of around 10.000 concepts on
the web (it only in text format for the time being).

Hence, using Dewey or any other classification to produce map
to the universe of knowledge has to be some kind of compromise in
order to provide browsing features spanning the whole of
knowledge.

Why Dewey, and not some other more intelligent system?
The answer is exactly the same as the one we get on the
question 'But why Microsoft?'. Dewey has 100 years long
history of being distributed as a part of a 'bibliographic packages'.
So one has to forget how dumbed-down it is, simply because
it has become an 'interoperable' solution.

There are not much time or resources that implementors
in educational domain can afford to waste pondering on
classification systems. This is why there is a tendency to favour the least

advanced systems such as Library of Congress Classification or Dewey.
Kind of quick fix. Compared to LCC, Dewey can, indeed, strike as rather

sophisticated knowledge organization tool (mind you, everything
compared to LCC does).

Education field does need some kind of general knowledge
classification structure. If one has to object Dewey, that has to be
based on its failure to satisfy some basic requirement in
indexing educational material, rather than its failure to appear
logical on the first level of division  - but this is an
entirely different issue.

Aida Slavic
SLAIS,
University College London

P.S. your argument about medicine being under applied
sciences would not be a good one, in this case. I hate to defend
Dewey, but medicine is by all means an applied science and can't be
classified under pure science such as chemistry, biology etc.
Medicine is field that quite clearly applies chemistry, biology,
physics etc. So it has to go together in 600 with technology.