Measurement of subject scatter in the superintendent of documents classification

Seven fundamental questions for the science of Library Classification

“…The distance between documents is one such objective factor. The informational similarity between documents is likewise objective if information is objectively measured as is done by Shannon and others (Boyce et al, 1990, Losee, 1990. Given these objective quantities, how might a classification system be "customized" for a particular collection, assuming that classification systems should not be the same for all collections?…”

Market basket analysis of library circulation data

“…Evaluations of document subject classification schemes have generally been based on subjective or qualitative criteria. Quantitative studies have examined the "scatter" imposed by moving documents from one classification scheme to another (Boyce et al, 1990), or used information theoretic measures to compare the information commonalities between documents placed physically adjacent to one another under a particular scheme (Losee, 1992). This present work is novel in its data mining approach to detecting patterns in library circulation data, and its focus on subject co-occurrences at the user transaction level.…”