Rudolph Focke and the Theory of the Classified Catalog. Occasional Paper No. 145.

Between 1900 and 1905, Rudolph Focke published a series of papers on classification theory and a draft of a code for the construction of classified catalogs. His work was the direct result of the reform of librarianship during the last decades of the nineteenth century. The large number of classification systems used by German university and research libraries was seen as an obstacle to the development of national systems of bibliographic control and access. The hope of standardization came to nothing; Focke's code may even have had the opposite effect of perpetuating local systems well into the twentieth century. His work was introduced to librarians in the United States at a time when subject cataloging and classification were in transition. His code is consistent with the general principles underlying the Library of Congress Classification, which may have been more influenced by nineteenth century German classification than has heretofore been recognized. (Author)