“The scope of a specialised documentary classification is usually designated by its title, the subject field that it professes to classify. It is no easy task to state what is meant by a subject field. In general it can be expressed as Thing-Activity. A definable group of things… is selected, and from the many relations in which they subsist a certain number are selected as relevant.”

—  Brian Campbell Vickery

Source: Classification and indexing in science (1958), Chapter 1: The need for classification, p. 11.

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Brian Campbell Vickery84
British information theorist 1918–2009

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