Bliss Bibliographic Classification - Adoption and Change

Adoption and Change

BC was not used by many North American libraries. The system was not without its flaws (the result of being largely a one-person project), and the layout of Bliss’s text was difficult to read. A few library schools sometimes taught the BC system to their students, but only in a minor way. The failure of the system to catch on in North America was partly because of its internal deficiencies but also because the Dewey Decimal and Library of Congress systems were already well established.

The City College library continued to use Bliss’s system until 1967, when it reluctantly switched to the Library of Congress system. It had become too expensive to train new staff members to use BC, and too expensive to maintain in general. Much of the Bliss stacks remain, however, as no-one has recatalogued the books.

The case was different, however, in Britain. BC proved more popular there and also spread to other English-speaking countries. Part of the reason for its success was that libraries in teachers’ colleges liked the way Bliss had organized the subject areas on teaching and education. By the mid-1950s the system was being used in at least sixty British libraries and in a hundred by the 1970s.

In 1967 the Bliss Classification Association was formed. Its first publication was the Abridged Bliss Classification (ABC), intended for school libraries. In 1977 it began to publish and maintain a much-improved, revised version of Bliss’s system, the Bliss Bibliographic Classification (Second Edition) or BC2. This retains only the broad outlines of Bliss's scheme, replacing most of the detailed notation with a new scheme based on the principles of faceted classification. 15 of approximately 28 volumes of schedules have so far been published.

The top level organisation is:

• 2/9 - Generalia, Phenomena, Knowledge, Information science & technology
• A/AL - Philosophy & Logic
• AM/AX - Mathematics, Probability, Statistics
• AY/B - General science, Physics
• C - Chemistry
• D - Astronomy and earth sciences
  • DG/DY - Earth sciences
• E/GQ - Biological sciences
• GR/GZ - Applied biological sciences: agriculture and ecology
• H - Physical Anthropology, Human biology, Health sciences
• I - Psychology & Psychiatry
• J - Education
• K - Society (includes Social sciences, sociology & social anthropology)
• L/O - History (including area studies, travel and topography, and biography)
  • LA - Archaeology
• P - Religion, Occult, Morals and ethics
• Q - Social welfare & Criminology
• R - Politics & Public administration
• S - Law
• T - Economics & Management of economic enterprises
• U/V - Technology and useful arts (including household management and services)
• W - The Arts
  • WV/WX - Music
• X/Y - Language and literature
• ZA/ZW - Museology