Academic geek that I am, I have been awaiting the release of the new Carnegie classification system (or, rather, systems) for months. Well, it is now out, and available here. I have not looked closely at it--I promised myself two hours of dissertation work today before any leisure web browsing and then I have to meet the furnace folks at my house (wonderful time to be without heat in Minnesota--UGGGH!), so I likely won't get to this until this evening.
But I did read in hard copy the other day Lee Shulman's wonderful Chronicle of Higher Ed piece (available for free on line here) about the classification process. The opening two paragraphs perfectly capture the challenges involved in this process while being an example of wonderful storytelling:
Classification is not for the faint of heart. Noah's instructions were clear and simple: Bring two animals of every sort onto the ark, male and female, to preserve life in the aftermath of the great flood. Those "sorts" were apparently subsets of several larger categories — "fowls," "cattle," and "creeping things."
So how many sorts did Noah select? Make the subdivisions too small and the ark will be flooded, quite literally, by the congestion of overpopulation. Too many very small categories are unwieldy, awkward, and ultimately useless. Yet it clearly would not do to include two cattle, two fowl, and two creeping things and call it a day. The goal was to replicate the essential complexity of life on earth, with "grain sizes" neither too gross nor too fine. All classifications face that problem, whether separating a large university into schools and departments, determining where to put the thousands of books in the library, or organizing music on your iPod.
I know not everyone will be pleased with the results. But it's hard not to look at them, and arguing the choices is part of the fun--kind of like Monday morning quarterbacking or post Oscars ranting. So, this evening after I put the kids to bed, cuddled on the couch in front of the laptop, some light browsing for me to look forward to. Hopefully with the heat fully restored.
Posted by perry032 at November 17, 2005 11:38 AM | TrackBack