I didn't think of it as putting a meaning on every row, just a header where a meaning starts to act as guides as the user is scanning the call number range. I think you're right = I should just harvest the most important call number ranges and insert these. And since I'm in a theological library, I can just concentrate on the B's to keep it manageable.  I'll give it a try during the holiday.

-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Karen Coyle
Sent: Wednesday, December 04, 2013 2:53 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Interested in enhancing call-number browse in Millennium catalog

On 12/4/13 11:10 AM, Kyle Banerjee wrote:
>
> But this is horribly hacky and a lot of work for relatively little gain.
> When you get right down to it, the only purpose of a call number is to 
> physically collocate materials on the shelf and it's not really that 
> useful for search which is why practically no one aside from a few 
> cataloging nerds do call number searches. Plus, anyone geeky enough to 
> do a call number search actually must know what call number range is 
> relevant to their needs. Keep in mind that in many cases, no decent 
> call number exists for a concept and the best one available really is 
> quite crummy so prominently displaying that won't necessarily be a good thing.
Well, I have to disagree with some of this. Although the "call number" 
is the shelf location, it has topical meaning that, while undoubtedly not perfect, is supposed to collocate items based on their subject matter. With LCC the big problem is that you can walk down an aisle with similar-looking numbers and have passed into a very different subject area. You can sometimes figure this out by book titles, but unlike STEM journal article titles, book titles can be more "catchy" than informative. "Don't think of an elephant!" is a book on progressive political rhetoric. (Thanks, a lot, Lakoff) "The anarchist in the library" is a book about information distribution and the social order. 
(Thanks, Siva V.)

I think we have done users a disservice for decades expecting them to somehow magically guess what they are looking at on the shelf. 
Collocation only takes you so far, because at some juncture, two books beside each other on the shelf are going to *have* to be about different topics even though their class numbers sort beside each other. I'm all for serendipity, but some information seeking needs an informed user.

kc



>
> kyle
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 3, 2013 at 6:35 PM, Harper, Cynthia <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> I'm thinking of trying to enhance the call-number browse pages on a 
>> Millennium catalog with meanings of the classification ranges taken 
>> from the LoC Classification database.
>>
>> http://id.loc.gov/authorities/classification.html
>>
>> a typical call-number browse page might look like this:
>>
>> http://librarycatalog.vts.edu/search~S1?/cBX100.7.B632+1999/cbx++100.
>> 7+b632+1999/-3,-1,,E/browse
>> <
>> http://librarycatalog.vts.edu/search%7ES1?/cBX100.7.B632+1999/cbx++10
>> 0.7+b632+1999/-3,-1,,E/browse I'd like to intersperse the call-number 
>> listing with call-number range meanings like
>>
>> BX100 - Christian denominations - Eastern churches
>>
>> Has anyone tried this?  Can you point me to the API documentation for 
>> the LC Classification?
>>
>> Cindy Harper
>>

--
Karen Coyle
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m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet