Colon Classification

Dr. S.R. Ranganathan was the founder of “Colon
Classification”. Colon Classification is known as ‘analytico Synthetic Scheme’.
It is also described as “Freely Faceted Scheme”.

The 1^st 
edition of colon classification was published in 1933 and up to now 7^th
edition of colon classification have been published ( 1987).

 First Edition of
Colon Classification in 1933

1)     
It is used only ‘Six general laws and ‘five laws
of library science’.

  : (colon) was used to ‘combine together
different facets’.

   First edition of Colon Classification’s there
has 3 parts.

             1) 127 pages of rules explaining the underlying
principles.

      II    2) 135 pages of schedules.

    III.   3) 106 Pages of Index.

 Mixed Notation was used in Colon Classification.

Second Edition of Colon Classification in 1939

Ø 
The 4^th part was added which
contained about 3000 examples which were illustrative of the rules given in the
1^st part.

Ø 
2^nd edition 4 parts given bellow

                    
I.           
Rules of Classification

                  
II.           
Schedules of Classification

                
III.           
Index of the Schedules

                
IV.           
Examples of call numbers  (Added)

 The main class Mysticism was
introduced which was represented by Greek Letter ‘Delta’.

Third edition of colon classification 1950 ( After 11 Year)

The Postulates of Five Fundamental categories were
introduced for the first time.