At the most technical core of traditional library science, classification stands as a bridge builder between the past and the future of our field. Anthropologists have long seen classification as a tool for understanding culture.
Classification involves the informal embedded in the formal and vice versa.
We then take cultural cues from the systems so created. In traditional library classification research, there have been two distinct challenges. This challenge is one of understanding the sense of vernacular terms. Classifications that work in the real world must meet both challenges simultaneously. For example, in studying the history of the International Classification of Diseases, we noted that the designers of this global classification system must constantly make practical tradeoffs between the two challenges.