Supporting Multiple Paths To Objects In Information Hierarchies: Faceted Classification, Faceted Search, And Symbolic Links / quote 2 of 3
Ranganathan's facets
It was through the Colon Classification that Ranganathan introduced the concepts of facets and facet analysis. Facets were Ranganathan’s solution to the inherent problems with the Dewey Decimal and Library of Con- gress classification systems, namely, that index terms had to be conceived before an information object could be classified by the system. Rather than starting by designing a classification scheme and then fitting objects to it, Ranganathan’s idea was to first start with the objects and then dynamically cull the index terms and attributes from them to provide more flexibility and description accuracy in the classification. The core facets which Ranganathan believed could classify any object were: personality, matter, energy, space, and time (Taylor, 1999).