Douglas developed a strong interest in the relations between education and classification. He explored the writings of L.S Vygotsky, L. von Bertalanf… - Douglas John Foskett

D. J. Foskett is the author of several special ‘faceted’ classification systems of which three, at least, have been published. He was, with A. J. Wells, one of the first to introduce Ranganathan’s ideas into England. The Metal Box Company’s classification system comprises six ‘facets’ (categories), of which four relate to the manufacture of boxes (products, parts, materials, operations) and two for packing and crating (packed and crated products-and material condition of the latter; processes). ‘Various common subdivisions’ are also added : research, development, instruments, control, special operations (welding, stamping, etc.). The classification established for the food industries being an extension of the CC, utilizes the latter’s categories, but refines their meaning: ‘personality’ becomes products; ‘material’ becomes parts, on the one hand, and materials, on the other; ‘energy’ becomes operations. The most important of the classifications compiled by Foskett is the one on health and occupational safety, of which the schedules were first published as an appendix to the proceedings of the Dorking Conference, then continued, modified and completed to serve as a classification for the International Information Centre for Occupational Safety and Health in Geneva...

During... ten years the C.R.G. has met nearly every month, and although it has never had more than about a dozen active members, its influence has grown to the point at which is causes Mortimer Taube in America to rage over its medieval scholasticism, John Metcalfe in Australia to denounce it as a plot by Ranganathan to ruin librarianship, and a British University librarian to describe it as one of the two most significant developments in British librarianship since the end of the war.

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