Mathematicians librarians

Every year on March 14, Mathematics Day or Pi Day is celebrated, when various ways try to raise awareness of how much mathematics is hidden in our lives and in what creative and fun ways it can be used.

Mathematics is present in libraries primarily through the Dewey decimal system, i.e. the Universal Decimal Classification that developed from it. Melvill Dewey (who was not a mathematician himself) divided human knowledge into 10 large areas and assigned a number to each, and by further adding numbers, the peculiarities of each publication are specified (narrower area, language, country, form of publication, etc.). The assigned number also determines the position of the book on the shelf.

It is less known that there were several mathematicians who worked very actively in libraries and significantly contributed to the development of the library profession. One of the first such examples is Eratosthenes of Cyrene (3rd century BC), in his time the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. He dealt with many areas, especially geography and mathematics, and was the first to calculate the circumference of the Earth and find a method for determining prime numbers (the so-called Eratosthenes' sieve). It is known that during his period he tried to collect all the important and well-known books, such as the tragedies of the Greek classics. He also insisted on detailed copying of important books in the library, which, according to tradition, was so skillfully done that copies were returned to the owners and the original was kept for themselves.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646 – 1716) is one of those universal minds who left a significant mark in various fields of human activity – let us mention philosophy, history, law, mathematics (invariant and differential calculus), psychology, physics, engineering... But he is also important for the development of a new approach to librarianship. He worked in the ducal libraries in Hanover and Wolfenbüttel and tried to build them in such a way that they covered the basic areas of knowledge, for which he created his own classification. He edited an alphabetical catalog of authors and created a system of indexing, i.e. tagging books. He invited publishers to regularly send summaries of all printed titles, which would help with classification and indexing. He even hoped that in this way he could collect a list and content of all printed editions since Guttenberg's time. Leibniz is actually one of the pioneers of librarianship with his ideas and introduced procedures.

A recognized and well-known librarian and mathematician by profession worked in our midst, and this year marked the 120th anniversary of her birth

Eva Verona (1905 – 1996) was born in the then Austro-Hungarian town of Trieste. She attended a classical gymnasium in Zagreb, then graduated in mathematics and physics from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and soon got a job at the University Library (now NSK), where she worked until her retirement, and then continued to teach at the study of library and information sciences. She was the first in Croatia to receive a doctorate in the field of librarianship and is one of the initiators of the professional Vjesnik librarians of Croatia and the founder of the Croatian Library Association.

Eva Verona's contribution is extremely great in various areas of organization and description of library collections. The most important is certainly her engagement in the creation of the alphabetical catalog, which is the basic catalog we use when searching for authors and titles. IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) invited her as a recognized expert to the group that worked on the international principles of the alphabetical catalog, and also developed standards for the bibliographic record ISBD within IFLA. She was the first European woman to receive the Margaret Mann Citation in Cataloging & Classification Award awarded by the American Library Association ALA.

According to the Ordinance and the manual for the production of alphabetical catalogues compiled by Eva Verona, it is still used in Croatian libraries today, and the award for young innovative librarians is named after her.

Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan (1892 – 1972) He earned a degree in mathematics from the University of Madras and began his career as a professor, publishing articles mainly in the field of mathematics history. The university was looking for someone to organize their library, for which Ranganathan was chosen. However, he found this lonely position unbearable and asked to be reinstated as a lecturer, so in the end an agreement was made to study librarianship in Europe and decide what he wanted to do when he returned.

During his studies at University College London, he was not particularly interested until he was attracted to the problems of classification. He believed that Dewey's decimal system had omissions, and in particular that it did not well describe the Indian literary tradition, nor their way of thinking and scientific approach, so he began to develop his own classification scheme. In designing it, he was allegedly inspired by Meccano toys, which were assembled using different combinations of parts.

The Ranganathan classification is known as the Colon Classification or Colon Classification. By type, it is a facet classification, since each publication is defined by several aspects that are then combined and complemented. It is also important because it is hospitable, that is, it is easy to include new sciences and disciplines that emerge in it, since all of them can be described from the proposed aspects.

Inserted into librarianship almost of his own free will, and somewhat resisting it, Ranganathan became a recognized world expert, extremely important for the development of this profession and the winner of many awards. His birthday is now celebrated in India as National Librarian Day.

Although Ranganathan's classification has not spread except in India and partly in some academic and specialty libraries, his five laws of librarianship, which should guide the activities of any library, have been accepted and often cited everywhere:

Books are for use
To each user his book
Each book has its reader
Save the user time
The library is a growing organism.

Finally, why have some mathematicians been good librarians and attracted to the field in the first place? It could be concluded that both fields require logic and ability to handle large data sets, as well as to organize them and to see some principle or pattern that helps to organize and further develop, combine and build on these sets.

Don't worry, it doesn't mean that every library needs a mathematician, but the truth is that libraries have been given models and tools to help them function better with the help of mathematical thinking. (A.D.T.)

A little more:

Aleksandra Horvat: Eva Verona – A Library Career

www.bib.irb.hr/271131.verona-eng.pdf

Ravindra N. Sharma: S. R. Ranganathan - A Personal Tribute

https://www.jstor.org/stable/25540934