Many problems in understanding and exposition of concepts in a specific area of knowledge constituting a subject arise from terminological problems. Objects are inadequately or ambiguously represented by symbols or terms. Definitions may be missing or wrong. Such errors rapidly lead to wrong operation of the inference component and invalid results of the whole system definitions. In order to avoid such problems, terminological methods should be introduced, thus enhancing the quality of the knowledge base and its application. Concepts are the building blocks of subject- fields. They are represented by terms or other linguistic symbols or by non linguistic symbols. Terminology of a given subject or its sub-field is also the representation of its knowledge at the level of conceptual logic. English language contains about 400,000 words plus another 300,000 technical terms, the largest in any language. But it is doubtful if any individual uses more than 60,000 terms. British residents who have undergone a full 16 years of education, are stated to use 5,000 words in speech and upto 10,000 words in written communications. sel Library and information science has used apart from normal terms in representing concepts, a large number of specific terms to represent concepts and also their manipulation and use in the whole body of thought and practice of the discipline. Dr. S R Ranganathan has introduced a number of terms - most of them are ordinary English terms to which he gave extraordinary meaning. During the years these terms went on increasing and had to be explained and understood. Most of the terms Ranganathan has used in classification, cataloguing, documentation, bibliographical work and library techniques. These terms generated by Dr. Ranganathan can be applied to a range of purposes such as library and information management, organisation of knowledge, and retrieval of information. He enunciated canons of Terminology to provide a scientific basis for the evolution and use of specific terms. Initially Ranganathan's terminology were not accepted by those who were familiar with old and traditionally used terms But in due course, his terms were accepted and found to be of vital significance in technical writing, teaching of concepts, application of techniques, and promotion of new thought and research in the subject. Indian Standards Institution (new Bureau of Indian Standards) had brought out separate Glossaries of Classification Terms and Cataloguing Terms, as evolved and used by Ranganathan. These have not been revised for long. During the Birth Centenary Year of Dr. Ranganathan (1991 1992) a number of works have been published evaluating his life and work, highlighting his contributions, but no thought was given to bring out a Book on Ranganathan terminology. This need has been met out by the present work "Ranganathan Dictionary". It is a compilation of words and terms used by Dr. Ranganathan in his works - books and writings. Commenting on Ranganathan's terminology Dr. H. Coblans has observed: "I must confess that as an editor of the Revue de la Documentation my pen sometimes itched to change his terms into a little more normal English. Fortunately I did not do much in the way of changing. Yet he had a real gift for using words creatively. After all, English was not his mother tongue. When you think of some of the ordinary English words to which he gave extraordinary meanings, we sometimes forget that we owe them to him". I quote this to emphasise the need of the work that the authors have taken in hand and accomplished creditably. I am convinced that the Dictionary will be of immense use to librarians, information personnel and the students and teachers of library and information science.
In the following pages of this book, you will find an alphabetical listing of library and information science terminology coined, defined, collaborated and used by Dr. Ranganathan. According to Ranganathan, precise and concise terminology is essential for building-up the theory of a subject on scientific lines. Well defined concepts and terminology help in communicating ideas without any overtones and undertones. Problems common to a natural language like vagueness, homonyms, synonyms, etc, can be bolted- out when we could standardise the terminology. Right from the beginning, Ranganathan toed a new line of thinking, cut new grounds and blazed new trails. His new concepts needed new terminology. Ranganathan's genius picked up most appropriate terms from the English language which received great acclaim even from the Britishers like Palmer, Wells, Foskett, Vickery and a host of others. His terminology got international acceptance. The humility and patriotism in Ranganathan made him to term his ideas as the 'Indian school of thought' and his terminology as 'Indian terminology'. In each of his book and also in the beginning of a technical paper, he was following the practice of giving the terminology (pari-bhasha) used by him. The terminology chapter used to begin with undefined or assumed terms and gradually build-up defined technical terms used in the text. He was also repeating the terms and definitions quite often in order to get the terminology accepted and established. The terminology coined by Ranganathan in various sub disciplines was scattered over a number of his treatises. What we tried to do in this work is to collect, collate (when different connotations are available) and present in a handy format. Our sincere thanks to Dr. (Mrs.) D. Rajyalakshmi, NEERI, Nagpur for her assistance in the compilation and editing.
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