James Brown

Background

He was born in Edinburgh, but after beginning his library career in Glasgow, he subsequently moved to London, and worked in Clerkenwell for the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury.

Career

Most of his life was spent in London. He devised three classification systems: Quinn/Brown (1898), Adjustable classification (1898) and Subject Classification (1906). The latter system was for municipal libraries and was informed by his advocacy of open shelf access of books in the United Kingdom. Indeed he was he pioneer of this new system of Clerkenwell, where the first experiment in open access was launched in May, 1893.

This was referred to as "safe guarded open access".

Alongside his classification work, he produced a standard textbook on librarianship (the Manual of Library Economy). He further contributed to theoretical journals and also produced correspondence courses in librarianship "upon which most British librarians depended for their professional studies until the 1930s".

As Librarian in the Metropolitan Borough of Islington he largely built up their collection and service. His work in classification attempted to deal with the problem of the shelf arrangement of interdisciplinary works, and how to ensure that works on the same topic would be found in the same place.

Participant of his attempt to deal with this was to create synthesised notation (a rarity among classification systems in his day) to allow composite classmarks to be created.

Clare Beghtol notes He tried to bring all works on a concrete topic together notationally so that, for example, "at E917 for Coffee must be collected everything related to coffee, regardless of standpoint, form or other qualification but it must not be put under such headings as Tropical Agriculture, Beverages, Crops, Foods, Drugs, Ethics, Bibliography, Customs, or any other general head".

Achievements

• Born in Blackburn, he played for Blackburn Rovers and was part of the team that won the FA Cup in three successive seasons between 1884 and 1886 (captaining the side in 1885 and 1886), as well as appearing on the side which lost in 1882.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Biographical Dictionary of Musicians

    (Originally published in 1886. This volume from the Cornel...)

  • Subject Classification, With Tables, Indexes, Etc., for the Subdivision of Subjects (1906)

    (Originally published in 1906. This volume from the Cornel...)

  • Manual of Library Economy: -1903

    (Originally published in 1903. This volume from the Cornel...)

Views

In 1898 he was threatened with a libel action by Charles Goss, over a polemic defending open access, and he was forced to apologise.

Membership

31st United Kingdom Parliament. 32nd United Kingdom Parliament. 33rd United Kingdom Parliament.

34th United Kingdom Parliament.

35th United Kingdom Parliament. 37th United Kingdom Parliament]

He unsuccessfully contested North Ayrshire in January 1910 and was the Member of Parliament (Member of Parliament) for South Ayrshire from 1918–1931 and from 1935 until his death.