I'm not sure how to interpret the "Division policies" section of the Manual entry T1--092 Persons. The first paragraph there reads:

It is the policy of the Decimal Classification Division to add T1--092 even in cases when a person's work may not approximate the whole of the most specific available number. Conversely, T1--092 is not added to extremely minute subjects, e.g., ball players are classed in the game they played, not in subordinate numbers for specific positions on the field, even if a player filled only one position.

For example, I'm classifying a biography of a Trappist monk. Is it permissible to use T1--092 in such a case?

Generally speaking, the underlying problem in the case of biography is that the DDC contains many detailed numbers for subjects that are not necessarily useful occupational specialties. That is, you may know the biographee's field, but do not know the specialty (if any). Sports figures are a good example. The subject of a biography may be a famous third baseman, but he has probably played a number of other positions, and, of course, was also a batter. Football has more specialists, but only a few stick to one position for most of their professional lives. In the case of biographies of budding young athletes, you have no way of knowing what the lifetime specialty will turn out to be. Here the guideline advises you not to bother. If you have the first biography of a man who appears headed for football fame, make no bets as to what position he might wind up playing, but classify him as a football player, and worry no more.

This advice carries over to famous pastors. Usually you learn immediately which denomination they belong to, but you have to hunt hard to ascertain which particular corporate body they pledged allegiance to. As often as not, you find they switched, or lived a long life during which their denomination's corporate bodies split and merged. They might have found themselves moving through a succession of organizational structures through no choice of their own. In these cases, go with the denomination and forget the organization, except for leaders prominently identified as founders or movers and shakers of specific bodies.

These are intended to be common-sense guidelines--not rigid rules. If you have a famous surgeon, add --092 to the surgery number; if you have a famous heart surgeon, add --092 to the heart surgery number.

However, regarding the specific case of a biography of a Trappist monk, you cannot simply add 092 to 271.125, the number for Trappists. The footnote at 271.125 tells you to add as instructed under 271. There is a special provision in the add table at 271 that drops the 9 from the subdivisions of standard subdivision 09. How is this indicated? Note that the first line of the add table is "001-008 Standard subdivisions." The absence of --09 offers a clue that you need to look further. Quite often --09 is regular even when standard subdivisions --01-08 have an extra zero, as they do here. But the 271 table is unusual: Not only is there no extra zero for the --09, but in the last line of the table, the number is shortened further. Instead of the usual 09 there, you find 01-09, and are told to add to base number 0 notation 1-9 from Table 2. Therefore, wherever this add table applies, you use notation 02 rather than --092 for biography, e.g., 271.12502 for the biography of a Trappist monk. The other standard subdivisions require an extra zero wherever the footnote applies, e.g., 271.125005 for a periodical on the Trappists.

Last revised: 05 September 2003