Benefits and problems of faceted classification

Benefits of faceted classification:

1. Do not require complete knowledge of an individual items
2. Do not require knowledge about relationships of items
3. Classes are hospitable, can accomodate new entities easily
4. Classes are flexible
5. Classes are expressive
6. Classes can be ad-hoc and free-form
7. Clases allow many different aspects on and approaches to the items

Major problems of faceted classification:

1. Choosing the right facets
2. Lack of ability to express relationships between facets
3. Lack of ability to visually express the scheme

William Denton quoting Barbara Kwasnick (1999) The role of classification in knowledge representation and discovery. Library Trends 48 (1): 22-47