LAW OF LOCAL VARIATION

Dr.S.R.Ranganathan has identified 6 basic laws.Basic Laws are made up of on the basis of basic process of thinking. The 6 Basic Laws are: 1. Law of Interpretation 2. Law of Impartiality 3. Law of Symmetry 4. Law of Parsimony 5. Law of Osmosis 6. Law of Local Variation DEFINITION FOR LAW OF LOCAL VARIATION: The principle that in any discipline and technique there should be provision for the users of them to secure, for strictly local use, results alternative to those for general use. Although the term ‘local interest’ if interpreted literally, means from national to village. But in accordance to this law, geographical area of any size may be taken into consideration, keeping in view the special interests of the users. Examples: 1. In colon classification the digit 2 is used for mother country and digit 3 for favoured country. This not only shortens the class number, but gives priority to shelf arrangement to the local collection and favoured collection. 2. A language in which the majority of the library are written, may be treated as favoured language of the library, in colon classification for such a language, there is no need to write the number of the language. All books which are written in favoured language of the library would be arranged earlier the group of books written in other languages. REFERENCES: 1. Ranganathan,S.R. 1967. Prolegomena to Library Classification;3rd ed. Bombay:Asia publishing house. 2. Dhyani,Pushpa. 1998. Library Classification: Theory and priniciples. NewDelhi:H.S.Poplai.