Jack Mills was a British librarian and classification researcher, who worked for more than sixty years in the study, teaching, development and promotion of library classification

Library classification

A library classification is a system of coding and organizing documents or library materials according to their subject and allocating a call number to that information resource...

 and information retrieval

Information retrieval

Information retrieval is the area of study concerned with searching for documents, for information within documents, and for metadata about documents, as well as that of searching structured storage, relational databases, and the World Wide Web...

, principally as a major figure in the British school of facet analysis which builds on the traditions of Henry E. Bliss

Henry E. Bliss

Henry E. Bliss was the author of a classification system he called Bibliographic Classification which is often abbreviated to BC and is sometimes called Bliss Classification...

 and S.R. Ranganathan.

Professional life

• 1947-48 Senior Assistant, Greenwich P. L.
• 1949-52 Librarian, City of London College
• 1952- British Bliss Classification Association Committee Member
• 1952- Member (later Chair) Classification Research Group
• 1952-62 Assistant Lecturer, North Western Polytechnic
• 1960- Chair of the Bliss Classification Association Committee
• 1963-64 Deputy Director, Aslib-Cranfield Project
• 1966-67 Library School, University of Maryland
• 1968 Lecturer, North Western Polytechnic
• 1973-84 Reader, School of Librarianship, Polytechnic (later University) of North London
• 1985- Retired

BC2

From the 1960s Jack Mills was the driving force behind the revision of the Bliss bibliographic classification

Bliss bibliographic classification

The Bliss bibliographic classification is a library classification system that was created by Henry E. Bliss , published in four volumes between 1940 and 1953. Although originally devised in the United States, it was more commonly adopted by British libraries than by American ones...

, chairing the Bliss Classification Association Committee, and undertaking the greater part of the work of revision as Editor of the new scheme. He was a great admirer of Bliss’s classification and used most of his life to develop a revised edition (BC2), a task he did not fulfil. The BC2 preserved the general structure of BC1, but the revised edition (BC2) is to all intents and purposes a new scheme of classification, realising the hopes of the Classification Research Group

Classification Research Group

The Classification Research Group was a significant contributor to classification research and theory in the field of library and information science in the latter half of the 20th century. It was formed in England in 1952 and was active until 1968...

 for the development of a new British scheme of classification.

See also

• Classification Research Group
  Classification Research Group
  The Classification Research Group was a significant contributor to classification research and theory in the field of library and information science in the latter half of the 20th century. It was formed in England in 1952 and was active until 1968...
  
  
• Document classification
  Document classification
  Document classification or document categorization is a problem in both library science, information science and computer science. The task is to assign a document to one or more classes or categories. This may be done "manually" or algorithmically...
  
  
• Faceted classification
  Faceted classification
  A faceted classification system allows the assignment of multiple classifications to an object, enabling the classifications to be ordered in multiple ways, rather than in a single, predetermined, taxonomic order. A facet comprises "clearly defined, mutually exclusive, and collectively exhaustive...
  
  
• Library and information science
  Library and information science
  Library and information science is a merging of the two fields library science and information science...