The paratexts of printed classification schemes

This article contemplates the paratexts within printed classification schemes. It shows how paratextual analysis can yield insights about specific classification schemes and the nature of classification schemes. The study analyses paratexts from 12 printed bibliographic classification schemes, using Genette’s seminal monograph on paratexts as a starting framework. The study looks at three key areas: titles, prefaces and a collection of four aspects not found in Genette. Insights about schemes include the preface being a conduit of the scheme–author/scheme–reader relationship, and the title page providing valuable and new information about memorialisation and perceptions of authority. Time is found to be highly significant, including complex relationships between past, present and future schemes and their paratexts, and obsolete/unused classes reframed as hypertextual relationships through time. Finally, the article proposes a novel paratextual model of the printed classification scheme based on Genettian theory, answering the ontological question, ‘what exactly is a printed classification scheme?’