Hi Ken: Many years ago I came up with an algorithm for sorting call numbers. In our collection, that is primarily LC numbers, but also other, including home-grown call numbers. Works fine for us about 99%+ of the time, and we use it in production. It currently exists in Perl. You can get it from
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~zimmer/other_index.html Let me know if I can be of further help. (Current note: I will not be reading my email after Friday, 12/16, and will be back around the end of the first week in January.) Roy Zimmer----->OIT----->Library Stuff & Other things-----> Western Michigan University----->Kalamazoo, Michigan USA localsystem=P3 ICBM=(%Fatal:GPS error 51) RF=KB8UBA AF="Hey you!" QRM! [EMAIL PROTECTED] you go, there you are! Ken Irwin wrote:
Hi folks, I've been using a Library-of-Congress sort routine for a few years, and until now I have never used it on sufficiently large set of data to notice that it doesn't really work. It does a great job of sorting by LC class letters, but after that it gets a bit sketchy. Can someone help me here? The sort uses the php "usort" command, with the sort routine defined in the SortCall function (at the bottom of the page) Here's the sort in action: http://www6.wittenberg.edu/lib/sort.php And here's the code: http://www6.wittenberg.edu/lib/sort.txt I'm finding that LC call numbers with decimals in the first number seem to be especially confusing, as in this supposedly sorted list: LB1027 .P383 1999 LB1027.9 .L43 2004 LB1028.24 .B75 1999 LB1027.3 .S33 1999 LB1027.9 .S26 2000 LB1028.24 .P65 1999 LB1027.3 .E44 2001 LB1028 .A7 1990 LB1027.25 E45 2001 LB1027.3 .E45 1997 LB1027.23 .B45 1997 LB1027.23 .S556 1996 LB1027.44 .M67 1994 Can anyone see why this isn't working? Alternately, does anyone have an LC sort routine that they are really happy with? This one doesn't even pretend to do a good job sorting on anything with more than one set of cutters, but now I find it's even lamer than I thought. Help! Thanks Ken -- Ken Irwin Reference Librarian Thomas Library, Wittenberg University
