James Duff Brown (1862–1914) was a British librarian, information theorist, music biographer and educationalist.
Alongside his classification work, he produced a standard textbook on librarianship (the Manual of Library Economy).
In 1898, he was threatened with a libel action by Charles Goss, over a polemic defending open access, and he was forced to apologise.
[4][5] He further contributed to theoretical journals and also produced correspondence courses in librarianship "upon which most British librarians depended for their professional studies until the 1930s".
Clare Beghtol notes He tried to bring all works on a concrete topic together notationally so that, for example, "at E917 for Coffee must be collected everything related to coffee, regardless of standpoint, form or other qualification but it must not be put under such headings as Tropical Agriculture, Beverages, Crops, Foods, Drugs, Ethics, Bibliography, Customs, or any other general head.