13th Convention Planner 2026 at Gauhati University, Guwahati, Assam.
September 18, 2026 at 9am to September 20, 2026 at 7pm
LIS Links
First and Largest Academic Social Network of LIS Professionals in India
LIS Links Becoming More Social
Birthdays
Birthdays Today
Latest Activity
APUPA Pattern
What is mean by APUPA pattern or arrangement?
Dr S.R.Ranganathan who is our father of Library and information science in India has enunciated a fundamental principle is known as APUPA pattern. APUPA pattern is one of the methods of arrangement of books in Classification. As per this method documents are classified in three types viz, Umbral, Penumbral and Alien. Umbral document implies the totally relevant document which is main interest of the reader. Penumbral document satisfies the marginal interest of the reader. This type is partially relevant and someway related to Umbral document. Alien document is totally non- relevant and thus is not required by the reader. So, we can recognize the pattern of every helpful sequence of book is Alien- Penumbral- Umbral- Penumbral- Alien - i.e. APUPA arrangement.
Thus the APUPA pattern arranges the most relevant book at the centre, books of marginal relevance on both side of the relevant book and totally disconnected books far away from the centre. This is the best way to maintain filiatory sequence. The filiatory sequence implies the placement of all the entities of a universe of knowledge in a definite sequence in one line according to the degree of their mutual affinities. The helpful sequence therefore, is said to be the one which follows the APUPA pattern.
Views: 20892
Replies to This Forum
-
Permalink Reply by Vijay Kumar Verma on
-
With the emergence of multi disciplinary subjects I think it is very difficult to follow this pattern. Now- a- days the nature of subject is not isolated and a particular book covers two, three or even more subjects.
Of course the system is very good for the the libraries with basic subjects collection.
-
Permalink Reply by Mrs. Chandrakala Nitin Pai on
-
I completely agree with Mr. Vijay kumar. The type of library type of user and their interest also costs more. So sometime we dont follow APUPA pattern
-
Permalink Reply by Parvez Ahmad on
-
This can be the example of APUPA.
parvez
-
Permalink Reply by P. Sellappan on
-
Excellent explanation with diagram
-
Permalink Reply by Siddhartha Shankar Ray on
-
Thank you Janab Parvez Ahmad Saabb!
It seems that after a couple of decades, I saw an explanation with a diagram. It brought back my memory of the old by gone days. Such diagrams like those of "Recall Value" & "Relevance" for database searching were quite popular in our days!
I am looking forward to see how the New-Gen LIS Professionals react to such explanatory posts!
Sincerely,
Siddhartha S. Ray, Calcutta
-
Permalink Reply by vaibhavi Thacker Kodrani on
-
Known as the "father of library and information science," Dr. S. R. Ranganathan created the APUPA pattern as a method of classifying books and documents based on their relevance to the searcher.
The APUPA pattern--which stands for Alien-Penumbral-Umbral-Penumbral-Alien--is used in the field of library and information science as a method of book or document classification.Issues with the APUPA Pattern
Problems with the APUPA pattern arise when books or documents have more than one subject, as is the case in multidisciplinary studies.
Read more: What is apupa in library science? | Answerbag http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1977367#ixzz2JZvwuPgF
-
Permalink Reply by Basab Mukherjee on
-
It is difficult to maintain in a library where there are different categories of users. Say, there are two categories of users in an academic library - students and research scholar. The APUPA pattern may not be the same for these category of users.
-
Permalink Reply by KAVITHAA A R on
-
This information is useful to me. Thank you sir.
© 2026 Created by Dr. Badan Barman.
Powered by
