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eneralities

CDewey ecimal lassification

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eneralities

The history of the Dewey Decimal system is a little…

murky.

• Credit for the invention of the Dewey Decimal system is generally given to Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey.

• He was born December 10, 1851 to a poor family as the youngest of five children.

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• His family was unable to finance his education at Amherst College so he got a job as a student assistant in the library. It was while working there that he began an intense study of library classification systems.

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‘‘After months of study,’’ he wrote, he was listening to a Sunday sermon, and while I lookt stedfastly at [the pulpit] without hearing a word, my mind absorbd in the vital problem, the solution flasht over me so that I jumpt in my seat and came very near shouting ‘‘Eureka!’’ It was to get absolute simplicity by using the simplest known symbols, the arabic numerals as decimals, with ordinary significance of nought, to number a classification of all human knowledge in print; this supplemented by the next simplest known symbols, a, b, c, indexing all heds of the tables, so that it would be easier to use a classification with 1000 heds so keyd than to use the ordinary 30 or 40 heds which one had to study carefully before using.”

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eneralities

Because the quote is so colorful—especially using the simplified form of spelling Dewey used at various throughout his life—students have been reading this account for over 100 years.

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Here is where the “murky” part comes in…

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• Although Dewey is considered the “Father of Modern Librarianship,” it seems that he was not the only person considering this subject at the time.

• Earlier, Sir Francis Bacon had begun the process of coming up with a classification system and then William Torrey Harris changed and expanded it while working as superintendent in the St. Louis school system. In 1873, Dewey wrote to Harris asking some questions about his classification schedule.

• Also, just one year earlier, a geologist named William Phipps Blake had organized an exhibition that he was overseeing into 10 “departments” which were then divided into 10 “groups” that were then subdivided into 10 “classes.”

• He published a pamphlet in February of 1873, describing his organizational system that was distributed throughout the country. This distribution most likely included Amherst, where Dewey was still employed as a student.

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• Wiegand states that “in mid-March 1876 Dewey wrote the Register of Copyrights in Washington, D.C., asking permission to copyright ‘‘a little work just passing thru’’ the press entitled ‘‘A classification & subject index with direction for their use.’’

• He paid one dollar for the cost of the copyright.

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By this time the (classification) scheme had also evolved to its more familiar ten classes with an ill-defined initial section (000) for bibliographies, periodicals, and encyclopedias that preceded Philosophy (100), Theology (200), Sociology (300), Philology (400), Natural Sciences (500), Useful Arts (600), Fine Arts (700), Literature (800), and History (900) (Wiegand, 1996)

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• The American Library Association was organized in Philadelphia three years later in 1876 with Melville Dewey as one of the founding members.

• At their first conference, Dewey was asked to present information on the method of cataloging and classification that he had “developed” at Amherst.

• It seems that from there, Melville Dewey was given credit for devising the system with little credit given to those who came before him by others….or even by Dewey himself.

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On the one hand the scheme has over the decades saved millions of dollars and countless hours of time. Because it has become so widely accepted throughout the world it has permitted one person to classify one title for the hundreds of thousands of libraries using the decimal system. In addition, the system itself has become familiar to millions of people who can feel relatively confident that their knowledge of the system used in one library will serve them well in another. On the other hand the doctrine of Anglo-Saxonism Dewey wove so tightly into his system has over the years resisted the introduction of new threads with more culturally pluralistic origins. (Wigand, 1996).

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The Classes Are:000 – Computer science, information and general works100 – Philosophy and psychology200 – Religion300 – Social sciences400 – Language500 – Science (including mathematics)600 – Technology and applied Science700 – Arts and recreation800 – Literature900 – History, geography, and biography

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800’s - Literature800 Literature rhetoric & critisism 810 American literature in English820 English & Old English Literatures830 Literatures of Germanic Languages840 Literatures of Romance Languages850 Italian, Romanian, Rhaeto-Romanic860 Spanish & Portuguese literatures870 Italic literatures; Latin880 Hellenic literatures; Classical Greek890 Literatures of other languages

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820’s English & Old English Literatures821 English poetry822 English drama823 English fiction824 English essays825 English speeches826 English letters827 English satire & humor828 English miscellaneous writings829 Old English (Anglo-Saxon)

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Who uses it?• More than 200,000 libraries around the world• Not often used in fiction collections

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What is it?• The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system

is the world’s most widely used library classification system Provides a logical system for organizing every item in your library’s unique collection

• It has been greatly modified and expanded through 23 major revisions, the most recent in 2011 (OCLC, 2011)

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• This system organizes books on library shelves in a specific and repeatable order that makes it easy to find any book and return it to its proper place.

• “All copyright rights in the Dewey Decimal Classification system are owned by OCLC.Dewey, Dewey Decimal Classification, DDC, OCLC and WebDewey are registered trademarks of OCLC.” (OCLC, 2011)

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How is it constructed?Typical Call Number:

Q.855.1EC70i:Ecop.2

Size Designation

Dewey Decimal Number

Cutter Number

Work Mark and other

Relates to the physical size of the bookIndicates the subject matter of the bookIdentifies who wrote the bookDistiguishes multiple works by the same author

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100-199Philosophy &

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A -- Bibliographies -- Shelved before 016B -- Biographies -- Shelved before 920C -- College Catalogs -- Shelved before 380

So, if the Dewey number for a biography of Lincoln would have been 920.L345n, it would now be B.L345n, and it would be shelved just before 920, where older biographies of Lincoln might also be found(at 920.L345).

Almost done with Dewey...but there's one final twist.

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What is it based on?

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What are the advantages?• Simplicity• Faceted• Translated into 30 Languages and used in

more than 135 countries• Continually updated

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• There is an abridged version for small local libraries, and a more detailed/complex version if the library grows, or for larger libraries.

• Provides an easy way to introduce new subjects

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What are the disadvantages?• Dewey’s greatest advantage and disadvantage is that it

reflects the bias of its creator and the cultural snapshot where it was born. Issues reflecting Dewey's personal bias and the cultural bias surrounding the late 19th century can be seen most clearly in the treatment of religion.

• There is also an inherent Anglo-American bias as seen in the presence of a whole division for American literature (810), but a clumping from French and French Canadian Literature.

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(Dewey Decimal System)

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Alternatives• Universal Classification System (Based on DDC

created by Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine)• Library of Congress Subject Headings

(Eliminates some of the bias & new subjects are easily added)

• BISAC (Book Store Model) – Used by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookscan, Bowker, Ingram, and others

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REFERENCES• Dewey Decimal in the UIUC Bookstacks. (n.d.). Retrieved July 5, 2011, from University Library -

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: http://www.library.illinois.edu/circ/tutorial/anatomy.html

• Dewey Decimal System. (n.d.). Retrieved July 5, 2011, from NYU - Dept. of Media, Culture, and Communication: http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/Dewey_Decimal_System

• Dewey Services. (n.d.). Retrieved July 5, 2011, from OCLC: http://www.oclc.org/dewey/•How one library pioneer profoundly influenced modern librarianship. (n.d.).

Retrieved from http://www.oclc.org/dewey/resources/biography. •Wigand, W.A. (1996). The ‘‘Amherst Method’’: the origins of the Dewey decimal classification

scheme. University of Texas/Libraries & Culture, 33(2), 175-194

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