[Publib] In defense of the Dewey Decimal System

[Doris Ann Norris]

I love Dewey.  Oh, I know there are problems...especially when they 
change the classification numbers and one has to decide if one is going 
to reclassify or wait an edition or two down the line.  It was devised 
at a different time, before technology and certainly before PC reared 
its head.

But the mnemonic devices make it so easy to use.  After I retired, I 
bought an old Dewey set at a library (where I was subbing). It has a 
place of honor in my home library.

Okay, it's nice to know tha in literature 1 is poetry, 2 is drama, 3 is 
fiction, etc. etc.  And that the repetition is used for countries as 
well.  840s, Italian literature, 440s, Italian language, etc. These 
country designations are used in a lot of numbers including, if you 
carry it out far enough, recipes for various countries and even regions 
of the U.S.

As with the Constitution, the Bible, the Koran and law, there are 
different interpretations as well.  And regional differences and 
differences in catalogers, etc.  Okay, once a few decades ago, I was 
embarrassed when I discovered that I had put two copies of a book in 
different classifications...one in 917.3 and the other copy in 973.

For those of you who get the library cartoon, UNSHELVED, there was a few 
days when the Mallville computer went down.  Who could find the 
books...the "old" librarian, of course.

I was working in a library (as a sub...where I couldn't automatically 
walk to the section)...and someone asked for a nonfiction book. I 
immediately went to the shelf and found it.  The patron was "amazed." 
"How did you do that?", she asked.  I told her that I knew the Dewey 
Decimal System.

I remember the days when UFOs were in 629.1334.... (Okay more numbers 
than I remember).  And what about the category of "Pseudoscience"...in 
the 133s.  Women's studies were in the 390s, etc. etc.

Sure, the DDS is biased toward Western civilization, but our culture in 
the U.S. had been that way for years and years.  Things are being 
changed...not quickly enough in neither society and nor in the DDS.

And I must admit that I know little of the LC system.  Have only used it 
when I was in graduate school.  Even the library at my small liberal 
arts college used Dewey.

At my age, the mnemonic devices come in even handier.

Doris Ann Norris, the 2000 year old librarian and lover of Dewey. (No, I 
really wasn't Dewey's lover...I was too old even then.)