A Teach Me How To Dewey production

We’re really doing it, buddies! Teach Me How To Dewey (aka the Dewey Domination System, aka Operation Climb Mountain Dewey) is in effect, library card at the ready to check out some sweet books, and maybe a movie or two if we’re feeling lucky. Generally, each post that explores a new Dewey ten-spot will have an overview of the section along with some commentary from the Dewer (that’s the Dewey doer) and 3 featured books (Dew3? Book Drops of Dewey?). These books won’t necessarily be the best of their bunch, but rather representative or quirky titles the average patron otherwise wouldn’t have discovered. Shall we begin?

The Rundown:

• 000 Generalities
• 000 Computer science, knowledge & general works
• 001 Knowledge
• 002 The book (i.e. Meta writings about books)
• 003 Systems
• 004 Data processing & computer science
• 005 Computer programming, programs & data
• 006 Special computer methods
• 007 [Unassigned]
• 008 [Unassigned]
• 009 [Unassigned]

There I was, all excited to begin the great Dewey quest when, after an intriguing start in the “generalities” section, I got deluged by shelf after shelf of booktorials on “information systems” and Microsoft Word 2003 and other software guides that were already obsolete like three months after publication. If someone was starting at zero with Dewey and work their way up (like, say, a first-time library patron browsing for books or a librarian blogging about super cool things like classification systems), they probably wouldn’t be hooked yet. The section on “the book” is probably popular among librarians and bibliophiles, but even that didn’t have enough in my library’s stacks for me to linger.

And yet, in the very first leg of the journey we have already encountered the mythical Unassigned areas. I like to think of them as the Elephant’s Graveyard of Dewey. (The Librarian King GIF in 3… 2…) So mysterious yet full of power and portent. What book bones lay there? Will any new subsection dare enter that haunted terrain?

Oh, I just can’t wait for 010.

The Dew3:

Wrong: Why Experts* Keep Failing Us–and How to Know When Not to Trust Them
by David Freedman
Dewey: 001 FRE
Random Sentence: “Okay, so lousy research can slip past peer review into journals.”

Aliens Among Us
by Ruth Montgomery
Dewey: 001.94 MON
Random Sentence: “Their fleet is smaller than the Ashtar group, but equally dedicated to helping earthlings.”

The Smithsonian Book of Books
by Michael Olmert
Dewey: 002 OLM
Random Sentence: “Such men often became moralistic, platitudinous bores.”