Dewey Decimal Classification – Page 3

DDC 060-069: Museum’s Rules

The Rundown:

060 General organizations & museology
061 Organizations in North America
062 Organizations in British Isles; in England
063 Organizations in central Europe; in Germany
064 Organizations in France & Monaco
065 Organizations in Italy & adjacent islands
066 Organizations in Iberian Peninsula & adjacent islands
067 Organizations in eastern Europe; in Russia
068 Organizations in other geographic areas
069 Museum science

It’s becoming evident that the first 100 of Dewey is tailored for folks who already love the library and its humanities brethren. Like the “first fruits” of library science, the best stuff (at least according to people like me who geek out about books, libraries, museums, and other districts of Nerddom) comes first, before every other discipline, as an intellectual offering to St. Dewey.

Museums aren’t the only subject of the 060s, but they are the most interesting since books about Iberian organizations apparently don’t circ well. (There were a lot of books on the so-called Robert’s Rules, a reference authority for parliamentary and meeting procedures, but forgive me for not raving about the riveting world of legislative order.)

Does your library have any other interesting books in the 060s? I’ve already admitted by bias toward museums and the like, but is there anything here for non-history geeks? If not, take heart that once we get out of the 100s we won’t find hardcore history until Dewey’s end. Until then:

The Dew3:

The Stranger and the Statesman: James Smithson, John Quincy Adams, and the Making of America’s Greatest Museum, The Smithsonian
By Nina Burleigh
Dewey: 069.09753 BUR
Random Sentence: “Perhaps Adams’s preference for looking at the skies was motivated by his hopelessness at what he witnessed on the earth.”

Cabinets of Curiosities
By Peter Mauriès
Dewey: 069 MAU
Random Sentence: “From the monsters of folklore and mythology to the freaks of real life was no very long step.”

The Secret Museum
By Molly Oldfield
Dewey: 069.5 OLD
Random Sentence: “It might seem a bit of a weird thing for him to have done, that is, if you’ve read his novels but don’t know much about butterfly mating.”

May 19, 2014 Add Comment

DDC 050-059: Killer serials

A Teach Me How To Dewey production

The Rundown:

050 General serials & their Indexes
051 Serials in American English
052 Serials in English
053 Serials in other Germanic languages
054 Serials in French, Occitan & Catalan
055 Serials in Italian, Romanian & related languages
056 Serials in Spanish & Portuguese
057 Serials in Slavic languages
058 Serials in Scandinavian languages
059 Serials in other languages

Journalism, the saying goes, is the first draft of history. It takes the first stab at what’s going on the in the world, with the assumption that future historians will take that draft and make corrections, additions, and judgements with the benefit of distance. With this in mind, bringing all those “first drafts” together into one publication (like the examples below do) creates a different and unique dynamic, where an overarching story emerges out of a series of first drafts–a whole that becomes greater than the sum of its parts. It’s fun to walk through the whole history of something and see how certain events were experienced at the time compared to how they are interpreted today.

The Dew3:

Paper Dreams: Writers and Editors on the American Literary Magazine
Edited by Travis Kurowski
Dewey: 051 PAP
Random Sentence: “In those days, in Iowa City, twenty-five dollars bought a hell of a lot of beer.”

Time: The Illustrated History of the World’s Most Influential Magazine
Edited by Norberto Angeletti
Dewey: 051.09 ANG
Random Sentence: “This was a fascinating, maddening, challenging, and ultimately expanding experience.”

The Classic Era of American Pulp Magazines
By Peter Haining
Dewey: 051.09 HAI
Random Sentence: “It was pretty young girls that evildoers invariably had it in for.”

May 17, 2014 Add Comment

DDC 030-039: Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the 030s

A Teach Me How To Dewey production

The Rundown:

030 General encyclopedia works
031 Encyclopedias in American English
032 Encyclopedias in English
033 Encyclopedias in German
034 Encyclopedias in French, Occitan & Catalan
035 Encyclopedias in Italian, Romanian & related languages
036 Encyclopedias in Spanish & Portuguese
037 Encyclopedias in Slavic languages
038 Encyclopedias in Scandinavian languages
039 Encyclopedias in other languages

You want facts? They got your facts right here. Perhaps this section should be renamed “Bathroom Reading” as there are encyclopedias and fact books galore, including the perennial favorite Guinness Book of World Records and multivolume and multicolored World Book. Once the behemoths of research, this type of printed books seems to be either dead or dying as a primary resource for in-depth study. I feel like a dinosaur for remembering having the set at home and actually using it for school assignments. Despite their diminished status, I’ve come to see them as a great place for serendipity to reign. Open up to a random page and you’ll find something interesting or informative or even delightful.

Just imagine how differently Breaking Bad would have ended if Walter White had stocked his bathroom with encyclopedias instead of a personalized book of poetry. I’m not saying encyclopedias are better than poetry, but I guess I kind of am. Perhaps I’ll change my tune (or my verse?) when I get to the 800s.

The Dew3:

The Best of the Old Farmer’s Almanac: The First 200 Years
Edited by Judson Hale
Dewey: 031.02 BES
Random Sentence: “It’s one thing to be an expert gardener but quite another to win blue ribbons for your efforts at the county fair.”

Mental_floss Presents: Be Amazing
Edited by Maggie Koerth
Dewey: 031.02 KOE
Random Sentence: “The good news: Teleportation is possible.”

The New York Times Presents Smarter By Sunday: 52 Weekends of Essential Knowledge for the Curious Mind
Dewey: 031.02 NEW
Random Sentence: “The particles that produce the weak force are called W and Z.”

May 12, 2014 Add Comment

DDC 020-029: Meta-Dewey

A Teach Me How To Dewey production

The Rundown:

020 Library & information sciences
021 Library relationships
022 Administration of physical plant
023 Personnel management
024 No longer used—formerly Regulations for readers
025 Library operations
026 Libraries for specific subjects
027 General libraries
028 Reading & use of other information media
029 No longer used—formerly Literary methods

We’re getting meta up in here. I suppose it’s fitting that the section on libraries should be towards the beginning. Imagine how much this section has changed from Melvil Dewey’s time until now. I wonder how blown his mind would be by the Internet and online catalogs. It’s something we modern users take for granted. I’m old enough to remember using card catalogs, but kids these days (*shakes fist at sky*) don’t have a clue. Whether that’s good or not is debatable, I suppose, but so long as they’re using the library I’d call that a victory.

Speaking of victory, this section is the first thus far that has books I’ve already read, two of which are below. Yeah reading!

The Dew3:

Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian
by Avi Steinberg
Dewey: 027.665 STE
Random Sentence: “For these reasons, the library has always been run by a strongman.”

The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction
by Alan Jacobs
Dewey: 028.8 JAC
Random Sentence: “Fortuity happens, but serendipity can be cultivated.”

My Ideal Bookshelf
edited by Thessaly La Force
Dewey: 028.9 MY
Random Sentence: “I picked all of these books because I think you should always judge a book by its cover–or its spine, in this case.” -Oliver Jeffers

May 10, 2014 Add Comment

DDC 010-019: Books, man…

A Teach Me How To Dewey production

The Rundown:

010 Bibliography
011 Bibliographies
012 Bibliographies of individuals
013 [Unassigned]
014 Bibliographies of anonymous & pseudonymous works
015 Bibliographies of works from specific places
016 Bibliographies of works on specific subjects
017 General subject catalogs
018 Catalogs arranged by author, date, etc.
019 Dictionary catalogs

Ohhhhh yeaaahhhh… Pure, unadulterated book crack. This is where things start to get good. Book lovers don’t have to go far to get their fix in Dewey. Bibliographies of all stripes serenade perusers of the stacks like the Sirens in The Odyssey, each its own rabbit hole of bookish delight. Be careful not to linger for too long here, though, as there’s so much more to see. (Although, if you’re already overwhelmed by the panoply of book choices before you, then perhaps a curated bibliography is a good place to start your reading adventures.)

The Dew3:

Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason
by Nancy Pearl
Dewey: 011.73 PEA
Random Sentence: “Ah, the lure of the open road, or the open water, or simply the great unknown.”

A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books
by Alex Beam
Dewey: 011.73 BEA
Random Sentence: “Make no mistake: This was no charitable act of cultural enrichment.”

Bizarre Books: A Compendium of Classic Oddities
by Russell Ash
Dewey: 016.082 ASH
Random Featured Book: Romance of the Gas Industry by Oscar Norman

May 8, 2014 Add Comment

DDC 001-009: You’re wrong about aliens and books

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.”

May 6, 2014 Add Comment

This Is How We Dewey: A Primer

A Teach Me How To Dewey production

Ready for the Snapchat summary of Dewey? Here it goes:

The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) organizes library material in a numerical hierarchy by field of study. Each one has its own 100-level placement, called a class:

000 – General works, Computer science and Information
100 – Philosophy and psychology
200 – Religion
300 – Social sciences
400 – Language
500 – Science
600 – Technology
700 – Arts & recreation
800 – Literature
900 – History & geography

Each class has its own 10 subdivisions, which have their own subsections, which become more specific the deeper they go. So a book with a Dewey number of 300 will be more general than one with 301.355. Books are organized on the shelf in numerical order, with books with the same Dewey number organized alphabetically by author. (It’s a lot easier to understand when you see it on the shelves, so go visit your local library!)

A book’s Dewey number has two components: its class number (i.e. a number that designates its place on the shelves) and three letters, which usually are the first three of the author’s last name.

So in my library, David McCullough’s Truman has a Dewey number of 973.918 MCC, which got that because it’s in:

900 History & geography
– 970 General history of North America
– – 973 General history of North America; United States

The numbers after the decimal point identify the material more and more specifically by geography, subject, language, etc. And because David McCullough was the author, MCC is tagged onto the end.

That’s basically it. How an item gets cataloged fully – with subject headings, physical description, and all that extra info most non-library folks don’t care about – is both an art and a science, and one best left to professional catalogers because they actually enjoy doing it. But going forward, we’ll be just fine with the basic knowledge of what a Dewey number is and why it’s important for libraries.

Two-minute tutorial done. Let’s Dewey this!

May 6, 2014 Add Comment

Dewey is dead; long live Dewey

The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) is kinda weird. For today’s app-ified patrons, it’s not very intuitive and seems tattered, like one of the old books it classifies. But despite what the sayers of nay say, it’s not time to dump Dewey. Instead, we should try to get to know it a little better.

Librarians encounter Dewey every day while finding books for patrons, weeding the stacks of old books, and selecting new material for the shelves. Yet it can be a bit hard to understand at times, even for librarians. How can such a fusty system be made fresh again?

Teach Me How To Dewey exists for four reasons:

To better familiarize library users with the library’s foundational organizational system (i.e. the thing that makes it all work);
To shine a light into the stacks, so to speak, and show the people who don’t use libraries very often what’s available freely to them;
To show why books and libraries are friggin’ awesome;
To disseminate as many Dewey-related puns as possible.

I’ll tour through the DDC ten decimal points at a time, highlighting a few representative/intriguing/weird books from each section.

Libraries are full of amazing things. Here’s hoping Dewey will help us find them.

May 5, 2014 Add Comment