FYI [posted by Troy] Since I regularly have to put up with Dewey Decimal System jokes, I thought that I'd better sent the record straight by posting a little bit from this article about the DDC. This system is so much a part of our libraries, schools, and education that we don't understand how innovative it was at the time. It really changed how people accessed information in an age of paper. Here's a quote from the article:The main innovation and advantage of DDC is that it's an indirect, rather than a direct, reference to a book's location. When you look up a book in the catalog, you're not told which shelf to go to; instead you're told a location relative to other books, and you need some second reference (such as a chart of where numbers are stored, or numbers marked on the sides of shelves) to find the book itself. This separation avoids the problems of the "fixed location": if the library adds books, so that some books are shifted to different shelves, only the chart of location needs to be changed, not the whole card catalog. At one time I actually knew how to add and create this system: 000 General Works (Miscellaneous) 100 Philosophy 200 Religion 300 Social Sciences 400 Languages 500 Pure Sciences 600 Technology (Practical Arts) including medicine, engineering, business accounting, agriculture, salesmanship, etc. 700 Fine Arts (including architecture, painting, photography, music, amusements, etc.) 800 Literature 900 History, Geography, Biography Now, I don't know any of this. Our library uses Library of Congress which looks like this: A = General Works B = Philsophy and Religion C = Auxiliary Sciences of History D = Universal History E and F = American History G = Geography, Anthropology, Recreation H = Social Science I = Political Science K = Law L = Education M = Music N = Fine Arts P = Language and Literature Q = Science R = Medicine S = Agriculture T = Technology U = Military Science V = Naval Science Z = Bibliography, Library Science
11:52:13 PM permanent link Google It!
|
|