A History of the Dewey Decimal System
The history of the Dewey Decimal Classification System (DDC) hearkens back to the very beginning of the modern library movement in the nineteenth century. The classification scheme’s progenitor was a man named Melvil Dewey who was born to a poor family in upstate New York in 1851. 1 His full name was Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey, but he was a man who supported language/spelling reform and had his named shortened to just Melvil Dewey. He even tried to have his family name further shortened to Dui. 2 In this he failed, but this is only one failure amongst his many successes. Dewey had a profound effect on the library movement in America. He originated the DDC in 1873 and had it published and patented in 1876. There has been some speculation that Dewey synthesized ideas from a number of sources and coordinated them into a unified system. There is some evidence to suggest that Dewey may have been introduced to the idea of a decimal classification by a pamphlet written by Nathaniel Shurtlaff in 1856. 3 The DDC may also have been partly adapted from a scheme that William Lorrey Harris had formed from a structure expressed by Sir Francis Bacon, and refined by the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. 4 Regardless of where the scheme emerged from, however, Dewey was the first person to properly expand on and define his ideas concerning a classification that placed books into a relative order based on disciplines rather than an alphabetical order, or one that simply identifies a shelf space for a specific book. The DDC was the first timely modern system that introduced features like relative locations and a relative index. This allowed books to be placed in stacks based on their relationships to one a...
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...n: A Study Manual and Number Building Guide, (Englewood, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited, 1998), 10.
10. Mona L. Scott, Dewey Decimal Classification, 21st Edition: A Study Manual and Number Building Guide, (Englewood, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited, 1998), 29-32.
11. Russell Sweeney, “The International Use of the Dewey Decimal Classification,” International Cataloguing and Bibliographic Control v. 24 (October/December 1995): 61.
12. Forest Press, “About Dewey and OCLC Forest Press,” 2003, (24 March 2003).
13. Forest Press, “Introduction to the Dewey Decimal Classification,” 2003, (24 March 2003).
14. Forest Press, “Introduction to the Dewey Decimal Classification,” 2003, (24 March 2003).
Books today are everywhere. We find them in many households, libraries and schools all around the globe. We find many different types of books; from stories to educational textbooks, we regard them today as sources of knowledge and amusement. But it wasn’t the case before 1455. That year, one of the greatest inventions in human history was revealed to the world; Gutenberg’s printing press. This press allowed printing in massive quantity, spreading books all around Europe and the rest of the world at a fast rate. The printing press had many positive consequences on society. At first, it standardized grammar and spelling, and then introduced the mass production of books. It finally inspired future printing technologies around the world.
Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d., pp. 113-117. Web. The Web.
Dewey the library cat is probably one of the most noteworthy cats that has ever been heard of. Dewey is an orange little tabby cat that the writer (Vicki Myron) found in the rain on her way to work, and brought Dewey with her to the library. From that instant Dewey the library cat grew up in a library lying on every book that he has seen. His name came from the Dewey Decimal System. He has unintentionally inspired thousands of people by being himself. He has Myron and the rest of the library staff play with him, feed him, and take care of him. He was truly the cat that everyone who has read it loved him. Even though some people didn't feel the same after reading Dewey. Dewey had a long life in the library that taught people to have fun, be happy, and be nice to people. He changed the author since she found him and being friends for years she wanted to share how she felt. His life is filled with multiple acts that inspire the mass of people who read it.
These documents were kept in an organized manner in archives with labels that could identify each item. It could, therefore, give the archivist an easy time in tracing a document (Buchanan, 2012).
Though many of the people around us enjoy the luxury of having access to libraries and books everyday, that is not the case for the vast majority of people around the world.
In 1837, in a speech given by Ralph Waldo Emerson called the “ American Scholar “ he made a remark about books. He stated, “ Books are the best of things, well used; abused among the worst.” Within this quote, he stated the importance of book within a society, about its use and impact. However, he spoke about the subject in a very distinct manner, causing the rise of many ideas and interpretation of the quote. To a certain extent this quote is true, books are one of the best tools that one can utilize to do almost anything when it is used properly. Otherwise, it can cause the rise of different useless ideas and at times also cause the misdirection of a population.
2. Federal Information, Processing Standards Publication 197, Announcing the Advanced Encryption Standards, (November 26, 2001)
Baron, N. S. (2005). Who wants to be a discipline? The Information Society, 21(4), 269-271.
Wilson, T. D. (1997). Electronic publishing and the future of the book. Information Research, 3(2). Retrieved April 11, 2013 from http://informationr.net/ir/3--2/paper39.html
...e pursuit of knowledge that thrived in the ancient library. The old library encouraged the public to debate, create and invent. The new library is carrying that legacy forward” (Mohsen Zahran).
Several now carry digital copies of literature sources. Understandably, some libraries exclusively allow and support for the purpose of electronic sources as being the primary foundation. Yet, some raise the concern that the libraries will be taken over and lose the mass number of physical books. However, in their Australian Academic & Research Libraries article “Practical Overlap: The Possibility of Replacing Print Books with E-Books,” Craig Anderson and Jeanie Pham point out, “This investigation [which tests if a library could go completely electronic] demonstrates that it appears unlikely that more than 26% of current print holdings could be replaced with e-books.” The percentage is not in the higher range of 70%. Therefore, it shows that there is still hope for books in libraries. Numerous children’s lives deal with reading books in the library. The abundant options of creative books a child could pick from is endless, and it would be an awful sight to see this iconic experience replaced with a kindle or
Southam, Brian C., and EB Ed. "Britannica School." Britannica School. Athlone Press, n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
Revolution e-books phenomenon facing the future generations to come, this phenomenon could have something that makes them forget the books. In fact, the books can not disappear because it is invaluable in terms of historical and educational. The important reason for this is that people's lives have been recorded in the past, even their own techniques of their work on a book.” There is reason to hope that e-books and print books could have a bright future together” (Catone, 2013). E-book and printed book have many differences from their look, feel, retention, weigh, cost, durability, availability, legibility etc.
At this point in time the computer was being integrated into organizations, and viewed by many as a boon to information management. While the major use of computers was reserved for technical and science librarians, reference librarians were adopting the use of computers since the amount of material a reference librarian was required to know was becoming impossible to keep up to without a computer’s aid. Librarians were, and still are, expected to be aware of the newest techniques and have the skills to use new technologies on the
Nowadays, information is the cornerstone of the modern enterprise and the web became the largest and most accessible information resources. The ability to gather, arrange, manipulate information with computers has given practice as well as for business people in order to manage information in an effective way. Information retrieval is a process and techniques of searching and interpreting information in order to store the data for easy retrieval when needed. The development of information retrieval systems is reviewed from its early history to the present time. The article entitled “Seven Ages of Information Retrieval”, written by Michael Lesk explained about the history or the beginning of information retrieval based on the imaginary of Vannevar Bush’s 1945 and theory of Warren Weaver in 1949 and the author try to relate with ideology of Shakespeare 1955 which is seven ages of man, starting from infancy and leading to senility. This article gives useful information about transformation of information retrieval. From my observation, there have many important elements that have been discussed in this article but what are really give impact to me is people, theory and transformation.