Melville Dewey Research Paper

On December 10, 1851 Melville Dewey was born in New York. He wanted people to spell his name as it was pronounced, which is Melvil Dui. When he was young he organized his mom’s pantry in alphabetical order. In school he did not like spelling and writing. He taught himself how to make shoes and was also his dad’s bookkeeper. He saved his money to buy a unabridged dictionary and he read it everyday. He became a teacher after graduation. He earned $1.50 an hour. He went to Alfred University and Amherst College. While at college there was a fire and he tried to save a bunch of the books. He went to the doctor and was told he had 2 - 3 years to live. He graduated with a bachelor’s and master’s degrees. After graduating he was hired to be the librarian at Amherst College. While working he saw how unorganized the books were and tried to figure out an easier way to organize the books, and be able to find them. He finally figured out how to organize the books in categories. The categories are 000s Generalities 100s Psychology and Philosophy 200s Religion and Mythology 300s Social Science and Folklore 400s Languages 500s Natural Science 600s Applied Science 700s Arts and Recreation 800s Literature 900s Geography and

He made 555 notes to the workers on what to do and he had 5 different pens he wrote notes with. While he was there he wanted to have a class for Librarians and he wanted them mostly to be women.He tried to get the school to allow him to teach and they said yes. He taught in a building across from the school and had 17 girls and 4 boys. He could talk 184 words a minute. Later in the year he founded the School of Library Economy, the first school organized for Librarians. 6 years later, he relocated to Albany and brought the classes there. Later it relocated to Columbia in 1926. He was also was the director of the New York State Library from 1888 to