Dewey or Don't 'e?

Today's topic is a request from Viroaquix, who writes:

"Yeah, the Dewey Decimal System. What's up with that? I wanna know."

Okay, Viro. The Dewey Decimal Classification system is actually owned by the Online Computer Library Center, which bought the rights to the DDC in 1988. It was invented in the 1870s by a guy named Melvil Dewey who was 21 and working in the Amherst College library as a student. Pretty impressive. The DDC was one of the things that gave a kick in the pants to the whole library movement, since this was also an era where public education became more important. He went on to be a big-shot librarian, I won't bore you with the details or tell you if that's a joke or not.

The DDC is generally pretty straightforward and reasonable. All books are given numbers dealing with their subject matter. DDC Numbers can be any number of digits long, depending on how specific the content is. All the DDC numbers are given 3 digits to the left of the decimal, everything else to the right. So something really general, let's say, a book on dogs would have a DDC number of 6 (Applied Science, and I'll cover this below) then 3 (Agriculture and related topics -- yeah, it's weird), then 6 (Domesticated Animals. Ahh. So general "domestic animal" books are 636. Then, dogs are 7 within that, so they're at 636.7. If you want to read up on your wiener dog, you'd have to add a 5 (Sporting dogs, hounds, and terriers) then a 3 for Dachshunds.

Wiener dogs are 636.753.

Books are then sorted numerically. Of course, some subjects are going to have lots of books in them. For instance, "dogs." That could make it hard to find a specific book among all those 636.7s. So what they'll do is then alphabetize those by the author's name, often including the first letter or 3 on the DDC, or "call number" tag. The DDC category that's probably overflowing more than anything, though is 813, "fiction." Bet you didn't think fiction books had DDC numbers. Well, they do, but there are so many 813s, that they're usually split out in libraries and they don't bother to number them (sometimes they're just given an "F" or "Fic" but it really means 813 -- they're in the system.

So far, it seems like a pretty reasonable system, right? Along the lines of what you or I would come up with. There are only a few weird bits. The biggest is the godawful mess of the 500s and 600s. The first digit 5 was assigned to "natural science" and the first digit 6 to "applied science." The "golden rule" is if it's about things in their unchanged state, it's a 5, but if it's been modified in some way, it's a 6. This is why dogs are in the 600s -- they're domesticated, and therefore altered. Wildebeests, though, would be in the 500s. Unless it was a book about keeping Wildebeest pets, I suppose.

It also leads to weird stuff like books about bees being in the 500s, but beekeeping books are 600s. Trees? 500s. Lumber? 600s.

Another kind of odd but neat bit is that certain "major" (read: European) languages and nations get special numbers that they keep across sections. It starts in the 400s (Language) where English gets 420, German 430, French 440, Italian 450, Spanish 460. You can tell it's (understatement alert) kind of a biased system by noting Latin gets 470, Greek 480, and the "minor languages" (i.e. every other one) has to shoehorn into the 490s.

Anyway, you see those 2-6 numbers for England, Germany, France, Italy, Spain pop up again later: General history of England? 942. Germany? 943. France? 944, etc.
German lit? 830s. French? 840s. Italian, 850s. You get the idea. Same bias, too. Greek lit? 880s. Lit of all East and Southeast Asian languages? 895. Lots of room for those new works by Aristophanes, I guess.

The one other notable thing about the DDC is that it's copyrighted. That's right, you have to buy a license to use it. Didn't know that? Neither did these folks:

25 Sep 2003
Dewey Decimal system owner sues Library Hotel

The nonprofit library cooperative that owns the Dewey Decimal system has filed suit against a library-themed luxury hotel in Manhattan for trademark infringement. The Library Hotel, which overlooks the New York Public Library, is divided according to the classification system, with each floor dedicated to one of Dewey's 10 categories. Room 700.003 includes books on the performing arts, for example, while room 800.001 has a collection of erotic literature." A lawyer for the library group, Joseph Dreitler, claims a "person who came to (the hotel's) Web site ... would think they were passing themselves off as connected with the owner of the Dewey Decimal Classification system." [...] The suit demands triple the hotel's profits since its opening.

In case you were wondering, the price for the DDC ver. 22 goes from $585 per year for a single user to an $1150 annual site licence for libraries with 10 or more staff members.

So, Viro, that's what's up with the Dewey Decimal system.