Dewey Decimal System
Created | Updated Apr 9, 2002
The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Earth Edition-910.03
You
see the young, somewhat disheveled man looking over the same
shelf for the 15th time.
Finally, what looks like help in the form of an eternally bored
lass with an unlimited amount
of books on a cart is spotted. The young man approaches.
"Excuse me, miss", he says,
"but I've been looking for a book on cheese for what seems
like hours now. It should be
right here, between these biographies of Cheektowaga and Anton
Chekhov... right?" The
lass turns to him slowly, stares at him for what seems like years
unemotionally, and then
bangs her head against the wall.
Over and over again.
The Dewey
decimal system is a method of classification used in libraries.
It is usually used for books, but can also be used with
nonfiction videos, tapes, cd's, etc. This way, instead of having
to go to the trouble of looking for the subject alphabetically as
a perfectly sane person would do, one must find the subject
either by looking in a card catalog (which, oddly enough, is in
alphabetical order) or using the library computer catalog, taking
down the number provided, and looking for that instead.
The Dewey decimal system was thought up in 1874 by Melvil Dewey,
an energetic man with a passion for confusion. This system uses
numbers 000 through 999 to cover general fields of knowledge as
follows-
000-099 - -
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Generalities
100-199 - - - - - - - - - Philosophy & Psychology
200-299 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Religion
300-399 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Social Science
400-499 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Language
500-599 - - - -Natural Science & Mathematics
600-699 - - - - Technology (Applied Sciences)
700-799 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Arts
800-899 - - - - - - - - - - - - Literature & Rhetoric
900-999 - - - - - - - - - - - - Geography & History
then narrows down the fields by using more specific numbers,
eventually getting into decimals. For example, 500 is science & mathematics, 520 is astronomy, 523 is specific celestial bodies and phenomena, and 523.44 is Upcoming Planetary Events and Missions. This way the library can add virtually any
new material they want, because all fields of knowledge can be
classified in this ingenious method, most likely under a number
such as "420.9112 T".
This brings me to another point- alphabetical order is still
used in the Dewey decimal system. Believe it or not, some
books are actually of the same perfectly exact topic, and
therefore they are the same number, such as "420.9112".
But Dewey didn't stop there. In his never-ending battle with
disorganisation, he stated that if there are two or more books
with the same number, they must be then further organised
alphabetically according to last name.
