"Don't Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater!"

DEWEY DECIMAL CLASSIFICATION (DDC)-A STORIED HISTORY

When one examines the pros and cons surrounding the use of the DDC in school libraries today, one would be remiss if one didn’t take a look at two important aspects of the classification: its history and its current use patterns.

Melville Dewey began development of the DDC in 1873 while working as an associate at the Amherst College Library in Massachusetts (DDC, Wikipedia, 2013). The first DDC volume was published as a pamphlet titled A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library and was also profiled in the first numbered issue of American Libraries (DDC, Wikipedia, 2013). Dewey’s role as one of the founders of the American Library Association (ALA) provided the ideal venue where information and publicity associated with the DDC could be distributed.

Using the growing, yet intimate human network that the early ALA created, Dewey recognized that, in order for the DDC to be successfully implemented and widely adopted, he would need the feedback of proponents and critics alike to point out gaps or validate parts of the first edition of the classification that worked. After obtaining the suggestions of over one hundred colleagues, the second edition, titled Decimal Classification and Relative Index for arranging, cataloging, and indexing public and private libraries and for pamflets, clippings, notes, scrap books, index rerums, etc. appeared in 1885.

With regard to the variant spelling of some words in the Dewey second edition title, it is interesting to note that during the late 1800s, Dewey was leading a spelling reform movement. The movement advocated abandoning traditional English spellings for use of a purely phonetic-based system (possibly a precursor to today’s texting language and use of abbreviations - e.g. Twitter hashtags). Dewey was so committed to spelling reform that on his 28th birthday, he officially changed the spelling of his last name to “Dui” and used that spelling officially during the years 1876 and 1883 (Weigand, 1996). He subsequently founded the Spelling Reform Association in 1886 (University of Illinois, 2014).

In the second edition, page length grew from forty-four pages to three hundred fourteen. Indexed entries also grew from two thousand in the first edition to nearly ten thousand in the second edition (DDC, Wikipedia, 2013). As subsequent editions were introduced (twelve editions between 1886 and 1942), the positive aspects of the DDC—particularly the benefit of shelf positioning enabled by the DDC’s numerical design—awareness of the classification and adoption grew rapidly. This coincided with the opening of library stacks to the public at public libraries—which had been primarily closed to library patrons.

With DDC adoption spreading to rapidly developing libraries, such as school libraries (which began to develop around the time Dewey began distributing the DDC), the need to produce an abridged edition was identified.

The first abridged edition was introduced in 1894. This easy-to-use version made sense for early school libraries, who faced many of the same staffing and time management challenges we as school library professionals face today.

As the DDC’s use in school and public libraries grew, Dewey also had great influence on how the Library of Congress (LC) viewed the DDC in the context of its work with libraries of all types. Since LC is still considered by most librarians to be the library standards authority, Dewey advocated the inclusion of DDC for books on catalog cards being produced by LC. The fact that LC chose to include DDC information for materials it cataloged even though it utilized its own Library of Congress Classification (LCC) certainly added to the validation that the Dewey Decimal System was an accepted, widely-adopted standard (DDC, Wikipedia, 2013).

DDC’S CRITICS AND CONTINUED USE

From the start, early DDC critics reinforced the fact that the system was originally developed for librarians managing closed stacks. Its rigid design and hierarchical structure are considered inferior in some respects to other classification systems, such as the Bliss Bibliographic Classification (BBC), which is less specific in design and use (Hj0rland, 2008). This lack of “friendliness” toward the casual user—to easily put a topic into a context—is evident in the following:

If you are interested, for example, in the Second World War, you must go to the social science area to find sociological analyses, to the technology area to find literature on weapons technology, to the biography area if you are interested in Churchill or Quisling as individuals, and so on. The alternative proposed by the critics of this system is to organize literature according to categories of reader interest (Hj0rland, 2008).

Yet, it is the very combination of both hierarchical logic and numerical precision that still makes the DDC a logical choice for school libraries, which rely on the use of physical volumes housed on shelves containing materials with subject categories that match curricular areas. This correspondence carries over into the digital world where curricular subject areas are displayed alongside their numerical equivalent.

These benefits led Rose Matthews to identify three reasons why the DDC is still a great choice for school library classification needs:

ORGANIZING BOOKS

The primary benefit of the Dewey Decimal System is that it catalogs books so that they can be easily located. Rather than having to randomly sort through stacks of books, or rely upon a system of alphabetization, students and researchers can find a book on a particular subject in a card catalog (paper or digital), then locate it on the bookshelf. There the seeker will find other books on the same topic.

CAN EVOLVE FOR NEW SUBJECTS

When Melville Dewey invented his classification, he had no way of predicting how knowledge would evolve and what new subjects books would cover. His system catalogs books into ten broad categories; for example, general works is 000, pure sciences is 500, and fine arts is 700. These ten broad subjects are further divided into subcategories, represented by the number to the right of the decimal. Beyond that, the number can get even more specific, and the classification even more precise, by expanding it to include further numbers to the right of the decimal.

UNIVERSALITY

The Dewey Decimal System is used in more than 130 countries. The system translates since it uses all numbers, which has greater universality than letters, and there is greater disparity in alphabets universally than numbers. More than 95 percent of public and school libraries use the system. In contrast, the Library of Congress system is used primarily in government and public libraries.

The universality of the system means that once the basics are mastered, a student or researcher can locate books using the Dewey Decimal System no matter in which library they conduct research (Matthews, 2013).

DDC’S FUTURE

While the DDC’s critics will contend that school libraries need to adopt a more “readercentric” approach to materials classification, the fact remains that the DDC works well in school libraries because school libraries support the school curriculum. Melville Dewey designed the basic DDC structure around a curriculum-based model. Whether he intended to do this or whether the times in which he lived dictated it (as well as the use patterns for libraries), the fact remains that the DDC’s use of subject areas and number building is both logical and scalable.

Thus, when making a decision about whether to continue using the DDC, school librarians should take a look at the basic structure of the DDC and its history for points of reference. By using this information, they can make a more informed decision to continue to use the DDC or abandon it using logical analysis and talking points for dialog. Hopefully, that approach will highlight the DDC’s positives and support the cautionary advice to “not throw the baby out with the bathwater!”