025.431: The Dewey blog

Would you Adam and Eve it?

The Believer! It's "intellectual yet playful." It's "rigorous yet amiable." It featured Tintin, Mark E. Smith, and Ian McEwan on its cover in successive months. How could it be anything other than the Dewey blog's favorite magazine? And that's even before you consider that the Believer is the only popular magazine (as far as we know) to tempt readers with featurettes that consist entirely of lists of DDC numbers recently mapped to Library of Congress subject headings. Here, for example, is an extract from the list published in February 2006 (on the same page as an interview with stand-up comedian Demetri Martin) of "Dewey Decimal Classifications of various endings":

Road closures—388.312
Retraction letters—070.44
Lost articles in literature—T3C—355
Ex-football players—796.33092, 796.332092
Same-sex divorce—306.89

Thanks to Rivka Galchen and Aaron Harnly for getting the Dewey word out in this way. Needless to say, we're all believers here at the Manor.

Rain, rain, rain

Whilst idly perusing the enormous pile of unbelievably important documents stacked up in the Dewey blog's in-tray, we recently came across a pink Post-it® note inscribed with the inscrutable URL www.nationalcherryblossomfestival.org. Hmm, we wondered, what could possibly be the subject of a web site called www.nationalcherryblossomfestival.org? Curiosity killed the cat but that didn't deter our intrepid researcher, who ascertained within hours that www.nationalcherryblossomfestival.org is actually the ingenious address concocted for the web presence of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, which began in Washington, DC, last Friday and which commemorates the gift in 1912 of 3,000 cherry trees from the city of Tokyo to the people of DC. It's probably all very beautiful and lovely in DC right now; unfortunately, the Dewey blog wouldn't know, as we're away from the Manor once again -- this time in Dublin, OH, where it's currently neither beautiful nor especially lovely, to be honest. When we heard that bit on the radio the other day about the underwater hotel, we didn't realize we'd be staying somewhere similar so soon. Okay, that's enough of the royal "we" for today. Works on the National Cherry Blossom Festival (such as Ann McClellan's The cherry blossom festival: Sakura celebration [Bunker Hill Publications, 2005]) are classed at 394.262 Holidays of March, April, May; standing room in 910.46 Facilities for travelers is where we'd put interdisciplinary works on submarine hotels.

You use "Regular" Google? Dude, that's so 2003

Back to PLA, then, for one last note of the goings-on at this excellent meeting. The Dewey-blog contingent decided that, since we'd spent much of the week learning about what the big names are up to, what we really needed was a sense of how the smaller, independent, unsung heroes of Libraryland are coping with everything the 21st century is throwing at them. So we thought we'd check out what Google, Inc., a lesser-known Mountain View, CA, company is doing in the name of organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful. Which is quite a lot, as it happens. Actually, that bit about "organizing the world's information [etc.]"? Turns out that's Google's mission, and we know that for sure because Ben Bunnell told us 142 times in his talk on Thursday. Ben captured all our hearts with his bright-'n'-breezy overview of Google Book Search (whereby Google aims to index "every word in every book") and Google Scholar (ditto for scholarly journal articles); and then, on Friday, David Ferriero (director of research libraries at New York Public Library) brought us up-to-date with a chronological account of the challenges Google and its five partner libraries continue to face in providing access, through Book Search, to the copyrighted works held by those libraries. Both speakers gave shout-outs to OCLC's collection analysis of the "Google Five" (NYPL and the university libraries of Harvard, Michigan, Oxford, and Stanford), which found that 60% of all the works that the libraries collectively hold are represented in only one of the five. Many of the records that you'll retrieve when you use Book Search come complete with a "Find in a Library" link to OCLC's Open WorldCat, which lets you determine whether books are available in your local library; Google's intention is to extend this feature to more records in the near future. Now: Wouldn't it be cool if Book Search grouped subsets of search results into subject categories, so that users could browse classes of related material? Oh, but I guess that would require the books already to have been assigned class numbers or something. Hmm. Hang on a minute ...

Game theory

Lots going on at PLA, which is one of the friendliest and most vibrant conferences your roving reporter from the Dewey blog has had the pleasure to attend. Yesterday turned out to be Generation M Day -- much to learn about how millennials' experience as gamers and internet users has shaped their distinctive attitudes toward life and work and the new ways in which they solve problems, interact with one another, and seek entertainment and information. First up was Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, who summarized the insights that may be drawn from the Pew/Internet data about the attitudes and behavior of Americans born between 1982 and 2000; then John C. Beck, president of the North Star Leadership Group and co-author of Got game: How the gamer generation is reshaping business forever, further highlighted the significance of the new "Generation Gap" between gamers and non-gamers. How should search and access tools be designed so that they help and hold the attention of young people who, forever immersed in networked media, are far more willing and able than their parents to multitask, collaborate, take risks, adapt to change, share and remix creative content ... ? Where does a subject classification scheme like the DDC fit in a world in which people find the stuff they want by connecting with like-minded peers and asking for recommendations? Rest assured: down at the Manor, we're on it.

Fast: Broken

Finally, we can stop bugging you about it -- because, in the early hours of this very morning, the Dewey Breakfast-slash-Update happened. Needless to say, a grand time was had by all who attended -- including not ten, not a hundred, but a total of zero people who would admit to reading the Dewey blog. Somewhat deflated by the results of our impromptu survey, but nonetheless impressed by the size of this morning's audience, we have resolved to make the blog a more irresistible destination for web surfers by offering a free muffin to every reader of each daily entry.* The discussion at breakfast, you'll recall, focused on the recent update that the DDC editors undertook of the development at 741.5 for comic books, graphic novels, etc. Francisca Goldsmith (Berkeley Public Library) and Terry Moore (Strangers in paradise) inspired us all with their insightful commentary on various aspects of graphic-novels librarianship in general, and on the DDC's treatment of graphic novels and other sequential-art media in particular. We talked about the pros and cons of distinguishing between fiction and non-fiction graphic novels; of classing fiction graphic novels in the arts (700) rather than in literature (800); of subdividing comic books, etc., first by format and then by country; of using subject headings to distinguish further among different formats and genres ... The consensus among panelists and attendees seemed to be that the DDC's update is on the right track; but of course we're still very much open to feedback from our users. We'd love to hear how your library is using classification and subject cataloging to improve access to its graphic-novels collection, so be sure to let us know! 

* Reader to pick up muffin from Decimal Classification Division offices, Library of Congress. Offer not available to residents of the District of Columbia, Virginia, or Maryland.

Last chance!

It's quite the jet-set lifestyle for the Dewey blog: yesterday, Ohio; today, Massachusetts; tomorrow ... still Massachusetts, actually, but you get the picture. We're in Beantown (T2—74461) for the 11th National Conference of the US Public Library Association, and tomorrow is the big day for all those who like to take their breakfast muffins along with a generous helping of Dewey-flavored discourse. If you don't have a ticket for the feast for all the senses that is our graphic-novels panel (starring Terry Moore, Francisca Goldsmith, and our very own Julianne Beall), maybe you could haggle for one from one of the shady-looking characters who'll be mooching around outside Salon H–K in the Marriott Copley Place at 7am tomorrow. Or you could try to make a late reservation here. See you there!

Gone in a puff ...

This latest dispatch from the Dewey blog is winging its way to you from Deepest Ohio, and, sho' 'nuff, the President is "visiting" Ohio this week, too. We think we might have given him the slip though -- no sign of him in Dublin so far. Anyway, as an insight into the top-level terminological discussions we regularly have, both at the Manor and at its satellite site we call the "Campus," we thought you might like to know that this morning's hot topic was "Combustion, Spontaneous human." (We said "hot" -- geddit?) As one might expect, in LCSH the broader heading is "Death--Causes." We're reluctant to link to any sites on the interweb that explain this particular phenomenon; while the accompanying photos are often helpful, let's just say they're not for the squeamish. We figured we'd put a work like Larry E. Arnold's Ablaze!: The mysterious fires of spontaneous human combustion (M. Evans, 1995) in 001.9 Controversial knowledge. But, hey, you might have evidence of the non-controversiality of SHC that we're not privy to. Be sure to let us know.

BRilliant!

Hope everyone was able to join the Dewey blog in celebrating Saint Paddy's Day (394.262) last week. Meanwhile, we know this is old news by now but we just came across it, and to be honest it has "quirky, offbeat news item suitable for wry, low-key recycling in the planet's fourth-best classification-themed web log" written all over it. It's British Rail's plan to build flying saucers powered by nuclear fusion, of course. Turns out the UK's national railroad, otherwise renowned around the world for its pinpoint timekeeping and delicious in-car dining, filed for a patent in 1970 for a super-speedy space vehicle -- a patent that was duly granted in 1973. But, fairly typically, BR didn't keep up with the patent renewal fees, and we never did get the Inter-City Spaceship. But you've got to love that a spokesperson for the UK government's Department of Transport was moved to make this statement last week: "We have no plans to introduce nuclear-powered flying saucers to the network." Well, it's good to have that confirmed. Interdisciplinary works on nuclear propulsion are classed at 621.485 under 621.48 Nuclear engineering; works on nuclear propulsion for spacecraft go in 629.4753 under 629.47 Astronautical engineering. Works on the physics of nuclear fusion (thermonuclear reaction) go in 539.764 under 539.76 High-energy physics; and the number for works on British Railways is 385.06541, adding T2—41 British Isles directly to 385.065 [Railroad transportation] Business organizations.

Visitors from Rojas Eberhard

We've been hosting distinguished visitors at the Manor this week. Octavio Rojas and Wilmer Moyano are here from Bogotá, Colombia, representing Rojas Eberhard Editores Ltda, publisher of the Spanish translation of DDC 21 -- Sistema de Clasificación Decimal Dewey e ĺndice Relativo (2000). Octavio and Wilmer are now working on a translation of Abridged Edition 14; a translation of DDC 22 will follow. They have spent the week patiently pondering the finer points of HMOs (362.1042584), forecourt sales (381.147), car boot sales (381.195), stir frying (641.774), afternoon teas (642), snooker (794.735), and street luge racing (796.67), amongst other delightful topics that don't seem to have yet attracted a critical mass of Colombian aficionados. (And let's just say it turned out handy to have a Brit around for some of the explanations.) School libraries in Mexico, Central America, and South America will be among the key users of the Spanish Abridged Edition 14, and expansions from DDC 22 are to be added in various areas of educational interest, including North American and South American native peoples at 305.897 and 305.898. In the photo, Octavio's on the left and Wilmer's on the right.

Just a relocation (not a discontinuation)

You better move quickly, people, because seats at the hottest event at PLA in Boston are filling up fast. Our graphic-novels-themed Dewey Breakfast (Thursday, March 23, 7:00am–8:30am, in the Marriott Copley Place) is proving so popular that we've had to move it to a bigger room! So it's goodbye, New Hampshire Room, and hello, Salon H–K. If you're thinking of coming to hear Terry Moore (Strangers in paradise) and Francisca Goldsmith (Berkeley Public Library) talk about the DDC's updated treatment of graphic novels, please register here. But hurry -- we don't think there are any larger rooms available so we won't be moving again.