025.431: The Dewey blog

Hot or what

The boffins in OCLC’s Office of Research have done it again. Just one look at the new DeweyBrowser -- launched today on the ResearchWorks site -- should convince you that these people truly are the Special Ones. It’s a visual interface that you can use to access any collection of resources that have been assigned DDC numbers. You start things off by typing in a search term in the normal way, but the system then responds, not with a conventional list of results, but with a color-coded display of the ten main DDC classes. “Hot” colors show you where lots of records that match your search are classed. You pick the main class that you want to take a closer look at -- say, 7 Arts & recreation -- and the ten divisions of that class are displayed with the same kind of color coding. Click on the division of your choice -- e.g., 77 Photography & computer art -- and the ten sections of that division are displayed, again color-coded so that you can see at a glance exactly where relevant records are concentrated. In this way, you can browse up and down the top three levels of the DDC hierarchy, using the colors as a guide, before settling on a particular DDC section -- e.g., 775 Digital photography -- and scanning a list of the records in that section that match your search term. In the demo version of DeweyBrowser that’s currently available at the ResearchWorks site, the collection is a catalog of more than 125,000 electronic books. Access to other collections is planned, but meanwhile we want to hear from you! Bouquets or brickbats? Either way, keep ’em coming.

Award fever continues

The John Ames Humphry / OCLC / Forest Press Award, for significant contribution to international librarianship, was established in 1987 in honor of Mr. Humphry, the executive director of Forest Press from 1977 to 1985. John Ames Humphry was a tireless promoter of the DDC internationally, overseeing its publication in Arabic, French, Hindi, Italian, and Spanish. This year’s awardee is Dr. Marianna Tax Choldin (center in photo), professor and director emerita of the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs at the University Library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Choldin was the Center’s first director, and by the time she retired (in 2002) librarians from more than 75 countries had participated in the programs she created. DDC editor-in-chief Joan S. Mitchell (right in photo) presented the award to Dr. Choldin at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago on June 27, 2005, immediately preceding the program on “Becoming a global librarian: Making connections and developing travel plans,” organized by ALA’s International Relations Round Table (IRRT). In her remarks, jury chair Nancy R. John (associate professor emerita, University of Illinois at Chicago; left in photo) quoted from one of the nominating letters: “I cannot think of a more deserving recipient of this award. She has brought knowledge and enlightenment to hundreds of librarians and information specialists from around the globe.”

NZ rules, OK?

One of the best-reviewed movies of the year so far is Murderball (2005), the documentary about the US and Canadian national wheelchair rugby teams. Played by quadriplegics, the sport was invented in Canada in the 1970s and really did used to be known as murderball, until it turned out to be difficult to attract corporate sponsors with that name. When classing works on wheelchair rugby (a.k.a. quad rugby), classifiers might be tempted by 796.0456 Wheelchair sports, where the note says to “Class here sports and games modified for participation of persons with physical disabilities.” But this number is for comprehensive works on wheelchair sports in general, not for works on specific sports. The Manual note at 796.08 vs. 796.04 instructs classifiers to “Class the wheelchair version of a specific sport with variants of the sport, e.g., wheelchair basketball 796.3238.” Wheelchair rugby incorporates elements of basketball and hockey, but is basically a variant of rugby. However, there is currently no separate class for “Variants of Rugby,” so works on variants such as wheelchair rugby should simply be classed in standing room at 796.333 Rugby. The more such works that are published, the more warrant we will have for creating a separate class. New Zealand beat Canada to win the gold medal for wheelchair rugby at the International Paralympic Games in Athens in 2004, by the way; the US team took bronze.

Use with caution

I had a Table of Last Resort once. It had three legs and I gave it away at a car boot sale (381.195) circa 1985. The DDC, on the other hand, has held on to its own such table for 40 years, and ... well, let’s just say it’s become part of the furniture. And a much-loved part at that (thanks, Laura!). Here it is at section 5.9 of the "Introduction" to DDC 22 (p. xlv of the print version):

"When several numbers have been found for the work in hand, and each seems as good as the next, the following table of last resort (in order of preference) may be used as a guideline in the absence of any other rule: ... (1) Kinds of things (2) Parts of things (3) Materials from which things, kinds, or parts are made (4) Properties of things, kinds, parts, or materials (5) Processes within things, kinds, parts, or materials (6) Operations upon things, kinds, parts, or materials (7) Instrumentalities for performing such operations ..."

In the DDC context, this table’s origins can be traced to the "Editor’s introduction" to Edition 17 (1965), where it was referred to as a "precedence formula." It wasn’t until DDC 20 (1989) that the more expressive sobriquet that survives today was adopted. The function of the Table of Last Resort is to give classifiers guidance in selecting a base number from among multiple alternatives, in the absence of other instructions. In this sense, it specifies a "preference order" -- as opposed to a "citation order," i.e., the order in which the concepts making up a compound subject should be represented. (In the DDC, citation order is always carefully detailed in number-building instructions.) But preference orders often correspond closely to citation orders, and the general concern to specify such orders can be traced at least as far back as Cutter and his recommendation that the concepts making up a subject heading be placed in order of "significance." Related proposals include Kaiser’s concrete–process formula, Ranganathan’s PMEST (personality–matter–energy–space–time), and Coates’ thing–part–material–action–agent. The order reflected in the DDC’s Table of Last Resort fits in somewhere between Coates’ suggestion and Vickery’s substance–organ–constituent–structure–shape–property–patient–action–operation–process–agent–space–time!

The French connection

Since the early 1990s, we've been working closely with the Association pour l’avancement des sciences et des techniques de la documentation (ASTED, Montréal, Canada) on translations of the DDC into French. Earlier this year, ASTED published Classification décimale Dewey abrégée et index, 14e édition, the French translation of Abridged Edition 14. Our association with ASTED started with the publication of Classification décimale de Dewey et index, edition intermédiaire (Montréal: ASTED, 1994), a translation of Abridged Edition 12 with additions from DDC 20. In fact, the guidelines that we've developed for translations of the DDC arose out of our experience working with the French team as we moved from the first ASTED publication to the French translation of DDC 21, Classification décimale Dewey et index, 21e édition (Montréal: ASTED, 1998). Production of the latter was led by ASTED in collaboration with the National Library of Canada (now Library and Archives Canada [LAC]), Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), and Bibliothèque nationale du Québec (BnQ). The experiences of all in working on this translation are chronicled in DDC: Francophone perspectives / CDD: Perspectives francophones (Albany, NY: Forest Press, 1999), available here. The French partners (ASTED, LAC, BnF, and BnQ) are now in discussions about a French web version of the DDC based on the up-to-date DDC 22 data file.

Time flies like an arrow

Bananas! Woody Allen's finest moment? Hardly. My current mental condition? Possibly. Nature's most efficiently packaged foodstuff? Exactly. For thousands of years, these musaceous comestibles have delighted humans with their easily removable and completely biodegradable packagings. The only enhancement that food technologists ever felt the need to add were those tiny sticky labels that carry the PLU (price look-up) data -- slightly irritating at worst, innocuous at best, one would have thought ... ? But no. Some people devote large portions of their lives to wrestling off fruit labels, often emerging to find one or two said labels stuck in their hair! The horror. So now the labels are to be replaced by tattoos. This might be okay for bananas, but what about for their less thoughtfully packaged cousins -- peaches and pears, for instance, whose skins people routinely elect to devour? How long before the tattoo ink is discovered to be more toxic than originally thought? Oh, okay, so the tattooing procedure doesn’t necessarily involve ink, rather a dexterously applied laser. Nevertheless, to whom can I complain, in a vaguely unhinged and irrational manner, about these unnatural tattoos? More importantly <splutter>, why does the International Federation for Produce Coding choose to use its own notation for classification of fruits (such as 3127 for a lovely large pomegranate) rather than the perfectly good DDC notation derived from 634 Orchards, fruits, forestry? <Deep breath> Hmm, need to find a quiet bench somewhere. Meanwhile, you’ll find all sorts of good stuff about the management of food retailing in grocery stores at 381.4564130068.

PAC all your troubles

Whilst mere mortals sleep, the boffins at OCLC work through the night, cooking up mouthwatering enhancements to WebDewey. Their latest slice of web wizardry is a way of searching your local OPAC for works classed at the DDC number that you’ve just found in WebDewey -- without leaving the WebDewey interface, and with just one click. The plan is that, with the August releases of WebDewey and Abridged WebDewey, users will be able to set their system preferences so that every display of a DDC record includes a button labeled “OPAC.” All you’ll need to do is click on that button and, hey presto -- the DDC number will be sent to the pre-selected OPAC, a call-number search conducted, and the results displayed in a separate pop-up window. We currently have this feature set up in a test version here at Dewey Manor, and ... well, actually, you can help us check that it works as beautifully with your favorite web-based OPAC as it does with ours. If you’d like to help, email Eliza with the URL that is used in your OPAC to conduct a call-number search. (For the OPAC at Capital University, Columbus, OH, for instance, that would be http://charli.capital.edu/search/c.) And if you’d like to suggest three to five DDC numbers for searches -- which could even include built numbers that aren’t already available in WebDewey or Abridged WebDewey -- that would be great, too. Your reward? A warm and wonderful WebDewey glow.

Melvil's World Tour 2005: Scandinavian leg

There was a whole lotta Dewey goin’ on in Stockholm recently. First off was a DDC seminar at Kungl. Biblioteket (KB; the national library of Sweden). Joan gave a couple of presentations, on Dewey in the digital era and the DDC in Sweden, and her slides are available here and here; Traugott Koch’s talk on Renardus is here, and Unni Knutsen’s on the DDC in Norway is here. Then Joan and Unni ran across to Stockholm University to give a three-day DDC training course. Before the seminar, staff at the Division for Bibliographic Development and Coordination (BUS) at KB had translated the DDC Summaries into Swedish (Översikt över DDC), and the DDC editors are currently working with BUS colleagues on a number of other projects. Winton and BUS colleagues are updating and expanding the area notation for Sweden in Table 2, while Joan and BUS colleagues are exploring the use of Dewey in the Swedish national bibliography, using the concordance between Sveriges Allmänna Biblioteksförening (SAB; the Swedish Classification System) and the DDC. Joan and Juli will meet with Swedish colleagues next month during IFLA 2005 in Oslo.

Ĉu vi parolas Dewey?

Much like Brad Pitt (791.43028092), Manchester United (796.3340942733), and your favorite type of kola-nut beverage (641.3376), Dewey is a global brand. The DDC is used in libraries in 138 countries, and in 62 of those countries to organize their national bibliographies. So it’s not really surprising that, over the life of the system (1876 to date), the DDC has been translated into more than 30 languages. Translations of the latest full and abridged editions are completed, planned, or underway in Arabic, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. What happens when speakers of these languages all get together in the same room to talk Dewey? We’ll find out soon. In conjunction with this year’s World Library and Information Congress (IFLA 2005) to be held in Oslo in August, OCLC is organizing a special meeting for DDC translators and representatives of national libraries and bibliographies using the DDC. Topics on the agenda include options in 200 Religion, multiple assignment of DDC numbers, and DDC research projects -- plus a demonstration of the German web version of DDC 22 and the translation support system that underlies it. (More bloggery on that exciting development later!) Attendees will also have the opportunity to share brief progress reports on DDC translations and on the use of the DDC in national bibliographies. The meeting will be held on Tuesday, August 16, 9:00-11:00 a.m., at Oslo University College, Room T225, Pilestredet 40. If you're interested in participating, please contact Joan S. Mitchell by July 27.

The classification will not be televised

President Bush reckons they put an off button on the TV for a reason. But there’s no reason that I can see. TV’s great! Who can get enough of Hit Me Baby One More Time, for instance? In honor of this most excellent of inventions, we’re proud to present our first Dewey Decimal Competition. All you have to do is identify the TV characters responsible for the following choice remarks. First prize: the lasting admiration of all your fellow Deweyophiles!

1. "Pathetic human race. Arranging their knowledge by category just made it easier to absorb. Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands! Ha ha ha ha!"

2. [Notable TV character at the bookstore register]: "Oh, I have Book-Lover's Discount." Clerk: "Uh, we don't accept that." [Notable TV character]: "Independent Booksellers?" Clerk: "No." [Notable TV character]: "Uh, Bibliophiles? Dewey Decimal Discount? Dust Jacket Gang?" Clerk: "I'm sorry ..."

3. "The Dewey Decimal System -- what a scam that was!"