025.431: The Dewey blog

Snow day

Here at the Manor, we no longer have any need to gather in our state-of-the-art, HDTV, surround-sound, 60" plasma-display, cinema-seating media room to watch the Winter Olympics. To catch all sorts of fun and games involving slippin' and, indeed, slidin', we can now just look out of the window. In an unprecedented occurrence that residents are still struggling to explain, several centimeters of cold white stuff fell on DC over the weekend, bringing the entire infrastructure to a standstill and sending a chill down the spine of every honest, hard-working employee desperately hoping to attend the workplace on time. You'll be relieved to hear that, after donning skis and balaclavas, a crack team of DDC editors and classifiers has overcome drifts of up to three inches in height in order to keep the world's premier classification scheme up and running. Speaking of which, the number for interdisciplinary works on snow is 551.5784 Snow, under 551.57 Hydrometeorology. Comprehensive works on snowstorms go at 551.555 Snowstorms ("Class here blizzards"), under 551.55 Atmospheric disturbances and formations; while works on the social problems caused by snowstorms, and the social services provided in response, are classed at 363.34925, adding to base number 363.3492 (Disasters caused by weather conditions) the number 5 that follows 551.55 in 551.555.

All-New Dewey Teaser: DOA?

Okay, so the All-New Dewey Teaser went down like a mouthful of soggy spaghetti. How could all those expensive focus groups have got it so wrong? Needless to say, the minion whose idea this was has been summarily dismissed and, last we heard, is currently attempting to eke out a living hawking his sad collection of keywords to search-engine advertisers. All that remains of the whole sordid affair is our promise to tell you precisely where we ended up deciding to class works on neoliberalism, educational attainment, and phishing. Without further ado, or indeed any ado at all, let's give it up for 320.51 Liberalism (not 320.513 Modern liberalism), 306.43 Education (under 306 Culture and institutions), and both 005.8 Data security and 364.163 Fraud. Controversial? Nous? If you think so, let us know. Otherwise, what we really want to know is: Does the All-New Dewey Teaser really have all the appeal of a wet Wednesday in Luton (T2—42567)? Or could it work if we tweaked it a little? Or does anyone have any better ideas for getting weekends off to an appropriately Deweytastic start?

Esspecially yours

Down here at the Manor, there are three little letters that are uppermost in our minds these days. Talkin' 'bout E. And S. And another S. Collectively, they signify ESS: Extremely Simple Syndication. No, wait, that's not right. Extra-Sensory Something-or-other? Hang on ... Don't we mean ESS, the legendary, much-sampled, art-funk pioneers who emerged from the late '70s NYC No Wave scene with a dynamic collision of twisted dance rhythms and a minimalist punk aesthetic? Uh, maybe we're getting a bit mixed up here. It's really our Editorial Support System that we're excited about, which is the software that we use to produce and maintain the DDC. The present version of the ESS was developed by OCLC in 1997 to support editorial work on Edition 22 (2003) and Abridged Edition 14 (2004), and was based on a relational database model using Microsoft SQL. This ESS was a replacement for a flat-file database system developed by Inforonics for the production of Edition 21 (1996) and Abridged Edition 13 (1997), which was itself an updated version of a system originally introduced in the late 1980s for the production of Edition 20 (1989) and Abridged Edition 12 (1990). It's now time to replace the ESS again: the new system will need to provide full and integrated support for the editorial revision of the DDC, mappings of DDC numbers to other vocabularies, the translation of the DDC into other languages, and the publication and distribution of the DDC both in print and via a variety of web-based services in a variety of formats. A team of developers at OCLC has begun work on the new system, and rapid progress is already being made. More news as we get it!

SOAP star

As both of our regular readers will know, the German translation of Edition 22 of the DDC -- Dewey-Dezimalklassifikation und Register -- was published in four printed volumes in October last year. This print version has now been joined by an online version, released last month (January 2006) and reported in OCLC Abstracts 9, no. 5 (February 6, 2006). The electronic version is called Melvil,* and (like WebDewey) is accessible to subscribers over the web. It's available in three formats oriented to different uses: MelvilClass is a classification tool, MelvilSearch is a retrieval tool, and MelvilSoap allows licensees to embed access to the DDC in web services based on the Simple Object Access Protocol. Further information on Die Deutsche Bibliothek's DDC-related activities is available at the ddc.deutsch website; details of how to subscribe to Melvil are given here.

* Not to be confused, of course, with the name of the University of California's online union catalog, which is in any case pronounced completely differently.**

** Not really.

Would you Adam and Eve it?

The International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources' latest Red List of Threatened Species lists 784 extinctions recorded in the period 1500-2004, with more than 15,000 of the 38,000 species evaluated by the IUCN classified as "threatened," i.e., endangered or vulnerable. Concerned? Of course we are. The more species there are around, the merrier it is for everyone. So, let's all get down to Papua (T2—951) and find some new ones! That's what the boffins from Conservation International did late last year, stumbling across the "Garden of Eden" in the process. Some of the species discovered in the Foja Mountains are a honey eater bird that was previously unknown to science, a golden-mantled tree kangaroo that had been thought to be extinct, twenty new species of frogs (including a microhylid frog half an inch long), four new species of butterflies, and five new species of palms. The expedition also found the breeding grounds of Berlepsch's six-wired bird of paradise. Result! As you'd expect, the DDC's good and ready for all these discoveries. Works on honey eaters are classed in standing room at 598.8 Passeriformes; tree kangaroos go in standing room at 599.22 Macropodidae; and microhylid frogs are in standing room at 597.89 Ranoidea. Works on butterflies go in 595.789 Papilionoidea, while palms are at 584.5 Arecidae. Birds of paradise? Good to go at 598.865 Paradisaeidae.

Knitting pretty

Okay, so obviously I'm not in the mood for jokes today after the way the big match finished up yesterday. That's the Canaries' season over for another year, then. Apparently there was some other game going on, though, up in Detroit. Maybe I should try to find out what happened in that? Hmm. I wonder if there'll be a report in the paper? Or on the interweb perhaps? Don't worry, I'm a qualified librarian: I'll get back to you on that in no time. Meanwhile, presumably everyone is aware that the Olympics are due to begin in just four days. No, silly, not those Olympics (796.98) ... the 2006 Knitting Olympics, of course. Sixteen days, many knitters, one dream. Rule #2 of the Knitting Olympics starts like this: "There are no rules ..." Already it's my favorite Olympics ever. Works on the art of knitting as a handicraft go in 746 Textile arts, at 746.432 (not to be confused with 746.422, which is the number for works on the art of ... knotting). And if you're ever confronted with a work on the Knitting Olympics, you might consider adding the standard subdivision —079 Competitions, festivals, awards, financial support from Table 1.

To Nobuko and Ruth!

Yesterday was a special day at Dewey Manor, as we celebrated the retirement of two irreplaceable colleagues in the Library of Congress's Decimal Classification Division (DCD): Nobuko Ohashi, and Ruth Freitag. We wish Nobuko and Ruth all the very best of health and happiness as they begin their years in retirement; but it's with great sadness that we wave goodbye. Both have given sterling service over long periods to the DDC.

Nobuko began work at the Library in 1977, as a descriptive cataloger in the Japanese section of the Shared Cataloging Division, and had spells in the Asian Materials Section of the Subject Cataloging Division and the German Language Section of the Shared Cataloging Division before joining the DCD in 1985. Nobuko became an expert in the areas of art, architecture, history, literature, political science, and law, and a most valued teacher of the DDC, providing initial instruction in the complexities of the scheme to a generation of classifiers. She introduced Dewey to a team at Die Deutsche Bibliothek (DDB) in a week-long seminar in Frankfurt, and attendees at yesterday's celebration heard a reading of a message of congratulation sent by Magda Heiner-Freiling and colleagues at DDB.

Ruth's fifty-five years of federal service began when she enlisted in the Women's Army Corps in June 1945. Ruth joined the Foreign Service in 1949, and was stationed as a communications specialist in London and Hong Kong, before she began work at the Library of Congress in 1960, in the Bibliography and Reference Correspondence Section of the General Reference and Bibliography Division. Ruth soon became one of the Library's foremost experts in reference work, sought after in particular for her encyclopedic knowledge of resources in science and technology. After moving to the Science and Technology Division, Ruth turned her attention to classification by joining the DCD in 1998. In her congratulatory message, Dewey editor-in-chief Joan Mitchell told Ruth: "Your knowledge of all things astronomical has helped us enormously -- I don't think I'll ever think about the phases of the moon without also thinking of you!"

The last word goes to pun-pundit Cosmo Tassone, and this toast (which wasn't written with the Dewey blog in mind, but could so easily have been):

Nobuko Ohashi has been such a fixture in Dewey that people find it hard to believe that she has retired. I would say to someone, "Nobuko has retired, you know." And the surprised response would be, "Oh -- has she?" Yes, she has, and may her retirement years be as happy and successful as were her years in Dewey. As for Ruth Freitag, her success in the Science Reading Room and in Dewey has been astronomical. But who could know that she could so align the stars as to reflect the trajectory of her retirement. Ruth has arranged things so that she will retire on Friday -- that is, Freitag. To Nobuko and Ruth!

Comic-book conundrum: Cracked

It's been a wild ride. But, finally, we've reached the end of the rainbow. We think we've solved The Great Graphic Novels Question. And to prove it, a revised and expanded entry for 741.5 Comic books, graphic novels, fotonovelas, cartoons, caricatures, comic strips (replacing seven entries in Edition 22 and four entries in Abridged Edition 14) was posted yesterday as our monthly update for February 2006, available in PDF or Word format from links on our New and changed entries page.

We've drawn a basic distinction between comic books, graphic novels, and fotonovelas on the one hand, and cartoons, caricatures, and comic strips on the other. As we explain in a new Manual note, the former category is for "multi-panel works written to be read in relatively long segments, like short stories or novels." If such works were originally published in parts, "the parts are likely to have been issued monthly or less frequently (occasionally weekly or biweekly as part of serial anthologies), not daily." The latter category is for works "written to be read in brief segments, like jokes or anecdotes." Such works "have a single panel, or a few panels issued daily or weekly online or in a newspaper; consequently they have an anecdotal quality even when the same characters appear in many segments brought together in collected works."

The comprehensive number for comic books, graphic novels, and fotonovelas is 741.5. Individual works, collections of works, and historical, descriptive, and critical treatments of works in this category by an individual artist or writer are to be classed in 741.59, where notation from Table 2 for geographic area can be added. Works in Hergé's series The Adventures of Tintin, for example, go at 741.59493, adding T2—493 Southern Low Countries    Belgium to 741.59. The comprehensive number for cartoons, caricatures, and comic strips is 741.56. Individual works, collections of works, and historical, descriptive, and critical treatments of works in this category by an individual artist or writer are to be classed in 741.569, where notation from Table 2 for geographic area can be added. Books in Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury series, for example, go at 741.56973, adding T2—73 United States to 741.569.

To help classifiers with this new distinction, we've also created a list of more than 80 titles of comic books, etc., giving the DDC number for each title. This "Sample Title/DDC List: 741.5 Comic books, graphic novels, fotonovelas, cartoons, caricatures, comic strips" (a Word file) is available here, or from a link on our Discussion papers page. Although the list isn't meant to be exhaustive, we'd definitely welcome suggestions for additional titles: let us know if your favorite isn't there! In the meantime, everyone at Dewey Manor -- especially Juli Beall, our resident Queen of the Comic Books -- would like to extend hearty thanks to the many people who gave such thoughtful responses to our series of discussion papers about the treatment of graphic novels in the DDC.

Remember, remember, the 31st of January

All right, all right, so already this week we've needlessly offended fans of the Steelers (who, lest it ever be in doubt, play very good football indeed and are extremely well-known in the Pittsburgh area and beyond -- unlike Ipswich Town or, though it pains me to admit it, Norwich City), and fans of Mozart (by being so slow out of the gate to commemorate his anniversary). Let's make it a hat-trick by being a day late in celebrating the 400th anniversary of the ignominious death of Guy Fawkes (April 13, 1570 - January 31, 1606), which occurred shortly after the failure of the Gunpowder Plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Like most failures, Guy Fawkes himself is ever so popular in Britain: believe it or not, more effigies of Fawkes have probably been burnt on Bonfire Night than those of either Margaret Thatcher or David Beckham. And -- tenuous Dewey connection alert! -- Giles' mother's father's middle name was Fawkes. In fact, we understand they may even be related. Giles and Guy, that is. Not just Giles and his mother's father. Anyway: comprehensive works on the Gunpowder Plot as a historic event are classed at 941.061 Reign of James 1, 1603-1625; general biographies of Guy Fawkes are classed at 941.061092, adding T1—092 Persons to 941.061; while works about the Gunpowder Plot that focus on the modus operandi of the crime go in 364.1310942132, adding T1—09 Historical, geographic, persons treatment and then T2—42132 Westminster City to base number 364.131 Political offenses. Bonfire Night? That's 394.264 Holidays of September, October, November.