025.431: The Dewey blog

Gym Class

I hated gym class in high school—dodgeball, softball, the dreaded gymnastics equipment. Turns out, I was just born too early. Nowadays, teenagers in West Virginia can dance the gym class away with Dance Dance Revolution (DDR). Further west in Colorado, teenagers can skateboard during gym period. In Minneapolis, you can take gym online.

The comprehensive number for physical fitness for young people twelve to twenty is 613.7043; add T1—071 Education and you have the number for high school gym class, 613.7043071. The number for DDR is 793.3 Social, folk, national dancing; the number for skateboarding is 796.22.

Java Earthquake

Just 17 months after the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami, Indonesia has been hit by another earthquake, this time centered under the seabed south of Yogyakarta in Java.  The death toll in this 2006 Java earthquake is currently over 5,400.

Indonesia is particularly prone to earthquakes because it is part of the Ring of Fire that encircles the Pacific Ocean.  This ring is where many different tectonic plates are pushing against each other.  (However, not all earthquakes are at the boundaries of tectonic plates: I lived through an earthquake in Newcastle,  Australia, back in 1989 -- Newcastle is in the middle of a tectonic plate).

In Dewey, geologic studies of earthquakes are found at 551.22.  geologic works on the 2006 Java arthquake are classed in 551.22095982 -- in standing room, without adding the historical period, because the area most affected by the earthquake does not approximate the whole of T2--5982 Java and Madura. We are currently working on an expansion for all the provinces of Indonesia, which would include a specific number for the Special Region of Yogyakarta (in Indonesian, Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta, or DIY).  Disaster relief efforts for earthquakes are classed in 363.3495095982.  Works on the earthquake’s affect on the life and history of the region are classed in 959.82.

Peinture canadienne-française

One of the regular tasks at Dewey Manor is to map new Canadian Subject Headings (CSH) to Dewey numbers.  In the March 2006 list were "Painting, French-Canadian" and "Painting, French-Canadian--Québec (Province)"; these headings present an interesting issue of Dewey application.

Both headings contain facets for the ethnic group (French Canadians) and for place (Canada or Québec), even if Canada is only implicit in the "Painting, French-Canadian" heading.  If we were just building numbers using Table 1, then the table of preference for that table puts ethnic groups (--089 within --08) ahead of places (--093-099).  However, for 750 Painting and paintings, geographic treatment is displaced to 759.  That means the rule of zero comes into play, since "there is a choice between the 0 subdivision and subdivisions beginning with 1-9 in the same position in the notation." (DDC Glossary)  750.89114 French-Canadian painting has a zero after the 75, while 759.11 Canadian painting and 759.114 Québec painting do not, so we prefer the numbers without the zero, i.e., 759.11 or 759.114

However, in 759.1-759.9, we can add a standard subdivision from Table 1 (with a few exceptions for works about individual painters, which do not apply here).  So to those numbers we can add --089 Ethnic and national groups from Table 1, and --114 Canadians of French origin from Table 5, giving, for "Painting, French-Canadian" the full number 759.11089114, and for "Painting, French-Canadian--Québec (Province)" the full number 759.114089114.

To Cosmo!

Yesterday at Dewey Manor we celebrated the retirement of Cosmo Tassone, a senior specialist and irreplaceable colleague in the Library of Congress’s Decimal Classification Division (DCD).  We wish him a wonderful retirement.  We’ll miss him sorely.

Before coming to DCD in 1974, Cosmo taught English and American literature and rhetoric for seven years (Georgetown University, University of Maryland, U.S. Naval Academy).  He also studied French cooking, though he never worked as a chef. In DCD he became the expert in classifying languages and literature, and also food and wines.  He was a strong and effective advocate of the change implemented in 2000 that allows standard literary period notation to be added for literature in English by authors not from the U.S., Canada, or Europe, and for literature in French, Spanish, and Portuguese by authors not from Europe.

Cosmo worked right up to the end, leaving the Dewey editors with one of his hard questions:  where to class American Sign Language literature.  419.7 American Sign Language is a linguistics number that cannot be used for literature (belles lettres).  The editors are now pondering where in Table 6 Languages to create a number for sign languages that can be used to build a proper literature number.  In the meantime, American Sign Language literature is in standing room at 890 Literatures of other specific languages and language families. 

Cosmo contributed his punning toast to the retirement celebration for Nobuko Ohashi and Ruth Freitag.  David Smith, former chief of DCD, contributed this poem for Cosmo’s celebration:

Cosmo Tassone

Chewed Dewey’s bone

For thirty-odd years.

But shed no tears,

For our boulevardier,

Downshifting a gear,

Having paid his dues,

Shuffles off to Syracuse.

Vietnam

Twelve Vietnamese librarians, led by Professor Pat Oyler of Simmons College’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science, visited the Library of Congress May 22 and 23. They are participating in a program to prepare a new generation of Vietnamese librarians for leadership roles. After successful completion of the program, they will receive a master’s degree in library and information science from Simmons. As part of their visit to LC, the librarians were briefed by Dennis McGovern, chief, Decimal Classification Division, and Julianne Beall, assistant editor, DDC.

This is a happy time to brief Vietnamese librarians about Dewey, because the Vietnamese translation is almost ready to go to press. The translation is based on Abridged Edition 14, with expansions in areas where literary warrant is high in Vietnam, including interoperable expansions beyond the provisions in DDC 22 where needed. The Dewey editors worked closely with Mr. Vu Van Son, editor of the DDC Translation Project, National Library of Vietnam, on expansions in the Table 2 and history provisions for Vietnam, and on the notation for peoples and languages of Vietnam. The New and Changed Entries for April and May, 2006, include changes in DDC 22 inspired by this work. For example, T2—597 Vietnam now has nine new subdivisions in DDC 22, e.g., T2—5971 Mountain region of northern Vietnam. Each of the twelve provinces in that region is named in the including note in DDC 22. In the Vietnamese edition, each province has its own number, e.g., T2—59712 Cao Bà̆ng. The numbers are the same, except in length, in order to keep the notation meaningful.

A similar approach has been taken for expansions in connection with other translations, e.g., the German translation of DDC 22.

Surf City

Both Huntington Beach and Santa Cruz, two cities in California, both claimed that they were "Surf City USA." The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded the title to Huntington Beach. The granting of a trademark is a matter of law and is classed in 346.0488 Law of trademarks. In 340 Law, unlike other areas of Dewey, the jurisdiction is added directly to the branch of law, followed by the specific subject in law. The granting of the trademark "Surf City USA" is classed in 346.730488 United States law of trademarks. Because the United States, not California, granted the trademark, the jurisdiction is the United State T2--73, not California T2--794.

A general travel guide to Huntington Beach is classed in 917.9496 Travel in Orange County; to Santa Cruz, in 917.9471 Travel in Santa Cruz County. A travel guide limited to a specific topic is classed with that topic, e.g., Surfing 797.32. Thus, surfing guides to Huntington Beach are classed in 797.920979496 Surfing in Orange County; to Santa Cruz, in 797.920979471 Surfing in Santa Cruz County.

Montenegro

It appears that we’re heading for a few changes to notes and captions in Table 2 and the 900s—yesterday, Montenegro voted to split with Serbia. We’ll wait to implement changes in Dewey until the split is ratified by Montenegro’s Parliament and the new country of Montenegro is recognized internationally. The good news is that Montenegro will stay at T2—49745 Montenegro and 949.745 Montenegro (and Serbia remains at T2—4971 Serbia and 949.71 Serbia).  We'll also need to address T5—9182 Serbs and Montenegrins (the people of the [on the way to being former] country of Serbia and Montenegro as a national group). We’re keeping an eye on further developments.

A Dewey historical note: One of the last-minute changes we made in the print version of Dewey before the 2003 publication of DDC 22 was the accommodation of “Serbia and Montenegro,” the new name of the former Yugoslavia. Yes, never a dull day at Dewey Manor.

Lamu

Unni Knutsen, a member of the Library and Information Science faculty at Oslo University College, and I exchanged e-mail messages last week about the Dewey Translators Meeting at IFLA 2006, the World Library and Information Congress in Seoul this August (we'll share more information about the Dewey meeting at IFLA soon--stay tuned). Unni mentioned that she had just returned from Kenya, where she had spent five weeks building a library in Nairobi. During her stay, she met her husband for a short vacation on the island of Lamu off the coast of Kenya. Of course, my immediate thoughts turned to, what is the Dewey number for Lamu? Lamu is not mentioned explicitly in the DDC, but it is part of Kenya’s Coast Province. Therefore, the geographic number for Lamu is T2--67623 Coast Province, part of T2--6762 Kenya.

Osteoporosis

May is Osteoporosis Awareness and Prevention Month, at least in the United States, home of the National Osteoporosis Foundation.   According to the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF), World Osteoporosis Day will be October 20.  IOF has a locator for many national osteoporosis societies, e.g., Osteoporosis Australia and National Osteoporosis Society (U.K.).

In DDC osteoporosis appears in a note under 616.716 Bone disorders of metabolic origin: “Class here osteoporosis.”  Because osteoporosis appears in a class-here note, it approximates the whole of 616.716; consequently, one can follow the instruction to “add as instructed under 616.1–616.9” for works about osteoporosis alone as well as for broader works about metabolic bone disorders.  General works about prevention of osteoporosis are classed in 616.71605, built with 05 Preventive measures from the add table under 616.1–616.9 Specific diseases; and general works about treatment of osteoporosis are classed in 616.71606, built with 06 Therapy from the same add table.  Works about specific preventive measures that can also be used as therapy are classed with the specific therapy, e.g., exercise for prevention or treatment of osteoporosis 616.716062 (built using the instructions under 062-069 Other therapies in the add table with 06 from the add table plus 2 from 615.82 Physical therapies), diet for prevention or treatment of osteoporosis 616.7160654 (built the same way with 06 from the add table plus 54 from 615.854 Diet therapy). 

Wicca

ReligiousTolerance.org describes Wicca as "a Neopagan, earth-centered religion" and continues:
"Depending upon how you look at Wicca, it is either one of the newest or one of the oldest religions in the world: 
*   Wicca is a recently created, Neopagan religion. The various branches of Wicca can be traced back to Gardnerian Witchcraft which was founded in the UK during the late 1940s.
*   Wicca is based on the symbols, seasonal days of celebration, beliefs and deities of ancient Celtic society. Added to this material were Masonic and ceremonial magickal components from recent centuries. In this respect, it is a religion whose roots go back almost three millennia to the formation of Celtic society circa 800 BCE."   

In a supplement to the May 1, 2006, issue of Library Journal, Janet Tapper expressed concern about the placement of Wicca with occultism in 133 in the Dewey Decimal Classification.  In fact, the Wicca religion is classed in 299.94 Religions based on modern revivals of witchcraft.  At that number is the note: "Class here neopaganism, wicca."  The Relative Index also includes the following entry for Wicca: "Wicca--religious practice 299.94." 

As we reported last October, we are working on a single optional arrangement in 200 Religion with religions arranged in a chronological/regional sequence (similar to the reorganization of Class 2 Religion recently undertaken in the Universal Decimal Classification). At some future date, this proposed optional arrangement could also become the basis of a new framework for 200 Religion. Ia McIlwaine (editor in chief of the UDC) and Joan Mitchell will be presenting a paper on preliminary research on recasting 200 Religion in a chronological/regional sequence at the ISKO 2006 Conference in July.  Stay tuned for more information.