025.431: The Dewey blog

Results of EPC meeting 142A

The Editorial Policy Committee meets in person once a year to review proposals to revise the DDC, but there are also periodic online meetings. The most recent online meeting was EPC 142A took place from February 10-March 6, 2020. EPC reviewed four proposals and one discussion paper; you can find the full text of those proposals at oc.lc/deweyexhibits. The results of EPC 142A:

• EPC 142A-S28.1 286.63 Restoration movement—Specific denominations: approved
• EPC 142A-S36.1 362.88 Victims of crimes; 364.1 Criminal offenses: approved with two changes: the class-elsewhere note at 362.8855 was revised to "Class victims of intimate partner abuse, spouse abuse, parent abuse, domestic violence in 362.8292"; in addition, comprehensive works on human trafficking and human smuggling were moved to 364.1551
• EPC 142A-S52.1 Cartography, map making vs. Maps: approved
• EPC 142A-S62.1 Sanitary engineering for rural and sparsely populated areas: approved with one correction: Waste technology—rural should be listed at 628.4091734.
• EPC 142A-S98.1 ANC presidents discussion paper: There were several comments about the discussion paper, with two EPC members weighing in to say this change would be an unwelcome precedent, one preferring manual-like notes at each number from 968.052 through 968.064 in the schedules, and one comment generally in support of the suggested revisions. As mentioned in the proposal text, a fuller proposal will be created for EPC 143.

Two of these revisions (S28.1 and S52.1) have already been implemented in WebDewey, the other two will be published in the next few weeks. Please let us know if you have any questions about these changes or about the revision process itself.

Flash exhibit: School desegregation

The first of our flash exhibits is now live, and the topic is school desegregation. We were inspired by Library of Congress classifier Ruby Woodard, who requested a number for Ruby Bridges, a civil rights activist known for being the first African-American child to desegregate a school in New Orleans. Ruby Bridges is now mapped to 379.263092, a new built number for biography of school desegregation.

While working on this, we noticed that the LCSH "School desegregation—massive resistance movement," which was mapped to 379.263 School desegregation, could better be mapped to a more specific number. We added the new built number 379.2630975, for school desegregation in the American South, to support this mapping.

Finally, while "massive resistance" to school desegregation occurred across the South after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, Virginia was the epicenter of it (Wikipedia’s article focuses heavily on Virginia), so we added a built number specifically for school desegregation in Virginia too, at 379.26309755.

We have some ideas for future topics. What would you like to see?

Announcing flash exhibits!

Like many of you, the Dewey editorial team is working remotely. That sudden change in work circumstances can make it hard to be as productive as you’d be in the office. Maybe you’re dealing without ready access to print resources in your usual workspace, or facing both distractions urgent (a child in need) or less so (hey, this would be a great time to vacuum!).

To build some momentum and give Dewey users something to look forward to, today we’re debuting a series of quick little enhancements we’re calling flash exhibits. These will be batches of a few changes in a specific area that don’t rise to the sort of level we’d need to consult with the Editorial Policy Committee on, such as new built numbers and LCSH mappings.

Look for the first of the flash exhibits tomorrow! Have an idea for a topic you’d like us to cover? Let us know! We welcome specific suggestions for changes too. It could be a good way to get involved with working on full exhibits yourself!

Remote volunteer opportunity during library shutdowns

We've heard from members of the Dewey community far and wide in the past week about the staggering impact of coronavirus. Winton, Juli, Alex, and I are all doing well so far, continuing our work from home.

Libraries around the world are figuring out how to best protect their workers and their patrons. For many, that means closing down and providing services online. Library classification is not the top priority for anyone at this point, but we're hearing that some library workers are struggling to find remote projects that ensure they are serving their library users in some way while their workplace is closed to the public. If that's a situation you're finding yourself in, we have a number of potential Dewey revision topics that require the research expertise of library workers of all types. You can find more information about the Dewey contribution program at oc.lc/deweycontributors. We would be glad to work with you to improve the DDC for library users at your institution and around the world—please get in touch at [email protected]. Be safe, everyone!

Creating proposals webinar on April 14

Lots of folks from around the world joined us for our February webinar about contributing to Dewey, so we’re hosting another one! This time we'll be going into more depth about what you need to consider creating your own proposal to make changes or additions to the DDC.

 

We’ll talk about how you can get started with the help of the editorial team; we're here to work with you to refine and implement your ideas. We'll also share stories from librarians who have made successful proposals to revised Dewey for the benefit of users around the world.

 

Details: 

 

Creating Proposals to Revise the Dewey Decimal Classification

Tuesday 14 April 2020
10:00 - 11:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time (North America) [UTC -4]

 

Free and open to all; register for the WebEx webinar at this link. The recording of the webinar will be posted on the blog.

COVID-19 (Coronavirus disease 2019)

Guest post by Julianne Beall

We hope you are not yet trying to classify books about COVID-19! Why? Because we are not yet sure where to recommend that you class them.

Remember SARS? When we indexed "Severe acute respiratory syndrome—medicine" to 616.2 Diseases of respiratory system, we were following MeSH (Medical Subject Headings). The MeSH heading Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome has Respiratory Tract Infections as the immediate broader term in the MeSH tree structure.

MeSH has not established a heading for COVID-19, but it has established a MeSH Supplementary Concept record. COVID-19 is mapped to Pneumonia, Viral. If the heading, when it is established, has Pneumonia, Viral as the immediate broader heading, we will index COVID-19 (Disease)—medicine to 616.241 Pneumonia.

The 616 number can be added at various places in the 610s and elsewhere, e.g., interdisciplinary number and social services number for respiratory tract diseases 362.1962, interdisciplinary number and social services number for pneumonia 362.196241; incidence of and public measures to prevent respiratory tract diseases 614.592, incidence of and public measures to prevent pneumonia 614.59241.

Stay tuned!