Last week we held a virtual retirement celebration for Michael Cantlon, who retired September 30, 2020, after 41 years of service as a Dewey classifier at the Library of Congress. His colleagues in the Dewey Program contributed slides and pictures to a PowerPoint presentation expressing their appreciation and best wishes for a happy retirement. One classifier, Cat Eiche, contributed to the presentation by raiding the Dewey archives for pictures of Dewey staff that included Michael before his hair turned gray—and other items that amused her, like a list of office equipment that included a Zenith 100 microcomputer (on which we first tried editing DDC on a computer) and a Diablo 630 printer.
Michael's primary areas of expertise were DDC 100s and 200s, but he also classified and trained classifiers in the 400s, 700s, 800s, and 900s. His colleagues expressed appreciation for the deep knowledge of the DDC that he shared.
Michael made many contributions to Dewey editorial work over the years, but mostly behind the scenes, making proposals and giving guidance directly to the editors. However, for DDC 20 and 21, he did much editorial work on the 200s and on the separate 200 Religion Class publications reprinted from those editions with expanded indexing. For the latter, see:
- 200 Religion Class (from DDC 20)
- 200 Religion Class (from DDC 21)
And today Michael has an exhibit among the EPC 142C exhibits now available for review at oc.lc/deweyexhibits: EPC 142C-S20.1 Religious conversion.
We all look forward to the day when the Library of Congress is fully open and we can give Michael our best wishes for a happy retirement in person.
We will all miss Michael so much!!
Posted by: Caroline Saccucci | 05 October 2020 at 09:44 PM
Michael has been so helpful to making Dewey better and I will miss his insight during meetings. Sending all my best wishes to him for a lovely retirement. Looking forward to seeing him around Capitol Hill!
Posted by: Violet Fox | 06 October 2020 at 11:33 AM