025.431: The Dewey blog

Return of the Dewey Teaser

Nothing delights a Dewey editor more than a snippet of Dewey in the midst of leisure reading.  We’ve suffered nearly a year-long drought of Dewey teasers--imagine then my delight last night just before drifting off to sleep to encounter the following passage in a novel I’m reading:

Reshelving books, he began to notice plays.  Toward the end of Dewey Decimal 822, Walter became acquainted with a two-foot stretch of small blue clothbound books with gilt titles on the spines.  The plays of Shakespeare.

Dewey teaser rules are here, and teasers of the past can be found in the Dewey blog category, DDC in arts and culture.  The first person to identify the source wins a citation in the Dewey Hall of Fame.  Extra points are awarded for citing the WorldCat.org entry!

Would you Adam and Eve it?

The Believer! It's "intellectual yet playful." It's "rigorous yet amiable." It featured Tintin, Mark E. Smith, and Ian McEwan on its cover in successive months. How could it be anything other than the Dewey blog's favorite magazine? And that's even before you consider that the Believer is the only popular magazine (as far as we know) to tempt readers with featurettes that consist entirely of lists of DDC numbers recently mapped to Library of Congress subject headings. Here, for example, is an extract from the list published in February 2006 (on the same page as an interview with stand-up comedian Demetri Martin) of "Dewey Decimal Classifications of various endings":

Road closures—388.312
Retraction letters—070.44
Lost articles in literature—T3C—355
Ex-football players—796.33092, 796.332092
Same-sex divorce—306.89

Thanks to Rivka Galchen and Aaron Harnly for getting the Dewey word out in this way. Needless to say, we're all believers here at the Manor.

Dewey Teaser: It's deep

We're taking a break today from our blanket coverage of the shenanigans in San Antonio, simply to bring you the news that, yes, Laura was right -- the conversation we related in last week's Dewey Teaser did indeed occur in the show Surface (NBC), "an expansive drama series that centers on the appearance of mysterious sea creatures in the deep ocean." What might have thrown people off the scent was the "clue" that we provided, since Surface is of course currently broadcast in the US on Monday, not Tuesday nights as we accidentally on purpose informed you. The supposed connection to Tuesdays, and the appearance in our transcript of characters called "R" and "L," is what probably led a number of readers to suggest Gilmore Girls. But Surface is all about Rich and Laura, not Rory and Lorelai, and the episode in question went out on Monday, January 9, at 8pm. The New Dewey Teaser begins next week -- bet you can't wait! -- and in the meantime we're going to hand things over to Tish Reigle for her expert summary of that special scene. It's exclusive to the Dewey blog, and won't be on the DVD. Take it away, Tish!

Laura is a (very annoying) biologist who saw the sea creatures while doing a research dive off the California coast. Rich is a regular guy whose brother was "killed" by the sea creatures during a fishing trip in the Gulf of Mexico. He eventually hooks up with Dr. Laura as they both try to tell world about this new animal. However, some "government agency" is trying to keep the existence of these animals secret and is willing to kill to do so. So Laura and Rich are always running and hiding while trying to gain more evidence of the creature. They finally hook up with a news station and show the tape of the sea creature (although it is treated as another "Nessie" story). Success! But they are still being chased by agents of this secret organization. Hiding out at a friend's house, Laura is retrieving her emails when she comes across one from somebody who truly seems to know something about the sea creature. The mystery emailer wishes to meet Laura and check some of her evidence. Laura and Rich are wary but the other person offers to give them a token of good faith. Emailer: "100 Leary Street. The code is 576 dot 80162 ..." Laura: "The code for what?" Emailer: "... AR." Later we see Laura and Rich running up the steps of a public building -- a library. Rich: "Wait a minute, we're being given the gift of literacy?" Laura: "Explains the code." Rich: "What's that?" Laura: "Dewey decimal system." Inside, Laura and Rich scan the books until they find 576.80162. It's the Origin of the Species. Behind the book is an envelope with false IDs, credit cards, money. 576.8 is the number for evolution but I would place Origin of the Species in 576.82, natural selection. Where the 0162 comes from, I don't know. Why the book is cuttered AR and not DAR or OR is also puzzling ... My daughter patiently stopped, rewound, played, close captioned this section several times and the number definitely seems to be 576.80162 AR. Surface is a sci-fi show. Not the greatest and definitely has holes in the plotline that a fleet of trucks can drive through. But I like the storyline of a boy and his sea creature.

Dewey Teaser: Back from the dead

No surprises last week, then -- everyone recognized the extract from Mike Thaler's The librarian from the black lagoon (Scholastic, 1997). But you know those rumors we were spreading of the Old Dewey Teasers' imminent demise? Greatly exaggerated. You wouldn't believe how excited we are to keep the Old Dewey Teasers alive for one final, final hurrah. And how eternally grateful we are to our resident culture vulture Tish Reigle, decimal classification specialist here at the Manor. Without further ado, then: Who's talking? Which TV program? (Clue: Tuesday nights ...) And what's up with the weird number?

[L is checking her email.]

Mystery emailer: 100 Leary Street. The code is 576 dot 80162 ...

L: The code for what?

Mystery emailer: ... AR.

[Later: L and R run up the steps of the public library.]

R: Wait a minute, we're being given the gift of literacy?

L: Explains the code.

R: What's that?

L: Dewey decimal system.

Dewey Teaser: Nine and out

It's been quite a while since our last Dewey Teaser, but needless to say it posed minimal problems for regular readers. (Megan and Rainey, we're talking about you.) The Red Scare's little outburst did indeed appear in The Tick, no. 6 ("Villains, Inc.") of November 1989. Now: this week's teaser is the final one in its present form. Next week's teaser will be the first of our brand spanking New Dewey Teasers -- for details of which you will just have to wait. In the meantime: What's the source of this classic piece of Deweyophilia?

"... [I]f you catch her in a good mood, she'll recite the Dewey decimal system by heart. They say Mrs. Beamster has a crush on Mr. Dewey and that she carries his picture in a lead locket around her neck."

Jam can be pumped, but not shaken

Happy 394.2614, everyone. We've got lots of good stuff lined up for you, but today we're just going to ease in gently with a pointer to Biblia's Dewey rap, "Check It Out." (Comprehensive works on rap go at 782.421649.)

Dewey Teaser: Eighth note

The Dewey Teaser lives on. Thanks to everytwo of you who flooded our inbox last week with suggestions of DDC-related quotes from classic works of literature, we're able to stumble on with our exciting competition -- maybe even limp into the New Year. How about that? This week's teaser, which comes courtesy of Nick, could be the trickiest yet. In fact, if you get this one, we will be forced to make serious inquiries as to what exactly it is that you think you're doing with your life. Nevertheless: here goes. Whence comes this misguided speech?

"What better place to begin my reign of Communist terror and oppression than a memorial to that decadent and imperialist American, Melvil Dewey, hated originator of the Dewey Decimal System!! I, The Red Scare, will ruin this place for everyone!!"

Pictures at an exhibition

Dewey-Dezimalklassifikation und Register, the German translation of DDC 22, was produced by a team from Die Deutsche Bibliothek in Frankfurt headed by Magda Heiner-Freiling, and published by K. G. Saur of Munich in four brightly-colored volumes in October 2005. (We first reported on the ddc.deutsch translation project earlier in the year.) DDC-DACHS: Die Dewey-Dezimalklassifikation und der deutschsprachige Raum is a traveling exhibition of DDC-related material that has been organized by Margit Sandner of the University of Vienna Library to accompany ddc.deutsch and to promote the new publication. (The letters making up "DACHS" indicate the German-speaking regions in which the Dewey-Dezimalkassifikation is used: D = Deutschland; A = Österreich; CH = Schweiz; and S = Südtirol.) The exhibition debuted at the University of Vienna Library in February 2005, has since visited Graz, Innsbruck, Bolzano, and Klagenfurt, and is currently showing (until December 16, 2005) at the Danube University Library in Krems, Austria. In the New Year, it will go to Linz.

The photos show a copy of the new translation next to a copy of Melvil Dewey's first edition of 1876; a view of part of the traveling exhibit; and the copy of Edition 8 from 1913 that was used by the former librarian of Vienna's British Council Library.

Dewey Teaser: The end?

Not sure if anyone will remember, but two weeks ago we had a Dewey Teaser, and a fine one it was too. Both of our brave respondents were correct, of course, in their identification of The Librarian: Quest for the Spear as the source of that exchange between Charlene (played by Jane Curtin) and Flynn Carsen (Noah Wyle). This TV movie's premiere on TNT in the US on December 5, 2004, surely takes its place in history as the first occasion on which the phrase "RSS feed" was spoken by a character in a prime-time drama, and maybe the first occasion on which the phrase "research paper orthodoxy" was spoken by anyone anywhere. Anyway, this week, the Dewey blog needs your help. Notwithstanding our earlier claims to have at our disposal an enormous pile of illuminating and/or entertaining DDC-related quotations from the classics of world literature, the sad and humbling truth is that in actual fact we, uh, don't. So -- what have we missed? Please, please, send in your suggestions, directly to the editor rather than to the blog if you'd like to see them used as future teasers. (Oh, and before anyone says "Hey, what about The Dewey decimal system of love?," well, we figured we'd sort of done that one here. And various TV shows here. And a comic book here and a comic strip there. Plus the timeless works that featured excitingly in our six previous teasers.)

Dewey Teaser: In seventh heaven

As we predicted, everyone knew the source of last week's teaser. The library clerk-in-meltdown was Mary, played by TGPP (The Great Parker Posey) in the classic movie beloved by ambitious library-school students everywhere, Party Girl (1995). Megan: as negotiated offline, you win a top-of-the-range DDC bookmark but only if you get this week's teaser right too. Cliff: since our extensive investigations on the interweb revealed that you are in fact a well-known OCLC employee, I'm afraid you're ineligible for this particular competition, but please feel free to enter under an amusing pseudonym like a lot of cunning readers seem to do. This week's teaser may be even easier than last week's, but, listen, we're still excited about it, okay? The question: From which work of lasting cultural significance is the following exchange extracted?

"What makes you think you could be the librarian?"

"Well, I've read a lot of books ... I know the Dewey Decimal System, Library of Congress, research paper orthodoxy, web searching, and I can set up an RSS feed."

"Everyone can do that. They're librarians."