025.431: The Dewey blog

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."

Dewey Teaser: The half-dozenth

Well, the only person to get last week's teaser right was too shy to display his problem-solving prowess in public, resorting to a personal email to the editor. Congratulations, sir -- since only you and I have any idea who you are, you will be inducted into the Dewey Hall of Fame as the Unknown Librarian. The source of the quote was Charles A. Goodrum's Dewey decimated (Crown, 1977), "A Werner-Bok Library mystery" that was nominated by the Mystery Writers of America as best first mystery novel, don't you know. Okay, this week's teaser is easy. Easy, I tell you! We're expecting a correct answer within seconds! The question: Which library clerk had this fit?

"I guess you didn't know we have a system for putting books away here. No, I'm curious. You were just randomly putting that book on the shelf, is that it? You've just given us a great idea. I mean, why are we wasting our time with the Dewey Decimal System when your system is so much easier? Much easier! We'll just put the books anywhere. Hear that, everybody? Our friend here has given us a great idea! We'll just put the books any damn place we choose! We don't care, right?! Isn't that right?"

Dewey Teaser: The fifth column

It might not sound as if this week's teaser has much to do with the DDC. But if you know the answer ... well, you'll see the connection. So here goes: From which murder mystery is this extract taken? Tell the world. Don't be shy.

They parted and George turned to the left and followed the hall around to the door opening into the eastern wing: Division of History and Literature. He entered and looked around the room for the first time. It was a large, high-vaulted reading room like any of a thousand others in the country's public and university libraries. He searched for the ubiquitous card catalog, found it, sought a title in its trays, and filled out the traditional call slip. He handed it in at the desk and waited at a nearby table. He was tired. He found he was too tired even to reason, so he stared in front of him musing on all the other rooms like this he'd sat in in the past fifty years. He had enjoyed it himself, he knew, but what impact did all the effort, the getting and the organizing and the keeping have? His mind slipped to a picture of Karl Marx writing, writing, writing in the British Museum and he smiled in spite of himself. Librarians had been using that one to prove they were never quite sure what for years.

100 not out

Well, we weren't exactly inundated with responses to last week's teaser -- surprisingly, we thought, since the author of the quoted reminiscence is one of the official Triumvirate of Famous Librarians. No, not Mao Tse-Tung or even Casanova, but the poet Philip Larkin, who spent most of his working life as an academic librarian, latterly at the University of Hull. The quotation comes from the short essay "Single-handed and untrained," which you can find either in Larkin's Required writing: Miscellaneous pieces, 1955-1982 (University of Michigan Press, 1999), or in the collection Long overdue: A library reader (Library Association Publishing, 1993) edited by Alan Taylor.

No new teaser this week, because whaddya know, whoda thunkit, etc., but today's entry is our hundredth, and in time-honored tradition, we're celebrating by saluting all the "hundreds" in the DDC. There's class 100 Philosophy & psychology itself, of course. There's the Hundred Days of 1815 (March 20 - June 28), in standing room at 944.05 Period of First Empire, 1804-1815. We've got the Nineteen hundreds (Decade) indexed at T1—09041 1900-1919, and again in World history at 909.821 1900-1919. Sure enough, the Twenty hundreds (Decade) are also there at T1—090511 2000-2009. The LC subject heading Hundredth Day of School is mapped to 372.18 Student activities--Elementary education. (According to LC's authority record, "many schools in the United States and Canada celebrate the 100th day of school with educational and recreational activities involving number 100.") And finally, there's the Hundred Years' War, which (as any fule kno) actually lasted 116 years (1337-1453) and therefore doesn't count. For the record, it approximates the whole of 944.025 Period of House of Valois, 1328-1589. Don't worry: the next time we'll be doing anything like this again will be for our thousandth entry -- sometime in 2009.

Dewey Teaser Goes Fourth

It's that time again, and boy, have we got a humdinger of a Dewey quote for you this week. Tongues have been wagging at Dewey Manor about barrel-bottoms being scraped, but let me tell you -- there are few more-capacious barrels than the barrel we're rattling around in right now. Your teaser today: Whose memoirs?

In 1903 the library had, of course, been closed access; in the Thirties an effort had been made to modernise its methods, opening the doors to readers and constructing an issue desk. There had even been purchased a copy of the current edition of Dewey. Otherwise it remained antiquated. The boiler (which I had to stoke, if not light) did little to heat the radiators, which were in any case poorly placed; the real warmth of the building came from the gas lights, that had to be illumined with long tapers that dropped wax over the floors, and even on myself until I learned how to handle them.

Don't read this, it's too graphic

One of the proposals that were discussed at last week's meeting of EPC is a relocation of the number for comprehensive works on graphic arts, from 760 to 740. The thinking is that such a relocation would solve a number of problems: the duality of the heading currently shared by Graphic arts and Printmaking and prints at 760; the double set of standard subdivisions (one set for graphic arts and one for printmaking and prints) currently at 760; and the current positioning of the number for graphic arts after the numbers for two subclasses of the graphic arts (drawing and drawings at 741 and painting and paintings at 750). The new heading at 740 would be Graphic arts and decorative arts, and 760 would be just Printmaking and prints. As with any relocation, we're still weighing the benefits of the improved development against its potential impact on current collections. But since this particular relocation would amount to a change in the second summary (i.e., the hundred divisions) of the DDC, there are additional factors to take into account. You know all those posters sold by ALA Graphics with a list of the divisions on them? Well, they'd need to be changed for a start. On that note: Have you perused the ALA Graphics catalog recently? Lots of rather excellent Dewey-related stuff licensed from OCLC -- not just the posters, but Dewey mugs (emblazoned with the DDC number for tea, natch), Dewey cat and dog collars (636.8 and 636.7), Dewey nightshirts ... Yup, Dewey nightshirts. Can anyone else spot the demographic that ALA is hitting up here? Whatever next? Dewey carpets? As it happens: yeah. People are working on the Dewey carpet idea as we speak. The Melvil Dewey bobblehead can't be far away. But what other consumer durables would benefit from the addition of a subtly inscribed class number? Specifically, how much am I bid for this lovely leather 006.5 iPod® case?

EPC Day 2

Of course, everyone got it right -- the source of last week's quote was indeed Allen Kurzweil's The grand complication (Theia, 2001) and his description of Class Struggle, the parlour game we all grew up playing, right?

But we have no new teaser for you this week, because there's so much to report on from yesterday's second installment of EPC Meeting 124. We continued to talk about graphic novels, and then we talked about them some more, and actually we're still talking about them. But rest assured: when we do make a decision, we're going to nail it. We did at least decide where to class works on how to write graphic novels: in standing room at 808.06 Rhetoric of specific kinds of writing. Diane Vizine-Goetz from OCLC's Office of Research gave us a fascinating demonstration of DeweyBrowser (see our earlier blog entry here), Terminology Services, and Curiouser. As colleagues have already reported, users of DeweyBrowser have recently been given access to two new databases: a set of 2.2 million WorldCat records for the works most widely held by libraries, and the set of authority records for classes in the Abridged version of the DDC. We're currently looking into a method by which users would be able to use DeweyBrowser to suggest index terms for DDC numbers -- stay tuned for developments!

Staff members of the Library of Congress's Decimal Classification Division (pictured) hosted a coffee break so that EPC members could see Dewey Manor's engine room in all its glory, before we returned to agree upon an expansion for Terrorism at 363.325 that we'll be posting on our "New and changed entries" site before the end of the year. Giles gave a great talk on what the future holds for WebDewey and our much-loved (but elderly) Editorial Support System, and we discussed strategies for training of and communicating with DDC users. One of the things we intend to do in the latter regard is to discontinue the Dewey tips in favor of sharing advice through this blog instead.

The pictures here show EPC enjoying a little 641.812 and a couple of editors reacting with some consternation to a Queso de Tupí a few short hours after updating the development for the Tupí at T5—9838.