025.431: The Dewey blog

Announcing the Truman Decimal Classification (TDC)

Newly-found photographic evidence confirms what was long held to be an urban legend: the creator of our beloved decimal classification system was, in fact, US President Harry S Truman!

Credit: W. Eugene Smith

This discovery is particularly ironic because Truman's middle name was simply the initial "S," many copy editors (and amateur grammarians) have questioned whether the period belongs in his name. While the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum assures us that the dot after the "S" is justified, we beg to differ—the dot, in fact, belongs squarely after the initial three digits of any TDC number.

When, among his many other achievements, Truman made time to design the system, and how it came to be attributed to an obscure, late 19^th-century librarian, remain unclear at this time.

To illustrate this clear break from the past, we recommend that going forward, works about the Truman Decimal Classification be classed not in 025.431, but 394.262.

 

FAQs of a New Dewey Editor

Since I started as Dewey Editor, it's been fascinating to hear people’s responses when I tell them about the position, both from people within the library world and outside of it. I'd like to share some of the most frequently asked questions that I've received.

[incredulously] People still use Dewey?!

YES!! It's the world’s most widely implemented library classification, used in over 130 countries around the world. Here in the United States, it's used by most public and school libraries. Elsewhere, such as in Europe, it’s also used in national bibliographies and academic libraries.

What exactly do you do all day?

One of the biggest parts of my job is researching publishing trends to ensure that the numbers in Dewey are up-to-date and that people who are classifying materials have clear directions for how to apply the DDC for resources in new or changing subjects. That also includes revising the current schedules; for example, right now I'm working on a proposal to update the language used in the schedules for LGBT issues. It's a collaborative effort; the editors all give each other feedback on finding the best approach for various challenges. Other editorial tasks include answering questions from library workers around the world about using the DDC and staying current on changes in other classification systems.

You're located at the Library of Congress? Don't they have their own classification?

They do. But there's a team of classifiers here at the Library of Congress who assigns Dewey numbers to new materials. (If you speak MARC, that team supplies the numbers in the 082 field.) The Dewey classifiers assign over 60,000 class numbers each year; that provides libraries that use Dewey with authoritative class numbers for the new resources they receive. The editorial team relies on the classifiers to let us know when there are areas of the DDC that aren't as robust as they need to be.

How many people are on the editorial team?

There's just four of us: two full-time editors, and two part-time senior editors.

So, what, y'all are *in charge* of Dewey?

Not really. The editorial team and the classifiers are just some of the people who make Dewey magic happen. Once editors research potential changes to the schedules, they bring those proposals to the Editorial Policy Committee, a 10-member group of people representing libraries from around the world. The EPC gives feedback and votes on whether to implement the changes that the editors propose. The DDC is owned by OCLC, so we work closely with teammates in Dublin to explore new ways of using Dewey data to provide access to users. The editors also collaborate with software company PANSOFT, the current developers of WebDewey, to make updates that make WebDewey easier and more effective to use.

LCC rules, DDC drools.

That’s not a question.

What's your favorite Dewey number?

They’re all beautiful in their own way.

What's the future look like for Dewey?

So bright we've got to wear shades. Right now we're working to make improvements to the system which feeds data into WebDewey so schedule changes are made more smoothly and new updates can be rolled out. We're excited about OCLC projects which will harness the subject access provided by Dewey classification into enabling new modes of discovery. And we're looking forward to making community feedback a more integral part of the way that the DDC is maintained and updated to ensure a truly global perspective. Stay tuned!

Welcome to our newest editor

We're pleased to welcome Violet Fox to the editorial team! Violet joined us on June 18 and is based out of the editorial offices at the Library of Congress. She previously worked in cataloging and metadata at the University of Illinois at Chicago and at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. She received her MLIS from the University of Washington in 2013 and has an undergraduate degree in history.

Her professional interests include exploring the ethical implications of classification and empowering library workers to be an active part of making subject access more responsive to user needs. Violet previously worked in the Dewey office as a summer intern in 2012 and 2013, mapping the most frequently used LCSH to DDC for access in WebDewey. In her spare time, Violet sends snail mail, visits offbeat museums, organizes zine events, and writes about roadside attractions in her own zine.

Happy retirement, Rebecca!

Rebecca Green retired as Dewey editorial program manager June 30—but not quite; she is still working on a proposal or two for Editorial Policy Committee Meeting 141 (scheduled for October).

Rebecca joined the Dewey editorial team in 2007 and became editorial program manager in 2016. Prior to joining OCLC, Rebecca was an associate professor in the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland, where she had been a member of the faculty since 1989.

In the Dewey schedules, Rebecca focused on the 000s, 200s, 320s, 400s / Table 4, and 700s, where her efforts led to new or enhanced developments in many areas, including 3D printing, big data, biometric identification, computational linguistics, computer security, digital media, handheld computing devices, natural computing, noSQL databases; information storage and retrieval (ISAR) systems (including the Web as an ISAR system), institutional repositories; concepts of God, local church, voodoo, Latter Day Saint movement, Orthodox church; political ideologies; prescriptive linguistics vs. applied linguistics; schools, theories, and methodologies of linguistics; regularization of language variations; 20th and 21st century art styles; concertos, keyboard vs. accompaniment. Rebecca was also involved in long-term efforts to implement a major revision for angiosperms and to determine how best to represent indigenous nations.

Rebecca enjoyed working with Dewey as data. She has worked to expose additional history-of-numbers information in the WebDewey History box, to enhance Dewey data with “hidden” fields that enable WebDewey’s number building engine to function properly, to present historical period notation for localities in the 900 schedule in a way that will work with the number building engine (to be available soon), and to develop machine-assisted identification of equivalence and hierarchical relationships between Relative Index terms.

She has presented scholarly papers at SIG-CR workshops, ISKO conferences, NASKO symposia, and UDC seminars on such subjects as the topical basis of see and see-also relationships in Dewey, Dewey classes as topic neighborhoods, facet detection based on WorldCat data, and the treatment of indigenous nations.

She has used her teaching skills in training interns and new editors, in preparing teaching modules, and in presenting workshops in the United States, Canada, and Sweden.

Often when teaching or preparing posts for the Dewey blog, Rebecca’s playful side appeared, as with the Dewey palindrome challenge (here and here).

We wish Rebecca well in pursuing her personal interests:

005.743

220

289.332

401.43

782.5145

786.5

Good luck, Rebecca, in this new phase of your life!

Dewey Team Staff Update

Welcome to Marti Heyman, Executive Director, WorldCat Operations

Marti Heyman recently joined OCLC as the Executive Director of WorldCat Operations, which includes managing the Dewey editorial team.  She comes to OCLC from Cengage Gale and brings a wealth of experience running metadata operations in various organizations including DuPont, Oracle, Deloitte, and Dow Jones.  She has deep experience in many facets of information and knowledge management, with an emphasis on knowledge capture, storage, and retrieval in a manner that facilitates maximum return for the enterprise. She has extensive experience designing, developing, implementing, and maintaining controlled vocabularies designed to maximize content discovery and access. She has led pilot projects requiring the adoption and implementation of linked data.  Marti also co-chairs the NISO Content and Collection Management Committee and has been active in numerous efforts to develop NISO Recommended Practices. She earned her MLIS and MBA from Drexel University and is currently an adjunct within Drexel’s College of Computing and Informatics teaching graduate level courses on Content Representation and Library Management.

Goodbye to Libbie Crawford, Product Manager, Dewey

Libbie Crawford will be leaving her position of Product Manager for Dewey at the end of May.  Libbie would like to share the following thoughts with the community:  "For the past 15+ years I have thoroughly enjoyed working with the international Dewey community.  Accepting the position with Dewey has been one of the most rewarding experiences I have had in my lifetime.  Now it is time for me to give back to the community in a different way.  For quite some time I have been working with charities in the Cincinnati area that address literacy and homelessness. I plan to increase my involvement in those two areas."

Welcome to Sandi Jones, Product Manager, Dewey

Sandi Jones will be taking over as the new Product Manager for Dewey.  Sandi has worked at OCLC for over 30 years in various roles in cataloging and metadata services, including serving as the product manager for Contract Cataloging and WorldCat Cataloging Partners services, which both integrate Dewey workflows.  She has great experience working with libraries and partners worldwide, and she is excited to join the team.

New Director of WorldCat Quality and Dewey

OCLC is recruiting for the new leadership position of Director of WorldCat Quality and Dewey. 

The person who fills this role will have responsibilities that include:

• managing continuous updates to the DDC,
• working with national libraries worldwide to maintain high DDC standards,
• coordinating DDC translations, and
• driving decisions about the exciting possibilities of working with the DDC as a key linked data reference in the semantic web.

OCLC continues to recruit for this position; if you know of someone who might be appropriate for this position, please have him or her contact Marti Heyman at heymanm@oclc.org.

New addition to the editorial team

Alex Kyrios was recently appointed as an editor of the Dewey Decimal Classification.  Based at the Library of Congress, he joins us from the Folger Shakespeare Library.  Before that, he was a metadata librarian / cataloger at the University of Idaho.  Alex is new to the editor role, but not new to Dewey.  Four years ago, Alex was an OCLC intern and worked with us on Abridged Edition 15.

Alex has an MLS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an undergraduate degree in English from the College of William & Mary.  Professionally, he's interested in user-focused research, and how cataloging and classification can be more responsive and accessible to users without sacrificing quality.  In his spare time, he enjoys board games, tennis, watching soccer, Wikipedia, and playing with his dog Trevor.

International Dewey Users Meeting at IFLA

The International Dewey Users Meeting will be held in conjunction with the World Library and Information Conference (IFLA) Cape Town, South Africa, on Tuesday 18 August 8:00-9:30 am at the OCLC Hospitality Suite, in the Conference Center Room 1.41/1.42. Learn what’s new with Dewey! Hear from Elise Conradi, Dewey Project Manager at the National Library of Norway, who will discuss the latest developments in Terminology Mapping and Peter Werling, CEO of Pansoft, who will provide an update about Dewey software. Also share ideas and notes with translation partners.

Register for this and other OCLC IFLA Events.

Dewey Breakfast at ALA

Going to ALA in San Francisco?  Join us for breakfast at 7:00 AM on Saturday June 27, 2015 at the Marriott Marquis San Francisco - Yerba Buena Salon 01-03.

Join us to hear two guest speakers discuss how Dewey is utilized in their libraries. Plus, learn about the latest decisions from the Dewey Editorial Policy committee.

Speakers:

• Caroline Saccucci, Dewey Program Manager in the U.S., Programs, Law, and Literature Division: “Dewing the Dew” at LC : Best Practices from the LC Dewey Section” 

• Michele Zwierski,Database Manager, Nassau Library System:  “To the edge of Dewey: Classification at the Nassau Library System”

Time will be available for you to discuss how your library uses Dewey.

Register for this and other OCLC ALA Events

 

New addition to the editorial team

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Carol A. Bean as associate editor of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). Carol comes to us from her position as Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Biomedical Informatics Research at Stanford University, the culmination--so far--of an illustrious career combining medical informatics and knowledge organization. 

The medical informatics perspective is evident in positions Carol has held as research information scientist, biomedical informatics program officer, and chief enterprise terminology officer within the (U.S.) National Institutes of Health (NIH) and as director of the Office for Certification in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). 

The knowledge organization perspective is visible through a faculty appointment in the School of Information Sciences of the University of Tennessee, where Dr. Bean taught courses in cataloging and classification, abstracting and indexing, and health care informatics. Carol’s research and publications have focused on, inter alia, relationships in knowledge organization systems (KOS), creating mappings between KOS, semantic interoperability, information extraction from medical texts, and topical relevance relationships. 

She holds graduate degrees in biopsychology (University of Georgia), information science (University of Maryland), epidemiology/biostatistics (University of California), and medical informatics (Columbia University).

Carol is based in the Dewey Editorial Office at the Library of Congress. Please join us in welcoming Carol to the Dewey editorial team.

Dr. Lois Mai Chan

We were shocked and saddened to learn of the passing of Dr. Lois Mai Chan on August 20.

Lois was a member of the Decimal Classification Editorial Policy Committee (EPC) 1975-1993, and she served as chair of EPC 1986-1991.  Before her last EPC meeting, Peter Paulson (then executive director of Forest Press) wrote: "As most of you already know, this will be the last EPC meeting for Lois Chan, who has served the Committee wisely and well for eighteen years.  We shall miss her careful and thoughtful reading of exhibits, her ability to clarify ambiguities, and her soothing composure when opinions conflict.  We will be honoring Lois at the Committee dinner on Wednesday evening."

Lois was co-author of Dewey Decimal Classification: A Practical Guide (1994, 1996) and Dewey Decimal Classification: Principles and Application (2003).  

Lois was part of the teams that introduced Dewey at workshops held in various locations around the world:  in 1995 at Crimea '95 and in Moscow at the Russian National Public Library for Science and Technology, at IFLA in Beijing in 1996, and in several venues in Hanoi in 1997. The proceedings of the Beijing workshop were published as Dewey Decimal Classification: Edition 21 and International Perspectives: Papers from a Workshop presented at the General Conference of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), Beijing, China, August 29, 1996. Lois gave the opening remarks, the summary and closing remarks, and was co-editor of the publication—doing what was typical for her.  

Her deep understanding of the principles of the DDC, and her consistently careful, hard work to communicate that understanding to students around the world made a lasting contribution to the development and teaching of the DDC.