025.431: The Dewey blog

Virtual AskQC Office Hours session on WebDewey

If you've never heard of Virtual AskQC Office Hours, it's a regular, free webinar series from my OCLC colleagues in Metadata Quality. Each monthly topic has two different sessions to accommodate time zone differences. Recordings and slides are made available from previous sessions too.

This month's session is an introduction to classifying with WebDewey. You'll hear from database specialists Robin Six and Bryan Baldus. I'm not presenting, but will be around to field questions, as will a few of our other colleagues.

The first one... just happened! That's on me for not thinking to post about it sooner. But you can still join next week's session, Thursday, June 23, at 4pm US Eastern time. Find registration information here.

EPC 143 exhibits ready for review

The Editorial Policy Committee (EPC) will meet virtually in early June for their Meeting 143. Dates and times will vary based on members' availability. You can view the following revision proposals at oc.lc/deweyexhibits:

• EPC 143-S29.1a - Introduction, Islam and secular disciplines
• EPC 143-S29.1b - 297.38 Rites, ceremonies, prayer, meditation
• EPC 143-S29.1c - 297.48 Sufi orders
• EPC 143-S29.1d - 297.54 Zakat
• EPC 143-S29.1e - 297.576 Individual observances
• EPC 143-S30.1 - 304.8 Movement of people
• EPC 143-S30.2 - Disasters as causes of social change
• EPC 143-S74.1 - Graphic design and communication design
• EPC 143-T1.2 - Terminology in T1--08 Groups of people
• EPC 143-T2.1 - Kosovo
• EPC 143-T2.2 - T2--599 Philippines
• EPC 143-T6.1 - T6--9549 Eastern Himalayan languages; T5--9549 Eastern Himalayan peoples

(To paraphrase guidance we give on the Summaries, Consult exhibits for complete and exact titles.)

Please share any feedback, positive or negative! You can do so by commenting on this post, posting to the the Dewey Contributors Google Group, or by email to [email protected] or an EPC member.

LCSH in WebDewey

I always enjoy going through the answers of our user surveys. One that has come up a few times, including the most recent one, is a desire for more mapped LCSH in WebDewey. I hear you! Mappings are a prime example of the value you can get out of WebDewey that just aren't practical in print.

Our current mapping of LCSH tends to be ad hoc. When we're working a certain area, we'll look for relevant LCSH to add on. Once upon a time, the editorial team tried to map all new LCSH every week. That quickly became more than we could chew! And if you've ever seen a mapped LCSH for a really obscure or specific topic, it may well have come from this. As you may know, the bar for authorizing an LCSH is much lower than that for a new Dewey number.

One comment on LCSH mapping in particular intrigued me:

More LC subject headings within the schedules as those tend to be more useful than Relative Index terms. Or at least make them match more

In years past, the editorial team often specifically chose not to map LCSH that were an exact or close match for a Relative Index term. While I can see the logic there, it's not a practice I've maintained. If you browse LCSH in WebDewey, for example, a heading that's not there just isn't there--an equivalent Relative Index term doesn't help.

Of course, it's a different story with keyword searching, which doesn't care about the source of a term. For that reason, I've often created Relative Index terms that differ from their equivalent LCSH--not to be contrarian, but to enhance keyword accessibility. We also have more flexibility with Relative Index terms. For example, we could give two Relative Index terms for close concepts that are clumped into a single LCSH, or use a more internationally recognized version of a US-centric term.

So my questions for you...

1. What are some specific areas (or even specific numbers) that you'd like to see more LCSH added to?
2. Do you prefer Relative Index terms that closely match LCSH, or do you want them to diverge?
3. Any other suggestions related to LCSH in WebDewey?

Now is your chance to participate in the Dewey Priorities Survey

The Dewey Decimal Classification is a valuable resource and keeping it current is important to all of us. We work with users like you to constantly improve it, to make the system more valuable across cultures and types of libraries.

To better learn what’s important to our users we invite you to participate in a brief Dewey priorities survey.

Please note that this survey will close on 11 April 2022.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Portrait of an editor: Constantin Mazney

Courtesy Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan

I have been researching previous editors of the DDC for a project you may hear more of later this year. As you can imagine, much has been written about some of these men and women; several have their own Wikipedia articles. But details on a few of them were scarce, even in John Comaromi’s excellent Eighteen editions of the Dewey Decimal Classification, published in the DDC’s centennial year of 1976. One of those was Constantin J. Mazney. We knew Mazney was editor-in-chief for Edition 14, published in 1942, but not much more. In this post, I’ll share more details I found, along with the work of a few people I thank at the end.

Constantin John Mazney was born May 17, 1889, in Odessa, now in Ukraine, then a part of the Russian Empire. He had a musical background, first earning a music degree from Moscow Imperial Conservatory (now Moscow State Tchaikovsky Conservatory) before immigrating to the United States in 1923. He listed his occupation as choirmaster in 1929 when applying for naturalization. We also know he worked as a schoolteacher in Detroit during this period.

In the US, Mazney studied at the University of Michigan. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in library science there, and worked in the university library from 1935 to 1938 before moving to the Library of Congress. At Michigan, Mazney studied under Margaret Mann, who recommended him for the DDC editorship after the death of Dorcas Fellows. According to Comaromi, it was largely in deference to Mann that Mazney was chosen as editor-in-chief.

Mazney oversaw the production of Edition 14, but it was unfortunately not a smooth process, exceeding its budget and missing deadlines. I can only speculate as to whether World War II exacerbated this—maybe I’m projecting current-day “supply chain issues” onto the past! Shortly after its publication, Mazney was relieved of his position by the Decimal Classification Committee.

Whether or not World War II more directly affected the production of Edition 14, public records from around that time show Mazney registered for the military draft, though he would have been in his 50s at this point. Records from the University of Michigan have him at the “Research Library” in Upton, NY in 1949, perhaps at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. (Incidentally, one of the operators of Brookhaven today is Battelle, a research organization OCLC has collaborated with most recently for the REALM Project.)

At any rate, Mazney seems to have returned to Washington, DC at some point, and died here in December 1951. He never married. He willed about $5500, around $50,000 today, to help fund a University of Michigan student award in Mann’s honor, which is still in place today (and not to be confused with ALA’s Margaret Mann Citation).

I enjoyed learning more about this man who had my job (more or less) 80 years ago, and hope you found this an interesting read too. If you have any corrections or additions, I’m happy to hear them. For people of Mazney’s time, we only have literal paper trails, and can only piece together the whole story from sometimes ephemeral documents. I hope future biographers will have an easier time of it. I ditched Facebook over 10 years ago, but my LinkedIn is reasonably up to date.

My thanks to MP Satija and Allie Alvis for research assistance, and to Jacob Nugent at the University of Michigan’s Bentley Historical Library for the same, plus the image. The timing of this post is coincidental, and has been in the works for several weeks.

New DDC editor-in-residence focused on equity

(cross-posted from OCLC Announcements)

Kelly West recently joined OCLC as the first visiting editor-in-residence for the Dewey Decimal Classification® (DDC®) system. In this inaugural six-month role, West will contribute her expertise to reduce systematic bias embedded in the DDC.

The new DDC editor-in-residence program offers early and mid-career librarians or others from allied fields the opportunity to collaborate closely with the DDC’s editor, Alex Kyrios, and the Editorial Policy Committee. Extending and maintaining the DDC requires deep knowledge and understanding of the structure of the classification scheme. In addition, placing every topic in an effective position within the scheme requires deep understanding of the topic. The DDC community worldwide will benefit from sustained engagement with a subject-matter expert to address a problematic portion of the DDC.

West is currently earning an MLIS from Louisiana State University. She serves as a 2020 – 2022 Kaleidoscope Program Diversity Scholar with the Association of Research Libraries as well as a 2021 – 2022 Spectrum Scholar with the American Library Association. Her professional interests include educating others through the preservation of Black cultural history, archival research, community outreach, and library advocacy.

OCLC continues to work toward improving diversity, inclusion, and equity throughout the library community. The DDC offers many opportunities for improving subject heading labels and the classification structure to empower underrepresented voices across a multicultural community. This editor-in-residence program is one step in a long journey to address past wrongs.

The DDC editorial team is always open to ideas from the library community to make the DDC truly reflective of libraries’ collections and evolving needs. To participate in these conversations or share a proposal, learn more about being a Dewey contributor.

DDC MARC tips: subfields $m and $2

A recent social media discussion asked about the purpose of subfield $m of the MARC 082 field, the field for DDC numbers in the bibliographic format. Subfield $m is a simple binary subfield, in which you can enter a value of a to mark the number as standard or b to mark it as optional.

If you don’t use this subfield, you’re not alone. In a perfect world, it would probably be nice to always have this information specified. But in practice, I think it’s safe to say catalogers are mostly entering standard numbers into the 082 field.

Please do use subfield $m if you’re recording an optional number (so specifically, $m b). If you really want to be thorough, you can use it for standard numbers as well.

Until recently, subfield $m was marked as mandatory on the 082 page in OCLC’s Bibliographic Formats and Standards documentation. We’ve changed that to mark it as optional. If you’re curious, it was probably marked mandatory because it’s marked that way in the Library of Congress’s National Level Requirements. I tip my hat to my OCLC colleague Jay Weitz for tracking that down.

While we’re on the subject of MARC, I wanted to remind you of the changes earlier this year to subfield $2. In short, this subfield now carries date and language information in addition to edition, to give a fuller picture of the provenance of a DDC number. You may have seen examples of this in WorldCat, and as of this writing, the Library of Congress MARC documentation page still has the additions in red text.

If you use a macro or Connexion constant data for subfield $2, you might consider adding $m to it too.

Collected biographies in 930-990

Recently, I wrote about individual biographies in 930-990. To quickly recap, individual biographies typically should go elsewhere unless they’re for historians, historic figures, or ordinary people used as examples of life in a certain period.

With collected biographies in this area too, be careful in applying standard subdivisions. The large add table at 930-990 plays a similar role to typical standard subdivisions here. Notably absent from this table is an equivalent notation to T1—092 Biography. That doesn’t mean you can’t use T1—092 at all in the 900s, just that you usually need to go to a specific period. Ordinary people go in the period in which they live; public figures typically go with the highest office they attained, or when they were most prominent. What about a historian who specializes in the entirety of a country’s history? Then you can use 930-990:007202 Historians and historiographers. So a biography of a historian of all of Chinese history could class at 951.007202, though one who specialized in Ming dynasty history would class at 951.026092.

Collected biographies, then, are the main reason you’d add biographical notation to the broadest number for an individual country’s history. Notation 930-990:0099 Collected biography is for “Description, critical appraisal, biography of people associated with the history of the continent, country, locality but limited to no specific period”. For example, use 954.0099 for collected biographies of people from India across time. In practice, these are often works that describe national leaders and other famous figures, but the same treatment would apply for ordinary people, whose lives illustrate the place over time.

Either way, if you’re simply adding T1—092 to the broadest number for a country’s history, that’s a mistake! If you’re tempted to do so, the right answer depends on the work you’re classifying.

Individual biographies in 930-990

If you’re used to standard subdivisions, it can be easy to slip into “autopilot” when classifying. Working on a biography? Add T1—092 Biography to the end. Like many heuristics, or mental shortcuts, this can save you time, but make sure you’re keeping an eye out for exceptions. Don’t do this if you’ve already added another standard subdivision, for example (although, because T1—092 is quite high on the Table 1 table of preference, you might well want to replace the other standard subdivision with –092!).

One big area where you should be careful with biographies is the 900s. This post will focus on 930-990, for the history of specific places. As you probably know, standard DDC practice is to class biographies in the respective subject area, usually with –092 at the end, e.g., 020.92 for a biography of S.R. Ranganathan. What sort of biographies belong in 930-990? Our guide here is the extensive 930-990 Manual note, and specifically the Biography section.

This note covers “biographies of persons who lived during the historical period and also for biographies of historians and historiographers of that period”. But this does not override the general practice described in the previous paragraph here. Ranganathan lived in 20^th-century India, but a biography of him would not class at 954.04 1947-1971 in Indian history.

So what do we mean by “persons who lived during the historical period”? It could mean a biography of an “ordinary” person, used as an illustration of what life was like in that place and time. Consider this example, a diary of a teenager in 1920s Portland, Oregon. Its DDC number, 979.549042092, has –092 added to a built number for Multnomah County, Oregon in 1918-1945. The Manual note we’re referring to specifically allows the use of –092 here even when the subject doesn’t approximate the whole.

You could also be in 930-990 for an individual biography of a public figure. National leaders, such as presidents, prime ministers, and monarchs, should typically have their biographies at the highest office they reached. Even when there’s a specific number for a leader’s administration, such as 973.932 Administration of Barack Obama, 2009-2017, add –092 if appropriate. A comprehensive biography on Barack Obama himself would class at 973.932092. Consult the Manual note for T1—092 for more information on biographies of public figures.

Finally, individual biographies of historians and historiographers class at the historical place and period they studied, plus –092. This means they could share a number with some of their subjects. Works classed at 942.055092 (base number 942.055 Reign of Elizabeth I, 1558-1603) could include biographies of Elizabeth I herself as well as historians of Elizabethan England, regardless of where and when those historians lived.

I hope you’ve found this helpful! Stay tuned for a future blog post on collected biographies in 930-990.

Participate in the latest Dewey Priorities Survey

The Dewey Decimal Classification is a valuable resource and keeping it current is important to all of us. We work with users like you to constantly improve it, to make the system more valuable across cultures and types of libraries.

To better learn what’s important to our users we invite you to participate in a brief Dewey priorities survey.

Please note that this survey will close on 05 October 2021.

We look forward to hearing from you!