Melvil Dewey

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Melvil Dewey bigraphy, stories - Presidents

Melvil Dewey : biography

December 10, 1851 – December 26, 1931

Melville Louis Kossuth (Melvil) Dewey (December 10, 1851 – December 26, 1931) was an American librarian and educator, inventor of the Dewey Decimal system of library classification, and a founder of the Lake Placid Club.

Selected publications

  • 1876 Hartford, Conn.: Case, Lockwood, & Brainard Company (44 pages).
  • 1885 Decimal classification and relative index for arranging, cataloguing, and indexing public and private libraries and for pamphlets, clippings, notes, scrap books, index rerums, etc.: Second edition, revised and greatly enlarged. Boston: Library Bureau (314 pages).
  • 1886 Librarianship as a profession for college-bred women. An address delivered before the Association of collegiate alumnæ, on March 13, 1886, by Melvil Dewey. Boston: Library Bureau.
  • 1887 Library notes: improved methods and labor-savers for librarians, readers and writers. Boston: Library Bureau.
  • 1895 Abridged decimal classification and relative index for libraries. Boston: Library Bureau.
  • 1898 Simplified library school rules. Boston, London [etc.]: Library Bureau.
  • 1889 Libraries as related to the educational work of the state. Albany.
  • 1890 Statistics of libraries in the state of New York numbering over 300 volumes. Albany.
  • 1894 Library school rules: 1. Card catalog rules; 2. Accession book rules; 3. Shelf list rules.
  • 1904 A.L.A. catalog Washington: Government Printing Office.

Work

Dewey was a pioneer of American librarianshipWeigand, Wayne A. and Donald G. Davis (1994). Encyclopedia of Library History. Taylor & Francis, p388. ISBN 0-8240-5787-2 and an influential factor in the development of libraries in America in the beginning of the 20th century. He is best known for the decimal classification system that is used in most public and school libraries. But the decimal system was just one of a long list of innovations. Among them was the idea of the state library as controller of school and public library services within a state.Jim Scheppke, State Librarian (2005). . Written on the occasion of the celebration of the State Library Centennial, January 27, 2005 Retrieved 30 June 2008. Dewey is also known for the creation of hanging vertical files, which were first introduced at the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago.Erik Larson (2003). Devil in the White City. In Boston, Massachusetts, he founded the Library Bureau, a private company "for the definite purpose of furnishing libraries with equipment and supplies of unvarying correctness and reliability."

Dewey Decimal Classification

Spine Books Label show Call Number for [[Dewey Decimal Classification.]]

Immediately after receiving his undergraduate degree he was hired to manage Amherst’s library and reclassify its collections. Dewey worked out a new scheme that superimposed a system of decimal numbers on a structure of knowledge first outlined by Sir Francis Bacon.W.A. Wiegand (1998). "" In: Libraries & Culture. Vol. 33, No. 2, Spring 1998. For his decision to use a decimal system he may have been inspired by two library systems that he includes in the acknowledgements in the first publication of his system in 1876.Comaromi, John Philip. The eighteen editions of the Dewey Decimal Classification. Albany, Forest Press Division, 1976. p. 10. In that preface, and in the following thirteen editions, Dewey cites the card system of Italian publisher Natale Battezzati as "…the most fruitful source of ideas…"Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library, Amherst, Mass., 1876. p. 10

Dewey copyrighted the system in 1876. This system has proved to be enormously influential; though many American libraries have since adopted the classification scheme of the Library of Congress, Dewey’s system remains in widespread use.

American Library Association