fandomhigh | Libraries and Books: Highlights and Dangers, Tuesday

Class today was meeting at school, and Jon had come early to make sure he could get the equipment hooked up to his laptop. Call it prior bad experiences, but he didn't entirely trust technology to work around him.

He waited until everyone was in, then gestured at the screen. "Today we're going over the Dewey Decimal system. It's a method a lot of libraries around the world use to classify books based on subject and organise them on the shelves. The current guidelines take up multiple volumes, so we obviously won't be covering every last part today."

He pulled up a list of the numbers. "This system uses three-digit numbers for the main classes, then decimals to show further detail. That way they can add any books and subsections they need to without having to renumber the rest of them, and a collection can expand to more shelves without losing coherence. But I'm sure you can spot a few problems with the classifications."

He let them look at it for a minute. "So let's discuss some of those issues, and talk about where books you might want to find should be."

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Organized.

Liberty Hazlett

Kurt Wagner

Belle

Josephine Jones

Tahani al-Jamil

Examine the system.

Can you spot issues with it? What are they?

Are there books you'd like to look for? What section do you think they'd be in?

Kurt thought for a moment then gave his answer to at least one of those questions.

"I think the biggest issue is that some topics or subjects would carry over to multiple sections. Would something about magic be in fiction or in science or something else? Would a book about archeology be with the history books, the science books, or a section all of its own?"

"Archaeology is a subsection of history," Jon answered, "but yes. And if you wanted something on the history of the subject, it might be there or in, say, the nineteenth century section, depending on the focus of the text. It's difficult to simply browse for things.

"And that's to say nothing of the fact that the 200s are nominally 'Religion', but everything up until 290 is focused on Christianity, while other religions are lucky to get a single number apiece."

"It can be difficult deciding where something ought to be if it could go in multiple places, " Belle said. "And sometimes the numbers go on far too long trying to be too specific."

Jon nodded in agreement. "And the more specific you get, the harder it can be to precisely categorize multi-dimensional works. Not to mention, some of the categories are highly problematic. The entire system is extremely Eurocentric, for one thing, treating non-European cultures and practices as something exotic or 'other'."

Libby was struggling a little with this one, because, as far as she could see, barring not having access to what numbers matched with what, she didn't see much of an issue. It seemed organized enough! But she was glad she didn't say anything at first, because once she heard some other opinions on it, she started to see it much better and nodded along with what her classmates said.

Sometimes, it was easy for her to forget just how many books there actually were, and now with that in mind, the thought of cataloguing them all by this method definitely seemed.m)...well, involved at the very least...

He's here!

So many of the problems aren't even inherent in the system, but the way books have been organized in the past. Yikes.

Libraries and Books: Highlights and Dangers, Tuesday

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Listen to the lecture

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Talk to Jon!

OOC!