Basic Principles of Dewey

         

Cataloguing our thoughts, events and important facts on a daily basis presents us with enough trouble that we rely on a myriad of devices and strategies to help guide us through the fray. When it comes to the Dewey Decimal System, guiding library patrons through the myriad of resources relies on a system which categorizes these items into a traceable hierarchy. Once learned and applied, this hierarchy provides academia with a useable framework that can be consistently improved upon depending on the size and extent of a collection.


Dewey did live in a time of progress; however that progression has accelerated over the past fifty years providing libraries with resources that come not only in book form, but in the form of multimedia, periodicals, audio, and video among many. In an academic sense, the DDC sets out to categorize all of these resources under the umbrella of ten main classes and numbers these from zero to nine and filling in necessary gaps with zeros (Multimedia Tour). These classifications help to support academic research and name subject areas such as; 100 Philosophy and Psychology, 200 Religion, 300 Social Sciences, 400 Language, 500 Science, 600 Technology, 700 Arts and Recreation, 800 Literature, 900 History & Geography. If instructed on the use of the DDC properly, the random nature of the numbers makes sense following those simple guidelines. From here, the hierarchical nature of the DDC begins to break down each classification further from broad to specific. For a simplistic breakdown, let’s take 100 Philosophy and Psychology to the next level. Once you have established the area of study you wish to research more about then breakdown this subject a bit further. You may ask which area of Philosophy or Psychology interests me? Perhaps you chose epistemology for instance, the DDC takes over here because it breaks down the 100 Philosophy and Psychology into ten more categories. For instance;


100 Philosophy


110 Metaphysics


120 Epistemology


130 Astrology, Parapsychology & the Occult


140 Philosophical Schools of Thought


150 Psychology


160 Logic


170 Ethics


180 Ancient, Medieval & Eastern Philosophy


190 Modern Western Philosophy


Finally for the purpose of demonstration we will move one more step further and move to the ones spot (000). Epistemology has its own inherent categories and itself can be broken down even further. Even though the level and hierarchy keeps building and building, each specific idea or field of study has its own specific place in the decimal system and once the framework is given for a student, colleague or patron to use they should find what they are looking for with relative ease. If we were to look for information on Epistemology of Self, we would find this in the 126. So it should be noted that although it can seem complex, Dewey created this system to facilitate research which should move from the broad to the complex.


Consequently, this raises yet another question regarding the organization of library collections. We must understand that we build our collections with our patrons in mind, therefore we should ask who uses the Dewey Decimal System and how relevant is it to today’s academic researcher or common library visitor.