I think it important to evaluate any type of research tool by the principles that are proposed in thorough research. Since the Dewey Decimal System was created to facilitate academic research and academic library browsing with its established hierarchy, the principle of bias should be taken into account. Although Dewey is fairly straight forward, there is one area in particular that is of particular concern regarding the DDC and its bias towards some types of resources.
In regard to bias, every library is going to have a certain type of resource that they may specialize in simply because of the type of patronage they have to their establishment. Another factor that may play a role are the administrators, collectors, curators and library staff that run the said library and their particular educational background. As I have made mention of before, Melvil Dewey was the product of up-state New York in the mid 1800’s and would have been very Western-Centric. This was a time period where American’s believed in manifest destiny, or the belief that God destined our country to expand across the globe. This combined with the collection Dewey had at hand at Amherst College to experiment with his new categorization method, led to some inherent bias in the DDC. Lynch and Mulero (2007) elaborate further noting that, “…Dewey had a strong classification bias when it was created. There was an emphasis on topics like Christianity and American history, for example, and not enough on Eastern religions and on history outside of the American experience” (p.1). Keep in mind that the emphasis they speak of is not on the literature itself, but on the hierarchy that was established. Unfortunately, this bias is reality and has changed over the twenty revisions made the DDC since its creation. Systems are the product of the time period they were created and the people who devised them, and the Dewey Decimal System is a perfect example of this.
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