The Dewey Dilemma

Abstract

There is no doubt the library world is in a dilemma about Dewey, but the system is hardly dead. In his 2007 book, Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger said bluntly, "It can't be fixed." In spite of that, Dewey is currently the most widely used classification system in the world, employed in 138 countries by over 200,000 libraries. But the Perry Branch Rebellion and experiments in serving both browsers and "grab-and-go" patrons have spurred a spirited discussion of how to make a singular knowledge system work in a world full of miscellany. In this article, the author describes how libraries find ways to classify books easily. (Contains 1 table, 1 chart and 29 resources.)