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Dewey Decimal Classification: A Practical Guide
Book by Chan, Lois Mai, Comaromi, John P., Satija, Mohinder Partap
- GenresReference
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1994
9 people want to read
About the author
Lois Mai Chan
23 books9 followersLois Mai Chan is Professor of Library and Information Science at the University of Kentucky.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 9, 2023
This introduction to the Dewey Decimal system is now ridiculously outdated, but was still sitting in my employer’s “professional” collection, so I decided to look it over for giggles. It does have some merit, mostly as a historical document, but must be read with its dated nature in mind. Published in 1996, its rules apply to the twentieth edition of Dewey Decimal, while the system is now on its 23rd (and evidently last) edition; an online version that is automatically updated on a continuing basis.
As I mentioned in my review of “A Handbook of History, Theory and Practice of the Dewey Decimal Classification System,” this new system of updates makes it impossible to publish a book with exercises that map to the current edition. That was not so in 1996, and this book does include an impressive array of self-gradable number building assignments. The problem, of course, is that to get all of the answers right, you need to have a copy of the 20th edition to hand. I had a copy of the 22nd to work with, and most of the time it worked – but I still got something like a less than 50% score because number-building is REALLY HARD, which is exactly why practice exercises and answer keys are valuable. Of course, from a practical point of view, I will never really have to do it for my job, because copy cataloging is the standard and we use the abridged version of Dewey anyway, but I appreciated getting the chance to practice and improve a bit.
All of the authors of this manual were heavy-hitters in their day, and one (Satija) is still with us and contributing to recent literature (such as the aforementioned Handbook). Joan Mitchell was to all intents and purposes “in charge” of the Dewey Decimal system at the time and one sees the others names pretty frequently in papers and books for years afterword. This is part of what I mean about the historical value of the book; it gives you a sense of how some of the most influential people in developing the system thought it should be instructed at a time when the transition from card catalogs to OPACs and ILS’s was just getting going. Obviously, this is only of value to specialists and library nerds, and it doesn’t help that the writing is about as dry as the Gobi desert, but I’m glad I powered through it anyway.
As I mentioned in my review of “A Handbook of History, Theory and Practice of the Dewey Decimal Classification System,” this new system of updates makes it impossible to publish a book with exercises that map to the current edition. That was not so in 1996, and this book does include an impressive array of self-gradable number building assignments. The problem, of course, is that to get all of the answers right, you need to have a copy of the 20th edition to hand. I had a copy of the 22nd to work with, and most of the time it worked – but I still got something like a less than 50% score because number-building is REALLY HARD, which is exactly why practice exercises and answer keys are valuable. Of course, from a practical point of view, I will never really have to do it for my job, because copy cataloging is the standard and we use the abridged version of Dewey anyway, but I appreciated getting the chance to practice and improve a bit.
All of the authors of this manual were heavy-hitters in their day, and one (Satija) is still with us and contributing to recent literature (such as the aforementioned Handbook). Joan Mitchell was to all intents and purposes “in charge” of the Dewey Decimal system at the time and one sees the others names pretty frequently in papers and books for years afterword. This is part of what I mean about the historical value of the book; it gives you a sense of how some of the most influential people in developing the system thought it should be instructed at a time when the transition from card catalogs to OPACs and ILS’s was just getting going. Obviously, this is only of value to specialists and library nerds, and it doesn’t help that the writing is about as dry as the Gobi desert, but I’m glad I powered through it anyway.
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May 11, 2023(letto una brutta traduzione italiana aggiornata a DDC 21)
January 21, 2021
It feels weird to rate this book, but it prevented me from losing my mind during a cataloguing assignment, so yay?
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews