Why Aren't Library Cataloging Systems Uniform?

Factual Questions
1

In elementary school, junior high school, and high school, the libraries I used utilized the Dewey Decimal System. Then I got to college, where the Library of Congress System was used (and my local school district, Og love 'em, apparently didn’t think that “college prep” necessitated teaching us about the library system used in colleges, so I was lost when I first go to college). Now I’m a regular patron of a public lending library, which utilizes… the Dewey Decimal System.

Is there a reason public lending libraries (and school libraries, for that matter) don’t use the Library of Congress system?

2

A number of college libraries use Dewey as well-- someone else can explain why better (we have a pile of MLSes on the board I think: I suspect that each system makes sense for a kind of subject matter (in a city public library it’s probably not necessary to dedicate a section of cataloging for late Byzantine paleography).
Just be happy you’re not in Europe-- I did a lot of work at some European universities at which there would be, for example, 35 separate libraries, all with their own completely bizarre, baroque cataloging system (oh, no, on the fourth floor here this is the Renaissance and Early Modern Department’s Library! They do things different down in the Medieval History Department’s library. . ."

3

From the dope: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mdeweydecimal.html

At the end is a comparison of Dewey and LC.
Very end: “In sum, DDC uses fewer categories and sub-classifications and is consistent across disciplines, while LCC is more highly subdivided with no consistency between disciplines. It’s understandable, therefore, that DDC has proven more useful to libraries catering to a wide range of needs such as public libraries and schools, while LCC is more widely used in libraries focused more on technical areas like colleges, universities, and government.”

There are more classification systems out there. I have to work with the National Library of Medicine Classification which fits in/around LC, but I’m not fond of it.

4

IIRC, the LoC system differentiates between different formats of the same book (a softcover version and a hardcover version of the same title will have different call numbers, as will the large-print version), while the DDS will not? That’s helpful in some cases.

5

I could probably have explained this very well back during my cataloging class, but it boils down to: it works better that way. LoC is suited to complex, detailed, academic-y collections, and Dewey works well for broad collections for laypeople.

There are lots of other cataloging systems–back in the old days you’d just identify books by what shelf they lived on or who they first belonged to, and across the pond lots of older libraries still use the same methods they’ve been using for the past few centuries.

There are new systems that are supposed to be more multi-faceted or more complete–Dewey certainly has some serious problems, since it’s a Victorian invention that has to be forced to accomodate modern collections. (Computer books? Squished into the 000s. Dewey designed a detailed, expansive system for cataloging books on particular aspects of Christianity, and stuck almost all the other religions into a little teeny section at the end. And so on.)

And of course in other countries and languages they’ve come up with their own systems.

6

The usual answer you get to explain why (as a rule) academic libraries use LC* and (as a rule) public libraries use Dewey is this: Dewey is better for casual browsing, because books on similar subjects are usually close together, where LC is better for research because it’s designed for researchers.

Most of the hardcore research I did using LC was in undergrad, when I was an English major, so all I can say from experience is that it’s very helpful to have the books about Yeats right next to the books by Yeats. (Dewey wouldn’t do it that way: Yeats’ poetry would be in the 821s with the other “British poetry,” his plays would be in the 822s with the other “British drama,” and criticism and interpretation would be all the way over in the 804s with the other criticism and interpretation.)

Knead
One of the SDMB’s resident liberrians

*not LoC, BTW

7

[QUOTE=HeyHomie]
In elementary school, junior high school, and high school, the libraries I used utilized the Dewey Decimal System. Then I got to college, where the Library of Congress System was used (and my local school district, Og love 'em, apparently didn’t think that “college prep” necessitated teaching us about the library system used in colleges, so I was lost when I first go to college). Now I’m a regular patron of a public lending library, which utilizes… the Dewey Decimal System.

Is there a reason public lending libraries (and school libraries, for that matter) don’t use the Library of Congress system?
[/QUOTE]

My college library used LoC. As others have said, it’s well-suited to a focused collection. DDC covers more.

Notice, though, that we don’t really need a classification system for books any more.

In the days before card catalogs, a classification system helped you go to the books for the subjects you wanted to find. Of course, that’s really all you could do; you couldn’t find a book by author or title unless you knew the subject.

Couldn’t you just use a card catalog and index everything including subject? You could then simple number the books as they came in and find them entirely by the card catalog! Well, in the days before computers, people liked to browse through the books themselves.

Who decides how to classify a book? Who decides how to fill out a card catalog? In the old days, that’s why you went to library school. In the 1953 film “War of the Worlds”, the heroine’s claim to intelligence is that she has a master’s in library science. Oh wow.

You could now, with computers, store books away from the readers and do all the classification/indexing by computer. You can still browse, in fact faster and from the comfort of your house. Mebbe this is the wave of the future.

8

[QUOTE=633squadron]
You could now, with computers, store books away from the readers and do all the classification/indexing by computer. You can still browse, in fact faster and from the comfort of your house. Mebbe this is the wave of the future.
[/QUOTE]

With all due respect, you couldn’t be more wrong on your wrongest day with a wronging machine.

What you’re describing is called “closed stacks” and the chances of that making a comeback in the public library setting are about as good as the chances of me hitting .400 in the majors. The general public have over 100 years of tradition of browsing shelves for books that interest them under their belts, and that’s not going to change any time soon.

9

[QUOTE=KneadToKnow]
books that interest them under their belts
[/QUOTE]

That didn’t come out quite as I intended. :slight_smile:

10

Most public libraries I’ve been in also file novels alphabetically by author’s last name. This causes confusion in college with people used to DDC as they’ll ask “where are your novels?” (reasonable question) and the answer is “mostly in the P’s but you’ll need to know the call number to find a particular one”. Public libraries are more set up for browsing while academic are more set up for surgical strikes and “if this book on Navaho religion is in this section others on Navaho and native American religions should be in the same general area” highly specific searches.

I have always wondered if the fact that the Bible and Bible commentaries are filed under BS was a cruel joke somewhere along the line.

11

Yeah, I remember now. It’s been 30 years. I must have suffered a LofC.

12

There’s a really practical reason to use LC in a very specific collection - the more specific a book is, the more slender it is likely to be. In Dewey, when you want to make a number more specific, you make it longer. See the problem?

LC is much, much easier to keep in your mind in the stacks, too, for what that’s worth. They’re shorter and the combination of letters and numbers makes it much easier to understand the number - there’s the “general location”, which is the letters, and then there’s the numbers, and then the Cutter. You don’t get, for example, this Dewey call number I just picked up as a random example in a nonspecialized public library - 641.5088288 Hal. Also, LC gives you the year, which is useful in research.

There are indeed research libraries that use Dewey - I believe New York Public’s research branch is one of them. It must be a huge pain in the ass.

13

There’s also SuDocs, a classification system for government documents that’s different altogether. Among other things that (understandably) confuse patrons, it uses no decimals, so the call number He 23.532.3/5 every “.” is a period, meaning numbers following are whole numbers. The 3/5 at the end means this is the 3rd item in a 5 item series. He means it was issued by the Department of Health as all items are filed under issuing agency.

14

Despite KneadToKnow’s comments, there is a trend towards letting people browse using their computers and request books online and have them delivered to their home libraries. This is true regardless of whether the home library is a public library or a research library. The details of what you can get vary, but there is certainly a trend towards collaborative collection development–where once a librarian would have to pick 4 books out of 25 on a subject at random, so all nearby libraries might have the same 4 books, but now several nearby libraries and pick and choose such that most of those 25 books would be owned by one library or another, and accessible to all users in the system.

On the other hand, I agree that computers do not eliminate the need for an effective classification system. And I also agree that both the Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal systems have some quirks which show the needs/preconceptions of their originators (Thomas Jefferson and Melvil Dewey) despite the efforts of late librarians to accommodate changing times and subject matters.

15

[QUOTE=Eureka]
And I also agree that both the Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal systems have some quirks which show the needs/preconceptions of their originators (Thomas Jefferson and Melvil Dewey) despite the efforts of late librarians to accommodate changing times and subject matters.
[/QUOTE]

The mention of Jefferson brings another point. When he sold his personal library to form the nucleus of the Library of Congress in 1814, he had probably the finest and one of the largest private libraries in America. It numbered less than 7,000 volumes (he sold 6,487 for $23,950*), many if not most of which were not in English (French, Latin, and Greek being the most common other languages) which today of course is outnumbered by most library branches.

*Jefferson’s classification system inspired the doors of the LoC as he initially filed everything first under the headings of IMAGINATION and MEMORY (later adding REASON as a third category. The Imagination door is a Greek with a lyre, the Memory door is a woman holding the helmet of her dead husband.
The Jefferson Building of the LoC has hundreds of sayings (from poems, scriptures, proverbs, plays, diaries, etc.) painted or carved or plastered on its walls. (It’s one of the most gorgeous buildings in the nation if you’ve never been there, incidentally, and if there really is anything like a Da Vinci Code/National Treasure hidden message this is where it would be- lots of little jokes in the paintings.) An irony is that one that’s particularly prominent and appears on ornaments/T-shirts/bookmarks/etc. in the gift shop is Jefferson’s “I cannot live without books”, a sad irony since… apparently he could or you wouldn’t be in the gift shop of the Jefferson building.

16

[QUOTE=KneadToKnow]
With all due respect, you couldn’t be more wrong on your wrongest day with a wronging machine.

What you’re describing is called “closed stacks” and the chances of that making a comeback in the public library setting are about as good as the chances of me hitting .400 in the majors. The general public have over 100 years of tradition of browsing shelves for books that interest them under their belts, and that’s not going to change any time soon.
[/QUOTE]
Although not a public library, the University of Chicago recently announced a shiny new closed-stack addition to their main library. The system will use a robotic crane to retreive bins containing the books from underground storage racks. We’ll see how well it works out.

17

[QUOTE=Eureka]
Despite KneadToKnow’s comments, there is a trend towards letting people browse using their computers and request books online and have them delivered to their home libraries. This is true regardless of whether the home library is a public library or a research library.
[/quote]

I must have misunderstood what I commented on. If this was what was meant, I apologize. This describes inter-library loan, which is and has been for a long time a cornerstone of library services. I understood the comment I quoted to mean that collections could be kept inaccessible to patrons’, who would find what they wanted by searching the catalog, request it at a desk, and have it handed to them.

My apologies if I mis-read.

18

[QUOTE=KneadToKnow]
I must have misunderstood what I commented on. If this was what was meant, I apologize. This describes inter-library loan, which is and has been for a long time a cornerstone of library services. I understood the comment I quoted to mean that collections could be kept inaccessible to patrons’, who would find what they wanted by searching the catalog, request it at a desk, and have it handed to them.

My apologies if I mis-read.
[/QUOTE]

I’m not sure you misunderstood, but I do think you over-reacted. The post you responded to suggested that with the advent of computers there is no need for traditional classification systems, and doesn’t show any appreciation that computer-based browsing is NOT generally an equivalent experience to browsing the stacks in person.

But closed stacks for older, seldom-used materials are a solution to the problem that many research libraries have of continually increasing collections but no space/money for more shelves. And many academic libraries must deal with decreased foot traffic, and increased demand for high-priced full text journals. There are certainly aspects of truth to the suggestion that computers help enable patrons to be less dependent on classification systems to be able to locate materials of interest than they once were.

19

[QUOTE=MikeS]
Although not a public library, the University of Chicago recently announced a shiny new closed-stack addition to their main library. The system will use a robotic crane to retreive bins containing the books from underground storage racks. We’ll see how well it works out.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, we have that at the university - it allows for excellent archival storage for books that don’t get pulled much.

If you’ve ever noticed that, say, non-Western stuff tends to have loooong call numbers, or that computer science crams a lot of books into a not very wide range of numbers, or a lot of stuff like that in a business library, that’s because of the age and idiosyncrasies of Jefferson and Dewey. A lot of what we collect extremely heavily in is essentially in categories labeled “Other”, which is a drawback of picking a system and then letting time march on.

20

[QUOTE=dangermom]
…Dewey designed a detailed, expansive system for cataloging books on particular aspects of Christianity, and stuck almost all the other religions into a little teeny section at the end. And so on.)…
[/QUOTE]

Don’t libraries owned by Jewish groups use the sections Dewey designated for Christianity to catalog Jewish subjects and cram Christianity in with everything else?