University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Dewey Today: An Analysis of Recent Editions

Cockshutt, Margaret E.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/1777

Description

Title
Dewey Today: An Analysis of Recent Editions
Author(s)
Cockshutt, Margaret E.
Issue Date
1975
Keyword(s)
  • Classification, Dewey decimal
  • Classification
Abstract
Despite the title of this paper, I do not intend to make a detailed analysis of the subject content of recent editions of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). Instead, I shall concentrate on certain classificatory changes within the system, and try to show how these changes seem to spring in part from changes in the editorial development of editions 16-18 of DDC, and in the administrative and editorial frameworks within which the editions appear. In my own research on classification systems, I have become increasingly fascinated by the ways in which the classification systems themselves are determined, shaped and changed by the people who devise and revise them. As has been said many times, the first fourteen editions followed in a largely unbroken line, with some relocations, but basically with expansions. Then came the abortive fifteenth edition. That this edition was recognized as a disaster became obvious with the appearance of the revised fifteenth edition in the following year. This was followed by the contractual arrangement between the Lake Placid Club Education Foundation (LPCEF) and the Library of Congress (LC) that LC should be responsible for the editorial work on future editions, for the length of the contracts. On January 4, 1954, LC began the editorial work, with David Haykin as editor. Benjamin Custer succeeded him as editor in 1956.
Publisher
Graduate School of Library Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Series/Report Name or Number
Allerton Park Institute (21st : 1975)
ISSN
0536-4604
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1777
Copyright and License Information
Copyright owned by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1975.

Owning Collections

1975: Major classification systems : the Dewey Centennial PRIMARY
21st Allerton Park Institute (1975); Edited by Kathryn Luther Henderson