Monday, July 22, 2013

Is the Dewey Decimal System Dead?

I don't agree with Weinberger's statement that Dewey's system is fundamentally flawed.  I think that Dewey's system does as good a job as any classification system can, given that knowledge and the perspective of knowledge is always changing.  Look at Linnaeus' taxonomy system, which morphed into cladistics.  The scientific world strives to organize and classify organisms also, and they too have had to change their nomenclature and their categories to accommodate new information.  Any classification system is going to have to evolve as knowledge expands.

What libraries need to do is to recognize this and concur on one universal system, whether it be the Library of Congress Classification System, Dewey Decimal System, or any other logical system.  Librarians must acknowledge that the world is not composed solely of Judeo-Christian cultures, and lead the way into a global platform that allows all information to be categorized under one umbrella system.  What is that system?  I don't know.  Perhaps RDA will allow enough flexibility to embrace other languages, other religions, and other viewpoints.  We shall see.

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