Goal is to use, at least as a starting point, an existing leading library classification system. For my tags and folders for all my data resources.
- Universal Decimal Classification looks great, but its €300 a year
- The Library of congress classification system seems open. But can only find pdfs, word docs. No spreadsheets or XML files, a bit manual. But main problem is doesn't seem to have many entries.
- Perhaps there's open foreign language ones, that have english translations? The german RVK is open and is seems a rich resource. Just doesn't seem to have a English translation. If you use the online version in the Chrome, you get real-time google translated version. Maybe somebody can translate the XML?!
Its seems crazy to me there isn't a leading open system. Would save humanity soo much time having an open standard.
I've been using the Wikipedia "List of Dewey Decimal classes" but I was wondering if there was anything else that would be more detailed, yet easier to use. Thanks in advance!
Hello my fellow book hoarders! I have over time collected hella books (over 7000 as of today) of different academic and other topics (but a lot of law books since thats my field), and for the longest time I'v organised them by general topic. For ease of searching, im thinking I'll add in a classification system, and obv my first thought was the DDC. What do you guys think? Any tips on how to get started or suggestions on how I should organise my data?
I looked online, but can't find anything. And putting 900+ strings in a list is not appealing to me.
I have been feeling super reticent about announcing on social media, but for some reason, I decided today was the day and I'd just go for it but keep it short and sweet: http://imgur.com/2nboEF0
I'm a school librarian and I couldn't resist digging out some old checkout cards for this (618.178 = "pregnancy after infertility"). The full picture underneath the card actually shows the 2 embryos we transferred, but I obscured one so people wouldn't be like OMG TWINS because it's not twins.
So far I've had a lot of positive responses and one friend (who I didn't even know was trying) messaged me to say that they are struggling and she just had a miscarriage. So while I was very self-conscious about posting anything related to IF, that one message makes me glad that I did. :)
I’m looking to learn some more about the universe and how it works. The physical and metaphysical. I own this book in which describes the Dewey Decimal classification in detail. 118, the metaphysical concept of force and energy, is at the peak of my current interest. Unfortunately, no library in my area carries a single book on this subject. I’ve tried using the Advanced search option by way of narrowing down search results to this specific Call Number. So now I’m turning to the internet and other resources for help on this.
What are some books about the metaphysical nature of “force and energy”. Classification 118 on the Dewey Decimal system.
While I unreservedly advocate for Universal Decimal, it is as I have noted in the past, not entirely flawless. In this submission I'm going to write about one of those defects and outline an idea for correcting it.
Universal Decimal (UDC) and Dewey both place computer science (and technology) in 004. This is the "0" top level category which is "general works" or "knowledge in general"... somewhat flattering if you this happens to be one of your favorite subjects. Even astronomy and physics go in the 500s, but computer science is so fundamental to everything that it gets the very first category (and near the top of it, for that matter).
Now, for those of you who are less familiar with computer science, it may be related to computer programming but this isn't what it's about. Computer science is a branch of mathematics in a very profound way. It deals with the idea of just what sorts of things can be calculated (the notion of computability), and how quickly they might be calculated, among other things. Mathematics is a 500 area topic (51x to be specific), and it seems strange to not include it there. Then again, UDC doesn't cal 004 just computer science either, but lumps in "computer technology" with it. Computer science in the 500s would certainly have the Church-Turing thesis stuff, but it'd be much more difficult to convince anyone that Learn Java in 21 Days belongs there with it.
There's no reason to ridicule those who originally designed it this way. They were working on of Dewey, and the Dewey system pre-dates the whole field of computer science, which for the most part wasn't defined for several more decades. The mathematics area was quite full already, and for those unfamiliar with the field, it might not have been clear that it even fit there. But whatever the actual explanation, if 004 is corrected, it would allow us to fit nearly every computer science/technology/engineering title into the same place, in a way that would be very convenient to anyone who was interested in using the library for those topics.
So just what's wrong with it as it is in the official version?
Note: Sorry about these being screenshots, wasn't any other good way to show this.
Right from the beginning it looks like a grab bag of computer jargon, without any care taken to choose topics on which works (be they books, articles, journals or whatnot) might actually be written. Take 004.032.324 for instance... do we expect there
... keep reading on reddit ➡Apparently, Dewey was a quirky, complicated, controversial guy. I'm starting a new podcast, and for the first episode I'm covering Dewey's Decimal Classification system and Dewey's life. Are there any librarians or biographers here who have deep knowledge of Dewey's life story?
I'm hoping to do a Skype or phone interview to include in the podcast.
Thanks!
Even if I were going to live forever with my e-book collection, I can't find anything. Let's assume that I can copy all of them to some NAS so that I can start to organize them on that NAS. I still have the problem of categorizing them.
I could try to reproduce the Dewey Decimal System and learn to file them under it. (From what I can tell, it looks pretty easy to grasp the basics.) I have got to think that such a simple-minded approach has already been tried by thousands of amateur e-book hoarders. Thus I have got to think that among all the folks who have tried this approach, at least one of them has stumbled upon a better way. Maybe someone here has already dealt with this problem and can tell me a better method than the Dewey Decimal System.
Edit:
Although Calibre might be an interface to the system, I was thinking that I might need to install some kind of open-source freeware content management system along the lines of Omeka:
https://omeka.org/classic/docs/
Edit 2:
Thanks to the many informative commenters who linked to resources such as:
https://www.reddit.com/r/datacurator/comments/mms3gp/do_the_dewey_for_your_calibre_library/
I now realize that I should re-learn how to use Calibre and its plugins before I start any major e-book re-organization projects!
