|
|
Melville
Louis Kossuth Dewey was born on December 10, 1851. His family was poor, and
lived in a small town in upper New York State. Later he cut his first name to Melvil, dropped his middle names and, for a short time, even spelled his last
name as Dui. He invented the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system, the classification system that bears his name, when he was twenty-one and was working as a student assistant in the library of Amherst College. His work created a revolution in library science and set in motion a new era of librarianship. Melvil Dewey well deserves the title of father of modern librarianship. |
Dewey
changed librarianship from a vocation to a modern profession. He helped
establish the American Library Association (ALA) in 1876; he was secretary of
ALA from 1876 to 1890 and president during the 1890/1891 and 1892/1893 terms. He
co-founded and edited Library
Journal.
He was a promoter of library standards and formed a company to sell library
supplies, which eventually became the Library Bureau. He was a pioneer in
library education. In 1883, Dewey became the librarian of Columbia College (now
Columbia University) in New York City. While there, he founded the first ever
library school on January 1, 1887. In December 1889, he became the director of
the New York State Library at Albany, retiring from that position in 1906.
His
range of knowledge and work was wide and varied. He was a pioneer in the
creation of career opportunities for women. In his later years he helped create
the Lake Placid Club, a leisure center in the Adirondacks. Dewey was also a
spelling reformer. Some of the early editions of his classification scheme were
presented in reformed spelling, and his original introduction written in
reformed spelling was reprinted in the Dewey Decimal Classification through
Edition 18.
Dewey died
from a stroke on December 26, 1931. Seven decades after his death, he is still
primarily known for the Dewey Decimal Classification, the most widely used
library classification scheme in the world.
