108 - The Dark Side of the Dewey Decimal System

The Kitchen Sisters Present

The Kitchen Sisters & Radiotopia

Society & Culture

4.6 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2019

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvil Dewey, the father of library science and the inventor of the most popular library classification system in the world, was a known racist and serial sexual harasser. Forced out of the American Library Association, which he co-founded, his 19th century world view and biases are reflected in the classification system that libraries around the world have inherited.

Molly Schwartz of the Metropolitan New York Library Council and producer of the podcast Library Bytegeist visits Bard High School Early College in Queens to find out about how students there are rebelling against the Dewey Decimal System. She also talks with Greg Cotton (Cornell College), Barbara Fister (Gustavus Adolphus College), and Dorothy Berry (Umbra Search Project).

Transcript

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1:07.0	go to Radiotopia. F.M. slash Donate. I couldn't believe the rabbit hole that I fell down. This all happened because I was
1:20.1	kind of bemoaning the fact that every time you say you go to library school, like when you're at a party and you're like,
1:24.4	I'm a librarian or I have a degree in library science, everyone, one of the first things I say is,
1:28.4	do you know the Dewey Decimal System?
1:30.0	Libraries?
1:31.0	Doey Decimal System. It's the first thing people think of.
	...

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