Melvil dewey biography library

Publication: in two editions full version and abridged version. Basis: Based on the bank model. First Edition: Published in Published by an anonymous name. Total Pages Role in 12 pages. Schedule in 12 pages. Lake Placid Club and other reforms [ edit ]. Controversies [ edit ]. Sexual harassment [ edit ].

Melvil dewey biography library

Antisemitism and racism [ edit ]. American Library Association medal [ edit ]. Selected publications [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. World Encyclopedia of Library and Information Services 3rd ed. Chicago: America Library Association. ISBN Wilson Library Bulletin. Archived from the original PDF on October 10, Irrepressible reformer : a biography of Melvil Dewey.

Chicago: American Library Association. In: Library World Vols 70—72, Grafton eds , pp. American Library Association. Melvil Dewey dead in Florida". The New York Times. December 27, Archived from the original on October 15, Retrieved April 3, Davis Encyclopedia of Library History. Archived from the original on April 10, Archived from the original on July 13, Retrieved July 4, Devil in the White City.

ALA Archives. Retrieved 25 March The eighteen editions of the Dewey Decimal Classification. Albany, Forest Press Division, Library of Congress. Training for Librarianship Before Chicago: American Library Association, Rubin, Foundations of Library and Information Science. New York: Neal-Schuman, c, p. The Library: An Illustrated History.

New York: Skyhorse Publishing. Metric Association Newsletter , vol. In , Dewey began working in the college library. There he discovered a site for his reforming interests, which by that time had also extended to simplified spelling, use of shorthand, and metric conversion. After he graduated in , Amherst College hired Dewey to manage the library and reclassify the collections.

For two years Dewey worked out a new scheme that superimposed a system of decimals on a structure of knowledge first outlined by Sir Francis Bacon and later modified by William Torrey Harris. He also became managing editor of a new periodical— Library Journal —which was introduced in October at the first ALA conference. For each organization, Dewey also authored a constitution and served as the first secretary, a post from which he exercised close control.

Lacking sufficient capital to push for reforms, however, Dewey soon merged the treasuries of all of these organizations into a single account and without informing any of them used that account as collateral against which to borrow money to fund initiatives that he was pushing in each. In , when other RWEC investors discovered what he was doing, they obtained a court injunction that denied him access to these funds.

Because the injunction prevented him from accessing the accounts of reform organizations he had founded, he had to tell them about his unorthodox business practices. An out-of-court settlement enabled him to restore access to organizational treasuries, but by that time "Dui" in he had changed the spelling of his last name to a more simplified, phonetically accurate form had lost substantial credibility with all of the organizations.

In March , he established the Library Bureau and, as president, resumed efforts to increase the efficiency of library services and to advance spelling and metric reform. In May , "Dewey" became librarian-in-chief at Columbia College, an all-male institution, and, at the urging of his new employers, reverted to the original spelling of his name.

Quickly implementing changes that he had been marketing through the Library Bureau, Dewey consolidated, by , more than fifty thousand poorly cataloged and lightly used volumes housed in nine separate campus locations into a central facility classified by the decimal system. In January of that year, Dewey opened the world's first library school, and against the opposition of many faculty members and most of the university board members, he included seventeen women in the first class of twenty students.

All parties also agreed to let Dewey move the library school with him to Albany. As secretary, Dewey crafted his office into a powerful force to lobby the legislature for higher education, to increase funding for New York libraries, and to eliminate bogus diploma mills. To help with this endeavor, he organized the New York Library Association in , set up extension sites in public libraries, and created departments within the State Library that provided traveling and interlibrary loan services and issued bibliographies of "best books" recommended for purchase by local libraries.

In , Dewey convinced the legislature to provide matching grants to the public libraries of New York if their collections passed inspection by a State Library employee. Because he irritated a number of politicians in the process of pushing for all these reforms, he also became an obstacle to efforts to merge New York's separately run common school and higher education systems.

In part to remove himself from unification politics and in part because he wanted to avoid charges of conflict of interest for helping a family member whose proprietary school operated in violation of a university charter that Dewey had responsibility for enforcing , he resigned as secretary of the USNY in However, he remained the state librarian.

While in Albany, Dewey did not neglect his other reform interests. As president of the American Library Association in , he organized an annual conference for the Chicago World's Fair that exhibited a 5,title "model library" that his New York Library School students and faculty had put together. He also played a pivotal role in the establishment of the American Library Association A.

This institution became the world's first specialized educational facility dedicated to training librarians. He also simultaneously supervised the University of the State of New York's library from Melvil Dewey's contributions to the field of librarianship were immeasurable.