Thursday, December 10, 2009

Happy Birthday, Melvil Dewey!

Melvil Dewey biography [OCLC - Educational resources]: "Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey was born on December 10, 1851 to a poor family who lived in a small town in upper New York state. Keenly interested in simplified spelling, he shortened his first name to Melvil as a young adult, dropped his middle names and, for a short time, even spelled his last name as Dui.

Dewey invented the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system when he was 21 and 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.”"

1 comment:

Cap'n Bob said...

I'd call him The Father of Annoying Grade School Topics. I remember having to study the DDC and hating every minute of it. Maybe that's why I'm such a poor library ppatron.