Pablo Wegesend
LIS 605
Dr. donna Blair-Mundy
Deep Thought Answer
The two major library classification schemes are the Library of Congress Classification
(LCC) and the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC). Both were made with the North American
library user in mind. While those systems were invited, there probably wasn’t much thought of
implementing them on a worldwide basis. Would it be suitable to implement either the LCC or
the DDC system on a worldwide basis? Let’s investigate those two systems to find out. There are
The Dewey Decimal Classification (DCC) system is widely used in public libraries in the
United States. It is divided into 10 classes, each representing a general academic discipline.
How some of those classes have been sub-divided shows its bias towards the Christian
European-American users.
For example, let’s look under the 200 class, which is for Religion. The 200 - 219 is about
religion in general. Christianity has 220's - 280's all to itself! To find anything specific about
other religions will require looking only under the 290's.
Being that the world has a billion Muslims, and almost a billion who are Hindus or
Buddhists, that's a lot of people whose religions that are warded off in the 290's section. The
DDC would have to make a more even distribution of the religions within the 220's 290's instead of just giving Christianity a near monopoly.
Now let's look under Languages (400's) and Literature (800's). There is an extremely
strong bias towards European languages and literature. For Languages, 420's to 480's are all
about Western and Southern European languages. As for the rest of the world, they are warded
off in the 490's. Major world languages like Russian, Mandarin, Hindi and Arabic are squished
in one section, whereas the less spoken language groups spoken almost exclusively in Europe
(like German, Greek, Latin, and Italian) get a major section to themselves. The same is true in
the Literature section.
In order for the DDC to be viable on a global basis, the DDC would have to put European
languages in one section, and give another section to the African languages, Middle Eastern
languages, probably a section to each different Asian language groups, as well as a section for
indigenous languages of the Americas and the Pacific Islands.
The LCC system was made specifically for the United States Library of Congress. The
system is also used by the majority of academic libraries in the U.S. It is divided into 21 classes,
which all represent an academic discipline(s). The only bias I can see is the bias towards the
Americas (notice the plural -s) is when it comes to History. The History of the Americas has
section E and F, whereas the history for other places has just section D. But that's mostly
because the Library of Congress is there to categorize items for the US.
Other than that, there is not an extreme level of sectioning bias in LCC as there is in
DCC.
Pablo Wegesend
LIS 605
Dr. Donna Blair-Mundy
Extra-credit
Analysis of “Non-Western Languages and Literatures in the Dewey Decimal Classification Scheme”
This journal article starts out with discussing the author’s experience in setting up a school library
in rural South Africa. While organizing the Literature section, the author noticed the ease of finding
English (and other Western languages) on the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) chart. However, the
native language of that region (Xitsonga) was nowhere to be found on the chart. The author then asked
about what message does this send to native African children about how important their culture, language
and traditions are considered by the larger world.
The article goes on to mention about the DDC’s worldwide use (in 135 countries) but yet has an
over-emphasis on Western languages in both the 400s (Languages) and 800s (Literature). An example
mentioned was the French language having an entire subclass (440’s) which are subdivided into 441
(French writing systems), 442 (French etymology), 448 (Standard French usage) and so forth. However,
the Chinese language, which is spoken by more people, doesn’t even have its own subclass. In fact, it
doesn’t even have its own whole number. The Chinese language is classified under 495.1.
The 800’s (Literature) has its own set of issues. Literature is classified under the language it’s
written, then by genre. An example mentioned for Western languages, would by English literature, which
has the subclass 820, which are sub-divided into 821 (English poetry), 822 (English drama), 823 (English
fiction) and so forth.
Because literature is organized by languages, classifying literature from multi-lingual nations has
some major hurdles. The mentioned example would be on South African literature. Literature written in
English would be in the 820’s (its own subclass), Afrikaans under 893.36 (not even a whole number) and
Bantu languages (which are various native African languages spread over multiple countries) under
896.36, meaning a there’s a lot of languages that are sharing a non-whole number. The literatures of
millions are treated as an after-thought.
The Dewey Decimal Classification has an exception to the rule of classifying literature by the
language written. That would be placing American literature under 810, instead of with other Englishlanguage literature under 820. Other nations have used the 810 subclass for their own literature. For
example, several Arabic countries have used 810 for Arabic literature in their libraries.
Even with those adjustments occurring, the author still feels that the Dewey Decimal
Classification system needs an over-all change to “accommodate historically marginalized non-Western
languages and literatures”
Citation:
Kua, Eunice. 2004. "Non-Western Languages and Literatures in the Dewey Decimal Classification
Scheme." Libri: International Journal Of Libraries & Information Services 54, no. 4: 256-265. Library,
Information Science & Technology Abstracts, EBSCOhost (accessed April 30, 2013).