Current Events > Dewey Decimal was the dumbest idea.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Why not just put "History" on the aisle instead

Whos Dewey?

Most people probably never needed to bother with it but there were some absolutely massive libraries and just putting "History" on an aisle would be about as helpful as putting up a sign that said "Abraham Lincoln's biography is in here somewhere"

These days you can basically just search libraries by ISBN which is even more obtuse than Dewey Decimal but the computer does all the heavy lifting for you.

Whos Dewey?

Dont you know the Dewey Decimal System!?
Gets cut in half

It's a shame there's no such thing as putting smaller signs below the big one that says history.

It's a shame there's no such thing as putting smaller signs below the big one that says history.

Dont you know the Dewey Decimal System!?
Gets cut in half

It was made before computers were popular and you didnt memorize the codes. You just went to the card catalog in the library and searched for whatever you wanted to read.

• Gettin' money!
• Gettin' p***y
• And the DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM

So like just stick hundreds of signs everywhere? That's your solution?

Dewey is actually a brilliant mind and over 100 years ahead of the time when thinking about education and learning.

Is this topic serious?

It can't be, because if so, it's really really dumb.

also, history of what? how you gonna find your books?

o just alphabetical by country name? so is America under A or U? China under China or People's Republic? Japan under J or N? You're just gonna throw the French history books in the same section? Are the American history books written in French filed under E? What about Persia? are those under I or P?

should the history of can manufacturing be next to the world history books?

Gracious.

They should put all the people who can't figure out putting smaller signs below the big sign in their own library, with an archaic numerical indexing system so anybody who wants to find them has to jump through hoops to do it.

Ok, so one last post to figure out how serious you are.

When I go to the "American History" section that is marked with one sign.. do you know how long it's going to take me to find the one book I want to read? Like there's hundred and hundreds and hundreds (if not thousands) of "American History" books. Do you know how many fucking signs you'd have to put up to make it easier to find the specific book I'm looking for than just finding what the code would be and easily finding it?

I mean, somebody is putting those dumb stickers on the spine. There's no way putting up "fucking signs" is more tedious.

Ok, so you don't have an answer.

Cool.

Sebody above said more than 4000.

You think there are fewer books than that to put stickers on?

Over 4000 pages

Ah, I see I misread.

But you really wouldn't have to put that many up. Once you get to a couple dozen books per division, that would be good enough.

You know, why are we making this equivalence anyway? I said it was a dumb idea to begin with. There would be no DD system to put up signs in exact recreation of anyway. It would just be the history section, then the American history section, then the civil war section, etc until you've narrowed it down to like five feet of shelf a piece or whatever granularity your library wants to do.

Dont you know the Dewey Decimal System!?
Gets cut in half

What if we made it like super granular? Like what if the signs were so small that you can nail them right onto the book? Well ok you can't nail books we'd have to use something else to affix the sign like some kind of adhesive. And the signs might be too hard to read so we can just index them all in an easier to read catalogue of every history book that we can put right outside the aisle with the sign that says history.

Sounds dumb. I'd rather just follow the signs than have to look stuff up in a book. What if someone else is using the book? What if there's a line, even? Why would you want signs that are hard to read?

"dude, i spent like ten whole minutes thinking about this and i am really smart. i think i know more than hundreds of librarians who spent years studying how to catalog and classify materials"

I feel like it's extremely important to know for certain that the book you're looking for isn't there immediately rather than spend hours inspecting the history aisle to come to the same conclusion.

"dude, i spent like ten whole minutes thinking about this and i am really smart. i think i know more than hundreds of librarians who spent years studying how to catalog and classify materials"

And we're back to assuming the only word in the library is "history."