Noah Counte

Order Begets Order.

People like order. Of course, some like more order than others. I think we can agree, though, that any trip to the library is made less irritating by the fact that they've shelved the books in a way that permits you to find what you are looking for. Most public libraries in the United States use the Dewey Decimal system. It's named after Melvil Dewey, a 19th Century librarian with a need for order and an eye for the ladies. Rumor has it that he had a librarian in every port. It's brilliant, if you ask me, that a man should go into librarianship at a time when every librarian in the country was a woman. Dewey was a librarian and an educator. His major contribution to libraries was to create order -- . He also was a proponent of spelling reform, and is responsible for such American English innovations as the spelling of "catalog" (versus "catalogue").

The Dewey Decimal Classification is so called, because it divides all knowledge into ten divisions, which are further divided into ten divisions, which are further divided into ten more divisions. If two books share a number (based on the divisions), they are separated alphabetically by author. As you might guess, a system designed in the 19th century by one man poses some problems. The 200s are Religion, and originally Christianity was a top level division, while all other religions were sub-divisions. That means that 200-289 was to Christianity, while all the other religions of the world shared just 290-299. Sure, you can cram it all in, but it's a bias. The Classification has been changed 22 times since its inception in 1876, but it remains Christian-centric (and male-centric, and Ameri/Euro-centric, among other things).

The Dewey Decimal Classification stops subdividing at the third level. But classification demands more classification. Think about all the images on your hard drive. You might divide them into people, plants and things. That might make them more manageable, but soon you'd need to separate friends from family, birthday celebrations from funerals, trees from flowers, cars from buildings... If it can be classified, you can bet someone's tried it. The point is, the more stuff you add to your collection, the more the stuff you have suggests ways to further separate your stuff from the other stuff you have.

And subdivision creates confusion, because no order fits all materials perfectly and the more specific your order gets, the harder it is to fit general items. Does that picture of a Jerusalem artichoke go with your pictures of foods or your pictures of flowers? Does Chekhov's "Strange Confessions" land in Russian Lit. or Detective Fiction? Is Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" 19th Century Lit. or does it belong in the Travel Section, beside "Gulliver's Travels," perhaps? For everyone who expects to find it in one place, there will be someone who is upset not to find it in the other.

Why? Because order imputes a world view. Finding something in the "wrong" place challenges our world view, and it's much easier to complain about mis-shelving or mis-cataloging, than it is to think about why we want to find things in a particular place that makes sense to us. Everyone should share our sense of what makes sense!

There are an infinite number of ways to order things. Islamic libraries in the late middle ages used a purely alphabetical system. Chinese libraries have used symbols to divide the universe for at least two millennia - and inside their broad categories, they've used some interesting schemes to provide sub-order. Rhyming last words, for example. An "Autobiography of Abraham Lincoln" might sit next to a "List of Cheese That's Stinkin'." Books can be ordered by size, or subject, or author's name, just to name a few of the obvious things that differentiate one thing from another. My favorite classification scheme is from the movie "High Fidelity," in which John Cusack's character rearranges his record collection autobiographically. Not based on the artists' bios, but based on where he was in his life when he bought the record. Genius! Completely useless to the rest of the world, but fully absorbed with meaning for a depressive 30-something going nowhere while the rest of the world enjoys their lives. At the same time, it perfectly defines the personal nature of our relationship with music.

This week, I plan to re-order my books.

If it interests you, check out your Dewey Decimal Classification: