The Efficient, Inventive (Often Annoying) Melvil Dewey
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Who was Melvil Dewey? Learn how Dewey's love of organization and words drove him to develop and implement his Dewey Decimal system, leaving a significant and lasting impact in libraries across the country. When Melvil Dewey realized every library organized their books differently, he wondered if he could invent a system all libraries could use to organize them efficiently. A rat-a-tat speaker, Melvil was a persistent (and noisy) advocate for free public libraries. And while he made enemies along the way as he pushed for changes–like his battle to establish the first library school with women as students, through it all he was EFFICIENT, INVENTIVE, and often ANNOYING as he made big changes in the world of public libraries–changes still found in the libraries of today!
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It was Melvil Dewey who set out to put libraries in order by creating a helpful system of numbers to organize books into categories, and who then promoted the idea of creating and maintaining free public libraries for the education of all. Both of these ideas did much to improve the world, and it is on these improvements associated with Dewey that we often look today, and for which we thank him, though we also keep in mind the weaknesses of Dewey that promoted racism and sexism as well.
A first look at Melvil Dewey for the youngest of readers.
