Before we start, WITNF is my own personal creation that I just thought of right now as an individual with a split personality - student librarian by day, rebellious teenager by dusk. I'm very mysterious.
It means What The Non-Fiction. I'm also very clever, as you can see.
Anyways, I hate the Dewey decimal system, but before reading these articles it was just because I thought it was annoying and there are IMO a variety of better ways to categorise non-fiction. And now that I have some real dirt on my dude Melville Dewey and his horrible division system, you best believe I am utmost honoured, delighted even, to be the one to display said dirt on your very screen in front of you.
First of all, man was discriminatory as HECK. Like even the people back in his day were shocked by his antisemitism, and considering it was like the 1800s or something, that says a lot already - but we shall go on. Dude even had his own private social club that "did not allow Jews or blacks to become members or visitors." seriously. The club even had its own pamphlet that read “No one shall be received as a member or guest, against whom there is physical, moral, social or race objection. … It is found impracticable to make exceptions to Jews or others excluded, even when of unusual personal qualifications.”
Finally, he was so racist that he even infused his creation of the DDS with it. First of all, Dewey was 21 when he invented the system, which automatically forces my hand and I have to believe that he was bonkers drunk when he did so. No one can tell me otherwise. I'm a hater, and haters gonna hate. Period. But anyways, Dewey was one of those generic white Christians who believe that no other religions or cultural/ethnic perceptions were valid nor were they a priority. That being said, in the DDS, you can find the topic of religion under the 200s. However, 60% of that section is made up of subjects on Christianity, which is literally one of over four thousand different religions. Those four thousand? Crammed in the remaining 40% space. Not to mention there's an entire section in the 200s that is "just for black people." Yowza.
Oh! Dewey was also sexist and hella creepy! AWESOME!
Yeah in the last article, I read that he repeatedly got called out in his day for sexual harassment. Today, he would be a registered sex offender. But yeah no just go ahead and use his organisation system (WHICH IS LITERALLY OUTDATED APPARENTLY????) In public schools and libraries worldwide!!! It's not like it's literally the future where we can generate an entirely new and effective system with the help of, like, a robot or the digital soul of Einstein or whatever.
Like - okay, I 'm not smart enough to create my own system, besides, I'm young and more out of touch with reality than your average folk, but can't we just alter the DDS or something at least? So that everything has it's own section that isn't overruled by the other subcategories. Add more numbers idk. Use symbols - like how books about truth and reconciliation go under the Indigenous category with the orange feather. Again I wouldn't know, but that doesn't mean Melville Dewey is the library god and is the only holder-of-truth when it comes to how to organise non-fiction as opposed to fiction.
I mean, I get that altering systems or finding ways to subject literally anything without it being even the slightest bit controversial is hard and definitely some sort of process, but, like, there are people on this Earth who have to pee on themselves to stay warm, so I really don't think it should be that much of a burden yk?
"wtnf"...hahaha. I knew you'd enjoy this assignment :) (although you didn't do enough about what you'd replace him with-and I am genuinely interested in what 12 categories you would pick for NF). As always, very engaging and enjoying to read-he was most definitely "hella creepy".
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