The Pratt Way

Melvil Dewey pushed and pestered his way right out the door of Columbia.  The trustees responded to his persistence to do things ‘his way’ by closing their library school and sweeping Dewey out.  Columbia was actually willing to turn away applicants, shut down the waiting list and turn their back on the program’s success in order to ditch Dewey - that is some bad blood.  
Anna Elliott’s article, appropriately entitled “A Singular and Contentious Life”, explains that by the time Dewey left Columbia his library school had been emulated by other colleges - certainly his initiative (whatever his motives) was a step in the right directions for libraries and librarians.  Graduates of Dewey’s program went on to found new library schools or direct them around the country.  Dewey moved on to Albany in 1883 to become the Director of the New York State Library and he took his school with him, which he renamed the New York State Library School.  He continued to push the envelope wherever he went and was encouraged to retire from the library world in 1906.
But the seeds of library learning had been planted and soon a seedling sprouted in Brooklyn.   The Pratt Institute, which now includes five professional schools, opened  1886 as a trade school.  Charles Pratt was another one of those millionaire industrialists looking for a beneficial way to spend his fortune - (we really need another one of those eras).  He made his money as petroleum pioneer in 1867 and had a kerosene refinery in Brooklyn.  He hit the jackpot after a few years when his company became a part of Standard Oil.  Although Pratt was a successful business man and had money to burn, he always regretted not finishing his eduction, much like Andrew Carnegie.  

photo from Pratt livejournal

According to The Cycopaedia of American Biography, published in 1918, Charles Pratt was a visionary with a big heart.  His determination to make the world a better place led him down many paths including the design of a model tenement and a banking system for people to accumulate their savings (called The Thrift).  He was a little more practical than Carnegie and dreamed of creating a school where students could learn to work with their hands and to appreciate “the value of intelligent manual labor”.  The Pratt Institute continues to fulfill that mission today and is driven by the motto:  “be true to your work and you work will be true to you”.  In addition to schools for kindergarten training and household science, they offered a library science program.  The website actually lays claim to the title of the oldest LIS school in North America, having been accredited since 1923 when the system for accreditation first began.  Sadly Pratt died only four years after beginning his school and the his son, Frederic, became the president.  In a founder’s day speech from 1890 Pratt revealed his altruistic character when he told students, “care not for your enjoyment, care not for your life, care only for what is right.”  That’s a motto worth living up to.

Dewey and the Librarians

I’m just not sure how much I trust Melvil Dewey.  I know he was a brilliant organizer and did more than spew decimals around the library, but I am a little skeptical of his motives for setting up the first school for librarians at Columbia College in 1888.  Sarah Prescott’s article in the SLJ, “If You Knew Dewey”, presented the history that left me wondering about Dewey’s inner moral compass. 

 Dewey was hired to be the head library of Columbia College in 1883 and wisely used his position to persuade the college to open a school for librarians called “The School of Library Economy” (where he could conveniently spread the gospel of his new decimal system).  At the time, women were not welcomed at Columbia - unless they attended the ‘special’ women’s school.  This small detail didn’t get in Dewey’s way, he proceeded to open admissions to both sexes and Columbia, shocked and furious, countered by refusing to let him use their classrooms.  Ever determined Dewey and his harem of 17 women and 3 men marched across the street and cleaned out a room above the college chapel to hold classes (he told the students that the college just hadn’t expecting such a big inaugural class).  

At first I applauded Dewey for striving towards equality and rising above conventional thinking of the time.  But the more I read, the more I began to question what was really going on in his file cabinet brain.  Was Dewey taking advantage of the limited career opportunities open to women to interest them in enrolling in his program?  Was he just looking for ways to spread the good word of his Dewey Decimal System?  Did he believe that his system was so easy that “even a woman” could learn it?  Was he trying to create disciples that would go on to implement the Dewey Decimal System at Carnegie libraries around the country?  And, far more creepy, why did Dewey’s library school application require data about the student’s height, weight, eye and hair color?  To make the selection process easier, Dewey even recommended the inclusion of a photograph. 

 Katharine Phenix argues that women were welcomed into the library at the time only because they were “cheap and available” and she quotes Justin Windson, “we set a high value on women’s work...and for the money they cost they are infinitely better than equivalent salaries will produce in the other sex.”  Dewey may have added ‘enjoyable to look at’ to the list of advantages.
Of course, I don’t know what Dewey’s motivations were but I know enough about his personality and prejudices to assume that he was not operating to enhance women’s independence nor was standing up for social injustice.  He was a pragmatist in every aspect of his life, passion had little, or nothing to do with his life choices.  And once he got an idea in his head - look out - not much could stop him!  

Dewey has been criticized for approaching the vocation of library science as a technical skill, not as the complex profession that it is.  He certainly didn’t regard his librarians as “managers of knowledge” - he taught them how label, categorize, file and find - thinking wasn’t a high priority.  The career of ‘librarian’ would become one of the few paths that were acceptable for women in the early 20th Century and it continues to be a female dominated profession (similar to elementary school teachers), in the year 2000, 85% of librarians were women.  

In my mind Dewey certainly isn’t a hero in the women’s movement but he isn’t a villian either - no matter what, he opened the door to women and allowed them into the library as authorities.  And once the cat was out of the bag there wasn’t much that could be done to stop women from becoming more than library technicians - they began creating libraries that spread knowledge, understanding and inspiration across our country, leaving Dewey in the dust.

What Does That Number Mean?

I have a vague memory of elementary school librarians explaining how to use the card catalog (remember card catalogs?) and the Dewey Decimal systems.  I recall the unsettling feeling of confusion as I looked at all the tiny numbers and followed the librarian through rows and rows of books while glancing  sideways at my classmates to see if I was the only clueless one ...

Thirty some years later I have discovered that the Dewey Decimal system is not that difficult, in fact it’s really quite clever and very practical.  Here are the cliff notes:  Melville Dewey divided all knowledge  into 10 classes (religion, history, language, etc. ), each class was segmented into 10 divisions and each division dissected into 10 sections.  Therefore, all books can be organized by precise subject and by number.  For instance, a book on butterflies would have the number 595.789 because 500 is natural science, 90 is zoological science, 5 is other invertebrates, .7 is insects, .08 is lepidoptera and .009 is butterflies.  Believe it or not, every new book is assigned a Dewey Decimal number by a division of the Library of Congress (I think this means an actual person!) and then the number  gets approved by OCLC (the Online Computer Library Center) - imagine how the books would stack up if you were out sick for a day or two?  Currently, the DDC is mostly used by public libraries and k-12 schools (about 200,000) in 135 countries but academic libraries have taken up with Dewey’s rival, The Library of Congress Classification.  

The Library of Congress System (LC)  was developed to organize the books in the Library of Congress.  The LC system added classes into its system only when they were needed to add a new book in the Library.  This approach made it easier to add branches for new areas of knowledge (computer science and engineering) and incorporate new subject matter that Melville Dewey never imagined!  The system uses 21 letters of the alphabet for initial classes ( T is for technology, but they don’t all work out that neatly) and each letter has alphabetical subclasses and is then further classified by numbers.  The authors last name and the publication date are added under the LC code and the result is a unique four line name for every book in the library.  The LC system is more efficient  in academic libraries that have larger, comprehensive collections.

And all this time I have just been writing down the number and following the little signs on the shelf.  Tomorrow I will tackle the most interesting thing about either system - Melville Dewey.  He may have been a rockin’ librarian but he was about as eccentric as they come....