The part of me that is somewhat of a Star Wars geek really finds it fascinating that, according to one of the catalogers at my place of work,  Barack Obama’s Dewey Decimal Cutter Number is…

Ob1

Classify is a new service from OCLC which returns class numbers (Dewey, LC, and National Library of Medicine) assigned to books in WorldCat. This could be a good way to use the “wisdom of the crowd” when you are not 100% sure where to group a particular book.

I noticed that the url had a “2″ at the end, so I removed it to see what would happen. It appears to be an earlier version of the service. I didn’t have any luck with the first few ISBNs I entered, but the example links work well.

Any other changes to the url bounce the user to the DeweyBrowser, which is a lookup service from a couple of years back. Although it also has a “2″ at the end of the url, nothing happens when one changes it. So much for rewarding curiosity

Classify found via Lorcan Dempsey’s weblog

Tim Spalding of LibraryThing has started a new ambitious project: develop a new shelf classification system that would eliminate the baggage of the 100+ year-old systems many libraries have in place, as well as create a system free from the trademark, copyright, and license issues connected with Dewey.

He is looking for a few librarians (one to five) to manage the project, and has started a LibraryThing group for everyone to join in the conversation.

This just started up this morning, folks… they’re still talking letters vs. numbers and general classification philosophy. We’re talking ground floor timing, so sign up and begin discussing!

found via Tim Spalding’s post to the Web4Lib list

Open Data : What Would Kilgour Think? is a post by Jay Datema about the recent settlement between the New York Public Library and iBiblio regarding the latter’s harvesting of records from the NYPL catalog.

I am increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of metadata being copyrighted.  This includes, but is not limited to, Dewey Decimal Classification and MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging) records.  These are tools that follow shared rules, developed and honed by communities and experience, that we use to store information about our collections.

We use these metadata systems in order to have a shared method of storing, finding, and retrieving what we have.  They should not be confused with the resources we make available, the software we use to search for them, nor should they be considered intellectual property, as they exist solely to describe something else.

The standards behind each of these systems is important to the library community.  It does not increase the value of our collection if we lock our MARC records using copyright; it only keeps other libraries from sharing our information, which decrease the value of libraries in general.

As with all good standards:  the standards themselves should be well-defined, controlled, and updated as frequently as necessary.  Their benefits should be available to anyone who can put them to good use.  The library community (including companies and corporations) should recognize the value of the commons, and strive to make our metadata available for the benefit of everyone.

from Librarian.net

Weed of the Month doesn’t have anything to do with gardening (although that topic is covered) but with weeding library materials.  Organized by Dewey Decimal Classification, it is an excellent overview of de-selection issues by topic area.

from Catalogablog