"Librarians are the secret masters of the world. They control information. Don’t ever piss one off." - Spider Robinson
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The Library Hotel, located at Madison Avenue and 41st Street in New York opened in 2000. A few block away from the New York Public Library, the hotel features a luxurious reading room and a rooftop "writer's den and poetry garden." |
Three years later, the Library Hotel was sued because each of the hotel's ten floors are labeled with the Dewey Decimal System.
For millennials who don't know what this is . . .
or why libraries used to provide pencils and scraps of paper . . .
Melville Louis Kossuth "Melvil" Dewey, a frustrated librarian, created a standard classification system in 1874. Before then, libraries indexed and organized items according to local librarian preference.
The system divides books into ten categories, (Social Sciences, Languages, Math and Science, Technology, the Arts, Literature, History and Geography, General Knowledge, Philosophy, and Religion) each with a corresponding, three-digit number.
The system further classifies books by topic and sub-topic with additional numbers . . .
as illustrated by Level4Outbreak on Know Your Meme.
Level4Outbreak:
Give me a topic and I’ll try to create a Dewey Decimal Number from it.
Fridge:
The celebrated electronic music duo Boards of Canada.
Level4Outbreak:
Since Boards of Canada isn’t a group that would have a Biography in the Dewey system, I made up my own number.
700 = Arts and recreation
780 = Music
781-788 = Principles, forms, ensembles, voices, instruments
781= General principles and musical forms
781.2-781.8 = Other principles and musical forms
781.6 = Traditions of music
781.63-781.69 = Other traditions of music
781.64 = Western popular music
781.648 = Electronica
T1--09048 = In order to designate the time period of 1980-1989, the period that the band started. Someone else might do it differently but this what I thought best.
T1--092 = Designates Biography. Those last two numbers get added to 781.648 to get
781.64809048092 = Electronica--1980-1989--biography as a final Number.
"A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone." - Jo Godwin
Captain Douglas J Falcon:
(Responding to Level4freakout)
Shit nobody cares about. Namely, this.
"A library is a place where you learn what teachers were afraid to teach you." –Alan M. Dershowitz
But they cared in the late 1800's. Dewey copyrighted his system, requiring payments from the libraries wishing to use the classification.
In 1988, the Online Computer Library Center bought the trademark, charging libraries a few hundred dollars a year for use. However, some small libraries and prison libraries, are allowed to use the system without paying.
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You can read about women who are unforgettable, disarming, and not-so-quiet sensation, or, become one by wearing new MYSTRECE. |
The case was eventually settled and the hotel can continue to offer room Law (300.006) and room Money (300.005).
#Library #Hotel #Law
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