page_title: Melvil Dewey
section_title: Dewey Decimal Classification
hierarchical_section_title: Melvil Dewey / Work / Dewey Decimal Classification
context_page_description: Melville Louis Kossuth "Melvil" Dewey was an American librarian and educator, inventor of the Dewey Decimal system of library classification, and a founder of the Lake Placid Club.
context_section_description: Immediately after receiving his undergraduate degree he was hired to manage Amherst's library and reclassify its collections. Dewey worked out a new scheme that superimposed a system of decimal numbers on a structure of knowledge first outlined by Sir Francis Bacon. For his decision to use a decimal system he may have been inspired by two library systems that he includes in the acknowledgements in the first publication of his system in 1876. In that preface, and in the following thirteen editions, Dewey cites the card system of Italian publisher Natale Battezzati as "the most fruitful source of ideas".
  Dewey copyrighted the system in 1876. This system has proved to be enormously influential; though many American libraries have since adopted the classification scheme of the Library of Congress, Dewey's system remains in widespread use.
caption: Spine labels of The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, showing Dewey Decimal Classification call numbers (030=Encyclopedias).
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