To clarify where the British Library uses Dewey (confirming what John has surmised below):
The BL shelves much open access material in the reading rooms by DDC but the most significant usage is an organisational tool in catalogues such as the printed BNB and an access tool on the Integrated Catalogue.
None of the items in closed access is shelved by Dewey except for a 50-year old sequence in the lending collection.
Roderic Parker
Digital Object Management Programme,
British Library, Boston Spa,
-----Original Message-----
From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Smith
Sent: 11 March 2008 16:53
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: JISC preferred classification scheme
Ann,
Most US and large UK university libraries use LCC. It simply scales better. When you have collections of a million plus items Dewey can become cumbersome.
Some parts of the BL may use Dewey but judging by the shelfmarks displayed when you search their catalogue they don't use it for organising items on the shelves.
John.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:JISC-
> [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ann Apps
> Sent: 11 March 2008 15:37
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: JISC preferred classification scheme
>
> John, and All,
>
> I guess that one reason why EPrints is not shipped with Dewey is that
> one needs a licence to use Dewey.
>
> I don't know why JISC chose Dewey as the Information Environment
> backbone.
>
> However The British Library uses Dewey. [And I thought all libraries
> use Dewey for arranging books on shelves, but that may be a naïve
> non-librarian's impression.]
>
> Ann
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> Ann Apps MBCS CITP. Research & Development, Mimas,
> The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK
> Tel: +44 (0) 161 275 6039 Fax: +44 (0) 161 275 6040
> Email: [log in to unmask] WWW:
> http://epub.mimas.ac.uk/ann.html
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:JISC-
> > [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John Smith
> > Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 2:57 PM
> > To: [log in to unmask]
> > Subject: [JISC-REPOSITORIES] JISC preferred classification
> scheme
> >
> > Ann,
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:JISC-
> > > [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ann Apps
> > > Sent: 11 March 2008 13:30
> > > To: [log in to unmask]
> > > Subject: Re: Central versus institutional self-archiving
> > >
> >
> > > Actually a decision was made quite some time ago that the
> backbone
> > > subject classification scheme for the JISC Information
> Environment
> > > is Dewey. (Don't shoot me down, I'm only reporting this!)
> Because
> > > of that, another application I work on (different from and
> > > unrelated to the one harvesting from repositories) uses Dewey
> as
> > > its backbone subject classification scheme.
> >
> > Interesting. I wonder why EPrints is shipped with a basic LC
> classification tree
> > instead?
> >
> > Also - why Dewey anyway, since almost all large Uni libraries
> use LCC?
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > John Smith.
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