College and Research Libraries Review Articles The Sixteenth Dewey Dewey Decimal Classification and Relative Index. Sixteenth Edition. Devised by Mel- vil Dewey. Edited by Benjamin A. Custer. 2 vols. Lake Placid Club, N. Y.: Forest Press, 1958. 2,439p. $30. In the preparation of the sixteenth edi- tion, the Editorial Policy Committee was guided by the consideration that the new DC would be used by general libraries of widely varying sizes and that it should be constructed in such a way that it would be as useful for classifying large collections as for smaller ones. In determining the degree of expansion of the schedules, the editors used as their criterion the amount of pub- lished material on any given subject; if more than twenty titles were assignable to one number, they decided that subdivision of that number was warranted. This pragmatic approach helps considerably to rescue the sixteenth DC from the procrustean treat- ment given the two preceding editions—the fourteenth having some of its tables stretched out to an immoderate length and the fifteenth suffering severe truncation of many of its schedules. For the purposes of this review, comparisons will be limited to the fourteenth edition since, practically, it is the direct ancestor of the sixteenth. Of primary consideration is the question of structure. It is axiomatic that any classifi- cation of knowledge, no matter how care- fully constructed, will inevitably get out-of- date; and the more minute the classification the sooner it becomes obsolete. It is equally true that extensive relocation of subjects, in line with current concepts and new fields of learning, would not only be impractical and expensive to carry out, but would provide at best only a temporary solution. From the beginning, classifiers have recognized the basic conflict between the principles of keep- ing pace with knowledge and maintaining the integrity of numbers. In dealing with this vexing problem of structure, the editors have employed three approaches: (1) expan- sion, (2) curtailment, and (3) relocation. T h e expansion of the tables in the six- teenth DC takes two forms. First, one ob- serves how many of the tables have been worked out fully, thereby reducing to a min- imum the number of "divide like" instruc- tions; for example, the numbers from 440 to 489 occupied less than one page in the fourteenth Dewey. Nine major and at least a score of minor languages had but the one linear instruction to divide like 420 English. In the sixteenth edition these language tables, filling five pages, are set out indi- vidually, at least in their main subdivisions, and although the necessity to follow the Eng- lish pattern still exists, it is on a more spe- cific basis and directions are repeated wher- ever they apply; e.g. under 455 Italian Grammar is printed "Divide like 425." An even more dramatic example can be found in 560 Paleontology. In the fourteenth edition this entire class occupied ten lines listing the general heading and its nine principal divisions. T h e classifier was dispatched in three directions—to Geology for the form divisions, to Botany for fossil plants, and to Zoology for the rest, to say nothing of a rather cumbersome note on geographic sub- division. In the sixteenth DC, Paleontology requires eleven pages. T h e sixteenth DC also contains true ex- pansion in its subdivisions of numbers to provide places for new topics. As one would expect, these occur primarily in the scientific and technical fields, such as Nuclear Physics with thirty-four places instead of one, or Nuclear Engineering with nine places where none at all existed in the fourteenth edi- tion. It is beyond the scope of this review to attempt a comprehensive listing of every change in the sixteenth DC and therefore only representative examples are given. In their efforts to redress the structural balance, the editors, in addition to expand- ing certain tables, have employed the op- posite device of contracting or curtailing schedules that had grown out of all propor- tion to the rest of the classification and even 102 C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S to the material on the shelves. An obvious example of pure elimination of places oc- curs on the literature tables. For instance, in 822 English Drama only the eleven period divisions are printed and no attempt is made to list the names and dates of the principal dramatists within each period. A further simplification is carried out in the other divisions of English Literature, Poetry, Fiction, Essays, etc., where no breakdown is given at all and the classifier is instructed to "Divide like 822." This creates no con- fusion, since the time divisions are virtually identical for all literary forms of any na- tional literature. By employing this same de- vice throughout the schedules of the major literatures, the 800 class is reduced from forty-eight to eighteen and one-half pages with no intrinsic loss of comprehensiveness. In this connection, one finds curtailment of schedules where one might least expect it, namely in the technical and scientific sub- jects. A statistical count made of just one aspect of Engineering—621.384 Radio Com- munication—shows that in the fourteenth edition 321 places were provided, the num- bers often running to eight or nine decimal places, whereas the sixteenth edition gives twenty-six places with the majority of the numbers of five decimal places or less. Upon examining the topics covered, it seems evi- dent that the abbreviated schedule provides sufficient places for even the large general library's collection of material on radio com- munication engineering. As the editor points out in his introduction, an alphabetical ar- rangement of minor subtopics may be adopted if a large amount of specialized ma- terial exists in a given collection. T h e two types of structural adjustment discussed above, expansion and contraction, have effected a more evenly balanced set of tables in the new DC. T h e third type, relocation of topics, is an attempt to achieve better balance from the intellectual point of view, that is, to reassign certain subjects in conformity with the current approach to the various disciplines. T h e whole question of relocation is fraught with controversy and every librarian will have to make his own decision regarding the extent to which he wishes to reclassify his collection. In the sixteenth DC 1,603 relocations have been recommended, of which 832 are total and 771 partial. In all, however, only about fifty of them would involve reclassifying more than thirty titles in a large general collection. T h e editors felt that these so- called major relocations were unavoidable, the previous numbers having become ab- surd in terms of the present grouping of subjects. Every relocated topic is clearly dis- tinguished by a conventional symbol, both in its new position in the schedule and in its former place. Furthermore, the same symbols are used in the index so that it is clear at a glance which numbers are no longer used or are used for a different pur- pose. A certain amount of tidying up has been done in Psychology, although it is still a hopelessly scattered field. Here, the editors lost a chance to make substantial changes which are inevitable. In one subject area the editors devised entirely new schedules. Present day concepts in organic and inorganic chemistry are so radically different from what they were when the scheme was built that new sched- ules were necessary. Since it is unrealistic to expect that librarians will be able to reclas- sify these sections of their chemistry collec- tions promptly, the older tables, brought up- to-date as much as possible, have been printed following the index and labelled "obsolescent." By the time the seventeenth edition is published, they will be considered obsolete and will not be reprinted. In addition to relocation, the editors have taken into account the fact that some li- braries, by reason of their collections or cli- entele, have specialized needs that d o not fit the standard pattern. For these, alterna- tive positions have been indicated in cer- tain subject fields which, while not recom- mended generally, are sanctioned by the Editorial Policy Committee. An invaluable adjunct in redressing the structural imbalance is the judicious use of typography and indentation. With the ever expanding fields of knowledge, true decimal- ization has often been lost and topics of equal weight subordinated one to the other or, the reverse, coordinate numbers as- signed to subordinate topics. A good exam- ple of how this situation is corrected, at least visually, can be found in the geo- graphic divisions of France, 944.1 - .9. lle-de- France .34 is given parallel weight and posi- J A N U A R Y 1 9 6 0 103 tion with Champagne .3, whereas Paris metropolitan area .36, by its indentation and lighter type, is clearly a subdivision of the lle-de-France. At the same time, the col- umnar arrangement of the geographical units makes the tables easier to use than the cramped paragraph arrangement of the fourteenth edition. In fact, the type has been reset throughout and the excessive dif- ferences of size, weight, and style of type faces have been eliminated. In addition to typography, the terminol- ogy has been gone over thoroughly and brought up to date. Not only has the spell- ing been returned almost to normal, but in- numerable outdated words and phrases have been replaced by current nomenclature. For example, changes have been made in the headings of the major classes: "Language" replaces "Filology," "Technology" is in place of "Useful arts Applied science," and " T h e Arts" for "Fine arts Recreation." Through- out the schedules the editors have shown sound judgment in selecting terms that are in general use. More important is the addi- tion of extensive annotations. These include definitions and scope notes, inclusion notes, instruction notes, and cross references. For a related series of numbers, centered headings have been introduced, with notes covering the whole sequence, which serve as a substitute for a comprehensive heading and obviate the need to repeat the notes under each individual number. Space pre- vents a more detailed discussion of the an- notations here but the editor, in his intro- duction, does an excellent j o b of exposition. Because the major portion of these an- notations is entirely new, and because the new typographical arrangement is so gen- erous with space, the sixteenth DC shows an overall increase of 512 pages, despite the fact that the actual number of entries is cut by 13,436, or almost half of those in the fourteenth DC. As a result, the work has been divided into two volumes; any incon- venience incurred by this separation is of minor importance when compared with the incalculable improvements of the new for- mat. Some may even prefer to work with two separate volumes. T h e second volume consists primarily of the Relative Index, which has approximately the same number of entries as the index to the fourteenth edition but, like their corre- sponding tables, the entries have been thor- oughly revised and reworded. T h e material following the index, however, is quite differ- ent from the fourteenth DC. Particularly noteworthy is the reprinting of the special author table for Shakespeare (one wonders why it was omitted previously) and the elim- ination of both the Table for Systematic Botany (now printed in very abridged form in the Botany schedule) and the Supple- mentary Tables. T h e Table of Form Divi- sions, salvaged and sensibly expanded, has been placed immediately preceding the clas- sification tables, a far more convenient po- sition. Less understandable is the retention of the list of topics which may be divided geographically. Since instructions on divi- sion are given in the tables themselves for each of the 322 places, their listing in straight numerical order in the second vol- ume would seem to be of limited value. In conclusion, one can say that the six- teenth DC shows a tremendous improvement in terms both of structural balance and of facility to the user. Although there is no complete solution to the basic conflict be- tween advancing knowledge and a predeter- mined scheme of classification, the editors have effected a compromise that probably will be welcomed in libraries committed to the Dewey Decimal Classification. Libraries which have found DC unsatisfactory in its basic principles have shifted to other sys- tems.—Alison Smith, Metropolitan Museum of Art Library, Neto York. Studies in Germanics Germanistische Studien. By Arno Schiro- kauer. Selections and introduction by Fritz Strich. Hamburg: Ernst Hauswedell & Co., 1957. 451p. From Arno Shirokauer's numerous studies in Germanics this valuable volume contains twelve which he published between 1924, four years after his first, and 1954, the year of his death. In its chronological arrange- ment the selection is representative not only of Schirokauer's course of development, but of the scope and dimensions of his scholar- ship. T h e first reprinted here is his early 104 C O L L E G E A N D R E S E A R C H L I B R A R I E S