The Douche Behind the Name
The Dewey Decimal System is that numerical code lurking on the spines of library books everywhere. It’s the reason you find Ghosts hiding in the 130s instead of a chaotic pile on the floor. Invented in 1876, this system revolutionised libraries and remains widely used today by book-nerds around the world, and students.
Melvil Dewey was a prodigy of order and efficiency – and also, a jerk.
By 25, he had conjured up his decimal system to tame every topic on Earth (of which there are ten). He was so fanatic about streamlining, he even chopped letters off his own name – Melville became Melvil, and even Dewey briefly became Dui. Dewey helped found the American Library Association and the first library school, insisting on admitting women as students – a progressive twist that would soon turn sour.
Behind the genius librarian façade lurked a man with a catalogue of errors in character. Dewey had what one biographer diplomatically called a “persistent inability to control himself around women,” a more modern, less diplomatic writer would call it being a fucking creep. He required female applicants to his library school to include photos, you know, like a gross dude. However, in 1905 four prominent librarians reported Dewey’s unwanted advances, forcing Dewey to resign from the very association he co-founded. It wasn’t just sexism in Dewey’s catalogue of flaws: he also wrote blatant racism into the rules of his private Lake Placid Club, banning Jewish people and Black people from membership. The backlash to this hateful policy got him publicly rebuked and kicked out of his New York State librarian job.
It’s a cosmic irony that someone so deeply flawed left an indelible mark on education and libraries. Melvil Dewey managed to imprint his name and system on the very institutions that later shunned him. There’s a bittersweet humour in this legacy: every time you navigate our library’s orderly shelves; you’re using a system created by a man you’d never want to sit next to on the bus. History has a way of shelving the bad with the good, and in Dewey’s case, the decimal genius and the douche are filed right next to each other – an absurd reminder that great contributions can come from not-so-great people.
By Mia Clarke
Take a peek at the controversial life of the Dewey Decimal System’s creator