I saw the Library of Congress thing, but whilst it doesn’t say I need permission to use it, the published headings don’t go down as far as I want them to, and the rest of the headings will require me to buy access to the system ($300) or buy the books ($$$) and type them up myself. Ick.

Not that this will stop me doing the idea, probably, but I’ll have to think up my own way…

Dewey has its downsides, of course, but so does any classification system. The nature of classification systems is that they are constructed with a certain worldview, and Dewey (or “Dui,” as he preferred, though his shortened phonetic spelling never caught on like his classification system) happened to be a male American Christian who didn’t really consider that people were eventually going to want to fit lots of books about Buddhism and Islam and Hinduism and Voodoo next to all the books about Christianity. But that was his world, and I don’t think it makes his system “truly horrible” in an absolute sense.

It might be inappropriate for a third-world library, of course (and unfortunately it gets used a lot in just those sorts of places because it’s relatively cheap and easy to use, not to mention well-known), but it really depends on context.

Tell me what classification system you think is better, and I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it too…

P.S. Aq, you’ve confused classification systems (i.e. call numbers) and subject headings. What you wanted for your trackback idea was the Library of Congress Subject Headings or some such, not Dewey. Four beautiful, slender volumes of LCSH. ;-)