2026-07-21 13:47 UTC
#TIL that:
1. The Dewey Decimal System is proprietary, and
2. There is no one analog for classifying research papers, everyone just wings it with search engines and databases
And I am disappointed in both.
Replies (1)
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@dalke@toots.nu 2026-07-22 07:31
@lkngrrr@hachyderm.io For some history, back in the 1950s people looked to computers as a way to not need single term classification. "The Technical Report and Its Impact on Post–World War II Information Systems", Jana Varlejs, https://web.archive.org/web/20130702201706/https://www.asis.org/History/07-varlejs.pdf quotes Taube (1950) “there cannot be one subject key to bibliographic organization which would serve the librarian, the general reader, and all specialists”, and proposed using computers to handle multiple coordinates. (Nor was he the first to propose it.)