Melvil Dewey

Most of them did so by using a fixed location method.

The librarian took note of where each book sat on the shelf.

Books were sometimes organized by size or color, but they were often organized by the order in which they were acquired.

Because of this, many libraries were not open for public browsing.

If someone desired a specific title, they would go in and ask the librarian.

The librarian would then consult their notes to find its location.

Without an official way to categorize books by subject or title, it was often a challenging task for the librarian as well.

Even though university libraries were common on larger college campuses, they also fell into the chaotic system of book cataloging.

Now, you're starting to get some sharing of things like cataloging.

In the first issue of American Libraries in 1876, Melville Dewey, God rest his filthy soul, was writing about how we need to share cataloging services because we're duplicating all this work.

And how do we do that? And in 1901...

The Library of Congress developed this card system where if you were at a library in Reno, Nevada, public library probably, and you got a copy of Call of the Wild or whatever was new in 1901.

That's interesting because it suggests a kind of unity of thought between the United States and Canada that I've never really observed in my lifetime.

I don't know if perhaps at the start of the 20th century when Melville Dewey was doing this and all of his drugs, they were a closer bond, but they don't seem particularly aligned at the moment.

I think we all know that basically the underlying Western philosophy of the United States... is the one that was written by a certain Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini in their book The Principle of Fascism.

Canada and all that's about, I must admit.