Wednesday, August 23, 2006

NYPL Goes with LC in Reference

The New York Times editorialized about the New York Public Library's move to using LC classification in its reference collection: Where the Books Are, NY Times, Aug. 22, 2006.
This change may seem like a trivial matter to you who Google everything. But the Reading Room at the New York Public Library is one of those places so common in this city where the clientele is both passionate and knowledgeable. Sooner or later, everyone who loves a library broods about how the books are arranged. Thomas Jefferson did. He sent 18 or 20 wagonloads of his books to the nascent Library of Congress. He wrote a long letter about the problems of classification and prepared a detailed catalog of his books on a system of his own devising. He loved books and loved arranging them. But that letter is easily his driest piece of writing.


And here's the news story: Sewell Chan, With a New Classification System, the New York Public Library Makes a Change for the Clearer, NY Times, Aug. 17, 2006.

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