t form it has been developed by Mr. Melvil Dewey
into a most ingenious scheme for distributing the whole vast range of
human knowledge into ten classes, marked from 0 to 9, each of which
sub-divides into exactly ten sub-classes, all divisible in their turn
into ten minor divisions, and so on until the material in hand, or the
ingenuity of the classifier is exhausted. The notation of the books on
the shelves corresponds to these divisions and sub-divisions. The claims
of this system, which has been quite extensively followed in the smaller
American libraries, and in many European ones, are economy, simplicity,
brevity of notation, expansibility, unchanging call-numbers, etc. It has
been criticised as too mechanical, as illogical in arrangement of
classes, as presenting many incongruities in its divisions, as
procrustean, as wholly inadequate in its classification of jurisprudence,
etc. It is partially used by librarians who have had to introduce radical
changes in portions of the classification, and in fact it is understood
that the classification has been very largely made over both in Amherst
College library and in that of Columbia University, N. Y., where it was
fully established.

This only adds to the cumulative proofs that library classification
cannot be made an exact science, but is in its nature indefinitely
progressive and improvable. Its main object is not to classify knowledge,
but books. There being multitudes of books that do not belong absolutely
to any one class, all classification of them is necessarily a compromise.
Nearly all the classification schemers have made over their schemes--some
of them many times. I am not arguing against classification, which is
essential to the practical utility of any library. An imperfect
classification is much better than none: but the tendency to erect
classification into a fetish, and to lay down cast-iron rules for it,
should be guarded against. In any library, reasons of convenience must
often prevail over logical arrangement; and he who spends time due to
prompt library service in worrying over errors in a catalogue, or vexing
his soul at a faulty classification, is as mistaken as those fussy
individuals who fancy that they are personally responsible for the
obliquity of the earth's axis.

It may be added that in the American Library Association's Catalogue of
5,000 books for a popular library, Washington, 1893, the classification
is given both on the Dewey (Decima