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Dewey vs. LC?

Dewey Decimal Challenge

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1_Zoe_
Mar 9, 2008, 9:43pm Top

I noticed that member lists for this group and the LC Classification Challenge group are quite different; a lot of people are in one but not both (well, "a lot" compared to the overall membership numbers). Do people tend to have a strong preference for one over the other? I figured that once I was doing one challenge, I might as well do both.

2philosojerk
Mar 9, 2008, 9:47pm Top

I'm all for both. I'm not even to the point of intentionally looking for books in specific sections. Right now, just trying to figure out how much I've read of each, and looking at the "challenges" as a life-long endeavor... in which case, I've got plenty of time to fill in the blanks as things appeal to me :)

3_Zoe_
Mar 9, 2008, 9:50pm Top

I've already determined that I haven't read very much of either, but I'm still thinking of it as a life-long endeavour and hoping at least some of the blanks will fill themselves in automatically :)

Okay, and I also considered it a good excuse to buy a bunch of random books at booksales.

4DaynaRT
Mar 9, 2008, 9:55pm Top

>2 philosojerk:
That's exactly how I'm handling both of the "challenges". I like seeing how my natural reading choices fill in the lists without going out of my way to fill in the blank spots.

5ATimson
Mar 9, 2008, 10:13pm Top

I already know I probably can't fulfill the Dewey challenge (the 220s do me in, I'm afraid), so I definitely have a strong inclination towards the LCC Challenge. Of course, I may be equally screwed there; I haven't yet looked at the LCC chart. :)

6_Zoe_
Edited: Mar 9, 2008, 10:17pm Top

I think LCC is much worse! I may not be particularly interested in Christianity, but I still think it's worth reading about in order to be generally knowledgeable. With LCC, on the other hand, you get categories like this:

V Naval science (General)
VA Navies: Organization, distribution, naval situation
VB Naval administration
VC Naval maintenance
VD Naval seaman
VE Marines
VF Naval ordnance
VG Minor services of navies
VK Navigation. Merchant marine
VM Naval architecture. Shipbuilding. Marine engineering

I really don't think I'll be a better person for reading a book about naval maintenance. But if I somehow manage to get through everything else, I guess I'll try....

7lucien
Edited: Mar 10, 2008, 12:05am Top

I started with the Dewey challenge first, simply because it's how the public library sorts their books. I'm having a lot of fun realizing I haven't read anything in a given topic and then browsing the stacks. I'll probably make an LCC list, but for now I'd just be filling them in accidentally.

It is true though that I have a better chance of completely finishing the LCC. The naval stuff doesn't bother me too much. But I worry about Dewey categories that are mostly lists of statistics or tables - like 528 - Ephemerides.

8E59F
Mar 10, 2008, 4:59am Top

They both have their quirks and old-fashioned qualities, but I find the LCC much closer to how I would construct a classification (except that I would have excessive detail in archaeology rather than naval science!). But maybe that's just because I've been using university libraries for the majority of my life and haven't used a DDC library much at all since early adolescence.

Also, I'll never come close to all 1000 DDC categories in one lifetime, unless I were to become rich enough to stop working and just read instead. The 220 or so LCC and 100 higher-level DDC classes are what I'm really aiming for.

9_Zoe_
Mar 10, 2008, 8:18am Top

unless I were to become rich enough to stop working and just read instead

That's what retirement is for :)

10E59F
Mar 10, 2008, 8:34am Top

I'm not sure I'm ever going to have enough money to retire, either :)

11Morphidae
Mar 10, 2008, 9:48am Top

I'm using Dewey because it's what I'm comfortable with. I'm not doing the LCC because I'm already doing far too many challenges and even though they cover the same things, it makes me twitchy to add another list I "have" to work on.

12kaelirenee
Mar 13, 2008, 4:39pm Top

I'm in both challenges, though for the Dewey Challenge, I am more than happy to do the 100 instead of the 1000. For the LC Challenge, I decided to break some of the subject headings down even more because of how much I read in them, like HQ. Because of that, I might just squash together other categories. For me, the overarching goal is to read in a much more varied way than I normally or otherwise would.

As for preference, I know I've said this before-I much prefer LC. It makes more sense to me and it has dealt with alot of the problems I have with Dewey (though not all). Both are subject to the biases and prejudices of American culture (ie, lots on military and Christianity, with "Other Religions" jsut kind of shuffled away and squashed together). But I work in an academic library and studied LC, not Dewey, in my cataloging classes, so I'm more comfortable with it and understand its nuts and bolts more.

13mramos
Mar 20, 2008, 2:18pm Top

I am in both. But the last 100 books I read were in categories I already had covered. LoL. And yes a couple of the books were in the Naval section listed previously in this thread. I found the Naval section to be one of my easiest to finish.

Will I ever complete both list … I doubt it, but I will try. But I am not choosing the books I read based on what I am missing. There are too many books I wish to read. So if I read one I can add … I will. Still it has helped me see how my reading life has been grouped.

14kaelirenee
Mar 24, 2008, 12:19pm Top

I found this and thought it was kind of interesting-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Dewey_and_Library_of_Congress_subjec​
It's a side-by-side comparison of Dewey and LC-it even has the LC subheadings that just aren't matched anywhere else.

15philosojerk
Mar 24, 2008, 12:36pm Top

Helpful link. I said (higher up) that I'm doing both challenges, but yes - in terms of organizing my books, and finding books at libraries or elsewhere, I find the LC system much more intuitive. That could just be because I'm in academia, though, and so all the libraries I use are organized that way.

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