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Comment by VoodooJuJu | Hacker News Reader

This is the appeal to authority fallacy that we see far too much in tech, here applied to library science.

The Dewey Decimal system is widely used and is completely appropriate for the vast majority of libraries. The LCC is useful for the Library of Congress. It's a custom classification solution designed by them, for them, for their own practical needs.

AWS uses a custom network protocol and custom hardware for their datacenters. It's designed by them, for them. It doesn't mean we should drop TCP/IP. Similarly, Netflix, Twitter, Google, etc all have quite complex and robust architectures. That's not an invitation to do what they're doing - it's actually the opposite. They're operating at a very a unique scale, with their own unique needs on top of that. Your fresh startup with zero customers has no business adopting their special architectures.

For the vast majority, LCC is just overengineered. Dewey Decimal is a better pick.

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AWS uses TCP/IP internally. And DNS. And DHCP. And NTP. And ssh. And all those other standard TCP/IP or UDP/IP algorithms you may think of. Now, if you want to claim they have their own bespoke build system, then I'd agree with you there.

When I was studying for my BSCS, I worked at a University library, shelving books. I had two floors -- Deck 4 (Dewey Decimal) in the old stacks, and 4 West in the new building (LCA). I also occasionally shelved books anywhere else there was in the library that needed shelving. So, I know both of those systems pretty well.

Dewey Decimal is like Latin or Ancient Greek -- a dead language. Not really designed to handle modern inventions and newer technologies. It was a huge improvement for its day and it served us well in the past. But it didn't age well, and it didn't scale well.

The Library of Congress system is alive, like modern Italian or English. It addressed the major weaknesses of Dewey Decimal and although it has its own problems, it has continued to adjust and evolve as necessary. It also has scaling challenges, but at the really big sizes operated by the likes of the library of Congress or AWS, I find that everything has its scaling challenges.

For me, if I was running my own personal small library (which I probably could, given all the technical books I've bought over the years), I might be inclined to use the Dewey Decimal system. Or maybe the Library of Congress system. I'd have to test them both out and see which served my needs the best.

And that's what I'd suggest you do before you make any Herculean or Sisyphean statements. Try them both out. See what actually works for you. Then speak from your own personal experience as to what works for you and why.

I heard that the Dewey Decimal System is something you have to pay for a license for in order to legally use. Is that not the case?

Lol what, its literally just how you order and label your books - doesn't seem like anything someone would charge for even if they could

Yes, they license it.

https://www.oclc.org/en/dewey/resources.html

(Blue box about a third down the page)

I'm a former professional librarian. Left the field in 1985, but have never heard of anyone anywhere paying for use of the dewey decimal system. OCLC services is a different issue. You're paying for their provision of cataloging for your collection.

Here's one instance where they sued over this in the early 2000's.

https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...

The issue was with a hotel that numbered their rooms according to the Dewey Decimal System.

I used to work in a library school. I'm not just making a trivial appeal to authority.

It usually takes time for a system to be changed by another better one across all libraries.

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