Dewey Decimal Classification System

OniLink

Hi,

How would I go about implementing a Dewey Decimal Classification System? Is there an easy way to do this?

Thanks,
~Oni.

Weedpacket

I find small sticky labels on the book spines and signage on the ends of the shelves works well.

OniLink

Smart arse 🙂 I meant is there any easy way when adding a book to a database to give it a dewey decimal number? Is there a script laready made for this?

Weedpacket

Yes; have a field called "Dewey" or something like that, and fill it in when adding the book.

NogDog

If you're asking about a way to have the program automatically determine what the number should be, I don't know if there is an existing script, but I'm sure it would require that you enter several fields of data for each book so that the algorithm could determine what the number should be. You might need a sequence of forms, since the selection of one category would result in a different list of sub-categories.

OniLink

Thanks NogDog, that's exactly how I was thinking. But its going to be a long process of entering all those bloody categories. I think I might just have a link to a dewey category tree (I think Wikipedia has one) and have the person entering the book to entering in the dewey themeselves.

NogDog

OniLink wrote:
Thanks NogDog, that's exactly how I was thinking. But its going to be a long process of entering all those bloody categories. I think I might just have a link to a dewey category tree (I think Wikipedia has one) and have the person entering the book to entering in the dewey themeselves.

Yeah, I ended up looking at the Wikipedia article before my first reply, to remind my vague memories of how the DD was structured. Maybe just put a text input field on the form with this link next to it:

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_decimal_system#Classes" target="_blank">List 
of DD Classes</a>

🙂

Weedpacket

OniLink wrote:
But its going to be a long process of entering all those bloody categories.

Hah, you think you've got it bad; I've got astrometric data for over two and a half million stars to enter into my database. To eight significant figures, no less. It's going to take me aeons to get them from the computer to the computer.

(Incidentally, I did a Google search on "Dewey Decimal Classification" and got lucky on the first hit. I'd never have guessed it existed....)