Dewey numbers for LGBTI topics have been and at times continue to be homophobic, reflecting the society and times in which the numbers are developed, from the nineteenth century to present. Melvil Dewey, a man so obsessed with efficiency he shortened the spelling of his first name and considered spelling his surname as ‘Dui’, invented Dewey decimal classification in 1876. Given the nineteenth century origins of DDC, many have noted the inherent cultural bias including a Christian concentration, racism, sexism and homophobia.

In a widely reported presentation to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Cerf expressed last week the belief that we live ‘in a digital Dark Age’ in which ‘an information black hole’ threatens to create ‘a forgotten generation, or even a forgotten century’. You couldn’t frame the problem in more alarmist, apocalyptic terms. But is true? Yes and no. Consider a written English text that exists in two formats: as an analogue document printed on paper and as a digital document written in Word Perfect 2.0 and stored on a 3½ inch floppy disc formatted by a 1989 Apple Macintosh.

I hold in my hands a cheap, ugly edition of every book in existence. At least that’s what it feels like. An ebook reader is like a portal, a word repository. It’s the world’s literature no longer bound by time and space.

HarperCollins is committed to the library channel. We believe this change balances the value libraries get from our titles with the need to protect our authors and ensure a presence in public libraries and the communities they serve for years to come. Remember the library card inside the front cover (sometimes the back) that used […]

‘Fess up: who remembers a time when there was no internet? Once upon a time, if a child, student, writer or reader wanted to know something, they would have to march off to the library* – a day’s hike to the great metropolis on the horizon, for some – and physically track down obscure and […]

This week, before things rapidly descended into chaos, I went into Fitzroy Library. For years now, it’s been a habit of mine, to peruse the sorting shelves and discover what others are reading – what they have recently returned, what they have been borrowing. It’s a tiny piece of sociological research (with a laughable sample and […]