As a librarian, of course I have to mention this site. Awesome name, great cause ... it has it all! You may vaguely remember your grammar school days and an introduction to Mr. Melvil Dewey. He not only helped start the American Library Association and founded the world's first library school at Columbia University; he also liked to spell phonetically and was quite the perv. (I don't know why people always imagine librarians as bun-wearing, uptight shushers. I met the oddest people during my time at SLIS.) I'm not sure where he found the free time to develop his classification system. (In case you're interested, this blog deals with thorny classification questions as well as updates to the system. Yes, I am a nerd.)
Mr. Dewey has now (unknowingly) lent his name to this worthy cause: Dewey Donation System. The people from one of my favorite websites (Television Without Pity) have combined various individual fund-raising efforts into one main goal: helping Harrison County Library System in Mississippi to rebuild the collection after Hurricane Katrina. The site will eventually expand to help get needy libraries and donors in touch with each other. How is that not cool?
PS-Near the top of my all-time vacation wishlist is to visit New York and stay in the Library Hotel. Each of the ten floors highlights one of the ten categories in the Dewey Decimal System, and each room has art and books about a distinctive topic within the category. I haven't yet decided which room I would like to stay in, but I would guess that room 800.001 is the most popular. :)
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