• Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to secondary sidebar

New York Almanack

History, Natural History & the Arts

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • Adirondacks & NNY
  • Capital-Saratoga
  • Mohawk Valley
  • Hudson Valley & Catskills
  • NYC & Long Island
  • Western NY
  • History
  • Nature & Environment
  • Arts & Culture
  • Outdoor Recreation
  • Food & Farms
  • Subscribe
  • Support
  • Submit
  • About
  • New Books
  • Events
  • Podcasts

Melvil Dewey: Efficient, Inventive, Annoyingly Bigoted

November 9, 2020 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Book purchases made through this link support New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.

A new children’s book, The Efficient, Inventive (Often Annoying) Melvil Dewey (Calkins Creek, 2020) by Alexis O’Neill and illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham, is a colorful biography about the creator and implementer of the Dewey Decimal Classification system, who had a significant and lasting impact in libraries but ended his career in disgrace for his racist and sexist views.

From the time he was a boy in Adams Center, Jefferson County, NY, until he was a grown man, Melville Dewey took deep satisfaction in organizing things, from his mother’s chaotic cupboard to books in libraries. Dewey promoted efficiency by practicing simplified spelling (“Melville” became “Melvil”) and hacking off any letters that got in the way of pronunciation. He claimed doing this could shave three years of a student’s time in school (Jst think uv wat els u cud learn in thoz yrs!) And everything he did seemed to move at warp speed: a student clocked him speaking at 180 words a minute in a library lecture. His inventions and helpful applications of efficiency are still being applied in libraries in more than 135 countries across the world.

Dewey was also a virulent racist with a penchant for harassing women. A founder of the segregationist Lake Placid Club, he helped write the Club’s policy banning membership of Jews and African Americans. Dewey bought adjacent land to keep Jews from owning it, not far from the historic John Brown Farm and Timbuctoo where Gerrit Smith had help settle free black families before the Civil War. The New York State Board of Regents was pressured to remove Dewey as State Librarian in 1904, but refused, offering only a public rebuke (Dewey resigned in 1905). He also resigned from the American Library Association amid complaints of sexual harassment, racism and antisemitism.

Those biographical details make him a strange subject for children’s book. Despite the couching of Dewey’s attitudes in the title as “Often Annoying,” this little light-hearted book doesn’t address these flaws, leaving them to a few sentences in a separate “Author’s Note” that moves quickly to a bullet point recounting his accomplishments.

Alexis O’Neill is the author of several picture books including The Kite That Bridged Two Nations: Homan Walsh and the First Niagara Suspension Bridge, Jacob Riis’s Camera; Bringing Light to Tenement Children, and The Efficient, Inventive (Often Annoying) Melvil Dewey. O’Neill received the California Reading Association’s award for making significant and outstanding contributions to reading throughout California and is an instructor for the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. More information about her work can be found on her website.

Book Purchases made through this Amazon link support the New York Almanack‘s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State. If you found this post helpful, make a contribution at our Rally.org fundraising page.

Books noticed on the New York Almanack have been provided by their publishers.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Filed Under: Adirondacks & NNY, Books, Capital-Saratoga, History, Western NY Tagged With: Books, Education, Libraries

About Editorial Staff

Stories written under the Editorial Staff byline are drawn from press releases and other notices. Submit your news to New York Almanack here.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Help Us Reach Our Fundraising Goal

Subscribe to New York Almanack

Subscribe! Follow the New York Almanack each day via E-mail, RSS, Twitter or Facebook updates.

Recent Comments

  • Louis deGonzague on WWI Vet, Belgian Painter Edward Buyck in NY
  • Chris Traskos on Frances Perkins, One of America’s Most Influential Women, Remains Unrecognized
  • Leslie Mankes on Catskills Resorts: The Beginning of the End
  • David Gibson on Rangers Respond to Deadly Snowmobile Accident, Injured Hiker
  • DOMINIC JACANGELO on How Snowmobilers Won Their Special Privileges To Ride On Forever Wild Lands
  • Shannon on John H. Moffitt’s North Country Political Biography
  • Phil Brown on Presidential Pardon Power: What The Founders Thought
  • HorseWeb on The Unpleasant Side of Life With Horses in Cities
  • Kathy Chappell on Preservation Failures: The Hardenbergh House
  • Rico Viray on Esopus: Wiltwyck School For Boys Lecture

Recent New York Books

The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret
Historic Crimes of Long Island
Its a Helluva Town
The Long Crisis
rebuilding the republic
The 20th Century Civil Rights Movement
first principles
An American Marriage
too long ago
the long year of the revolution

Secondary Sidebar

New York State Historic Markers