Irrepressible Reformer: A Biography of Melvil Dewey - Softcover

Wiegand, Wayne A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 083890680X ISBN 13: 9780838906804

Publisher: ALA Editions, 1996

Synopsis

Drawing from rare archival materials researched over a period of 15 years, preeminent Dewey historian Wayne Wiegand has produced the first frank and comprehensive biography of the man behind the Dewey Decimal Classification System and scores of other enduring achievements. Tracing Dewey's life and influences that shaped it, "Irrepressible Reformer" explores Dewey's ingenious enterprise as a library innovator, New York State education official, and business and resort operator - as well as those aspects many found arrogant, manipulative, immoral and bigoted. The library world's most famous figure, Dewey (1851-1931) copyrighted his Decimal Classification System in 1876 as a young man at Amherst College. After many editions, it is used today in more than 100,000 libraries worldwide. Organiser and first executive officer of the American Library Association, he is credited as the father of library education and of librarianship as a profession. In his myriad activities in education, spelling and metric reform, state politics and hostelry, Dewey crossed paths with Andrew Carnegie, Teddy Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington, and other giants of his era. As New York State Regents Secretary, Dewey was a turn-of-the-century educational reformer ahead of his time in certification and extended learning. Wiegand gives a full account of this period, which ended in a public dipsute over Dewey's exclusionary treatment of Jews. "Irrepressible Reformer" explores Dewey's further troubles with anti-Semitism and sexual harassment as he built the Lake Placid Club in New York into a $15 million property. "Irrepressible Reformer" suffers none of the restraints of previous "kinder, gentler" biographical treatments, as it reveals the enigmatic Dewey "warts and all". Yet, the prize-winning author provides richer background on Dewey's positive achievements than any work to date. A profound character study that reads like a novel, "Irrepressible Reformer" should long serve students and researchers in librarianship, education, New York State history and American reform movements.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Melvil Dewey (1851-1931) is known for his Decimal Classification system for libraries, but the system was only one endeavor in a feverishly ambitious life. The other Dewey - reformer, businessman, powerful state education officer, resort-empire builder - has long been obscured, as has the dark side of Dewey's personality. Drawing from years of archival research, preeminent Melvil Dewey historian Wayne A. Wiegand has produced the first frank and comprehensive biography of this enigmatic reformer. While providing richer background on Dewey's positive achievements than earlier, reverential biographies, Wiegand reveals his subject as one who was "driven, tense, often arrogant", who had "an obsessive need to control...and self-righteously denied his own racism and class prejudices". Whatever Dewey's virtues and flaws, his influence on libraries and education was profound. To understand his life is to better understand these institutions - then and now - and the people who shape them.

From Library Journal:

Finally, Melvil Dewey fully revealed, in entertaining prose, built on rigorous and deep historical scholarship. This is the definitive biography we've missed for so long. It tells the story of an American archetype?a man imbued with the inventive curiosity, sexism, anti-Semitism, racism, type-A control-freakishness, and reform zeal so characteristic of the power brokers of his time and his nation. The result is a masterpiece of history. It appropriately bears the imprint of the library association he founded and nurtured and which was enlisted for years to coconspire to cover up the darker side of the old boy. Wiegand's (a Dewey historian) penetrating, provocative interpretations add to the readability and pleasure of this fine biography, even his highly arguable view that the persistence of Dewey's design for librarianship means it "will likely remain a marginal profession." To this member of the small club of holders of jobs Dewey once held, it is obvious that Wiegand's work can be used to make the opposite case as well: that it was Dewey who gave librarianship any hope at all of becoming central to modern American society. Either way, you should own and read this brilliant, comprehensive study of the biased crackpot genius to whom we librarians owe so much.?John Berry, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: ALA Editions
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 083890680X
• ISBN 13: 9780838906804
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 444