A Biography of Melvil Dewey

Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey was born in a small town in upper New York State on December 10, 1851. He changed his first name to Melvil and dropped his middle names.

He invented the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system, the classification system that bears his name, when he was working as a student assistant in the library of Amherst College at 21..

Dewey changed librarianship into a modern profession. He helped establish the American Library Association (ALA) in 1876; he was secretary of ALA from 1876 to 1890 and president during the 1890/1891 and 1892/1893 terms. He co-founded and edited Library Journal. He was a promoter of library standards and started a library supply company, which later became the Library Bureau. He was a pioneer in library education. In 1883, Dewey became the librarian of Columbia College (now Columbia University) in New York City and founded the first ever library school on January 1, 1887. He retired in 1906.

In his later years he helped create the Lake Placid Club, a leisure center in the Adirondacks. Dewey died from a stroke on December 26, 1931. Seven decades after his death, he is still remembered for the Dewey Decimal Classification, the most widely used library classification system in the world.