Melvil Dewey - Work

Work

Dewey was a pioneer of American librarianship and an influential factor in the development of libraries in America in the beginning of the 20th century. He is best known for the decimal classification system that is used in most public and school libraries. But the decimal system was just one of a long list of innovations. Among them was the idea of the state library as controller of school and public library services within a state. Dewey is also known for the creation of hanging vertical files, which first introduced at the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. In Boston, Massachusetts, he founded the Library Bureau, a private company "for the definite purpose of furnishing libraries with equipment and supplies of unvarying correctness and reliability."

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Famous quotes containing the word work:

    Then, bringing me the joy we feel when wee see a work by our favorite painter which differs from any other that we know, or if we are led before a painting of which we have until then only seen a pencil sketch, if a musical piece heard only on the piano appears before us clothed in the colors of the orchestra, my grandfather called me the [hawthorn] hedge at Tansonville, saying, “You who are so fond of hawthorns, look at this pink thorn, isn’t it lovely?”
    Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

    The common experience is, that the man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then he is part of the machine he moves; the man is lost.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Even the wisest man grows tense
    With some sort of violence
    Before he can accomplish fate,
    Know his work or choose his mate.

    Poet and sculptor, do the work,
    Nor let the modish painter shirk
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)