025.431: The Dewey blog

In this post, I’d like to highlight a couple of exhibits approved at EPC Meeting 145 earlier this year: EPC 145-S32.1 Radicalism and EPC 145-S32.2 Christian nationalism. They were entwined enough that they might have been a single larger exhibit except for quirks of timing. The former was completed before work on the latter began.

EPC 145-S32.1 began in response to classifiers in Europe and the US asking for a clearer place to class works on far-right or radical right-wing ideologies. Political ideologies aren’t subdivided by left-right spectrum in DDC, partially due to how that spectrum differs, sometimes wildly, across countries. A natural place for ideologies labeled right wing is 320.52 Conservatism, but as some of these classifiers brought up, far right ideologies can diverge from conservatism, especially on the idea of “caution in effecting social change”, to quote our definition note.

Investigating this question, we noted that 320.53 was something of a catch-all for radical ideologies, though its former caption of “Collectivism and fascism” didn’t make that entirely clear. The exhibit brought radicalism from the class-here note to the caption, so now you’ll find 320.53 Radicalism, collectivism, fascism in WebDewey. We also authorized two new subdivisions, for left-wing and right-wing radicalism.

What makes a political ideology radical? The DDC does not seek to answer that, only to provide a place for works about ideologies considered radical. We also figured “radical” was rarely the most salient way to describe an ideology, and put in notes to suggest another number be used when applicable.

Meanwhile, EPC 145-S32.2 modestly expanded 320.55 Religiously oriented ideologies, which previously only had a single subdivision for Islamic ideologies. This exhibit began as an attempt to provide a place for Christian nationalism. We ended up drawing heavily from existing treatment of political Islam in doing so, identifying both social theological (261.7) and political ideology (the new 320.553) classes depending on disciplinary treatment.

We also decided to be a bit cautious, leaving Christian nationalism in an including note at both numbers, as it’s just one political ideology drawing from Christianity. There was enough literature to justify some development here, but not so much that we can’t afford to wait a bit. Better to have the topic in standing room now and later move it to a new number than putting it in a class-here note now and later deciding it’s getting conflated with other ideas.

Take a look at these changes in WebDewey, or in print-on-demand beginning in 2025, and let us know what you think. And for those of you about to celebrate US Thanksgiving—may politics come up at the dinner table no more than you want, even (especially?) if that’s none at all.

No, this isn’t about a modern reimagining of The Hobbit—it’s the story of how we eventually found a place for vaping in the DDC. For a single topic, it took us a while.

We all know the DDC is discipline based, right? So what discipline does vaping belong to? Several of them. When introducing a topic into the classification, it’s always a good idea to consider whether there are similar topics that could either form models for a new development, or even whether the new topic can go in an existing number.

Vaping first came to our attention in the “before times”, identified as a priority by respondents in a 2019 user survey. Emily Zinger, our intern that year, assisted then-editor Violet Fox in researching the topic, as did volunteer contributor Josh Hall. Their efforts culminated in exhibit EPC 142C-S36.1 Vaping and vaping devices.

You’re welcome to read the whole exhibit, but to summarize, they looked at how tobacco products, smoking, and cigarettes were treated in the DDC. They identified an important split between vaping as an activity versus vape devices (also known as e-cigarettes, e-cigs, vape pens, vapes, and many other terms) and their liquid, which can be covered in disciplines such as manufacturing. It was a great start, but ultimately, EPC sent it back for further work. It took us a while to prepare a revamped exhibit, but in our defense, it was 2020.

I led the efforts on this year’s version, EPC 145-S36.2. I kept “Vaping and vaping devices” as the title, which I believe I suggested before. (Was I inspired by a certain King of the Hill catchphrase? I’ll never tell!) As I noted in the exhibit, last year’s Editor in Residence, Kathryn Becker, helped a lot to get us back on track with the topic. It really does take a village.

My general approach was to start with the previous exhibit, which had solved a lot of the fundamentals, but to scale back a bit, saving some similar topics, such as indoor smoking bans and other law aspects, for another day.

You can see all of the approved changes live in WebDewey, which differ in some respects from what I proposed. An important one, inspired by feedback from colleagues in the UK, was to put vaping in including notes, limiting it to standing room.

Why? For all the interest in the topic, we just haven’t seen that much literature on it. I still expect it to grow, but it didn’t grow as much as I expected since 2020, for example. Using including notes here is more “future-proof”, in that if we later decide to give smoking and vaping different numbers, we can do so. Conversely, if we decide class-here notes are more appropriate, that the topics should be treated the same, it’s easier for us to shift that way, and allow number building, than vice versa, which would entail invalidating numbers users could otherwise have built in the meantime.

I’m glad to say that once we really get to work on an exhibit, the timeline is shorter than it was here. But the journey of vaping is also a good example of how the extra time to get it right can really pay off.