Education and Personal Life
Dewey was born in Adams Center, New York, the fifth and last child of Joel and Eliza Greene Dewey. He attended rural schools and determined early that his destiny was to be a reformer in educating the masses. At Amherst College he belonged to Delta Kappa Epsilon, earning a bachelor's degree in 1874 and a master's in 1877.
While still a student, he founded the Library Bureau which sold high quality index cards and filing cabinets, and established the standard dimensions for catalog cards.
As a young adult he advocated spelling reform; he changed his name from the usual "Melville" to "Melvil", without redundant letters, and for a time changed his surname to "Dui".
From 1883 to 1888 he was chief librarian at Columbia University, from 1888 to 1906 director of the New York State Library, and from 1888 to 1900 secretary and executive officer of the University of the State of New York. In 1895 Dewey founded the Lake Placid Club with his wife Annie. He and his son Godfrey had been active in arranging the Winter Olympics which took place at Lake Placid—he was chairman of the New York State Winter Olympics Committee. In 1926 he went to Florida to establish a new branch of the Lake Placid Club. He died in Lake Placid, Florida.
Even Dewey's friends found his personality difficult, and he early in life established a pattern of making powerful enemies. As one biographer put it, "Although he did not lack friends, they were becoming weary of coming to his defense, so endless a process it had become.” He was removed from his position as New York State Librarian during a controversy over policies he had instituted at the Lake Placid Club restricting membership based on race and religion. Another biography refers to Dewey's "old nemesis—a persistent inability to control himself around women" as an ongoing cause of trouble on the job.
Dewey had been married to Annie R. Godfrey, and then to Emily McKay Beal. He was a member of the American Library Association's Hall of Fame.
Read more about this topic: Melvil Dewey
Famous quotes containing the words personal life, education and, education, personal and/or life:
“A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“... many of the things which we deplore, the prevalence of tuberculosis, the mounting record of crime in certain sections of the country, are not due just to lack of education and to physical differences, but are due in great part to the basic fact of segregation which we have set up in this country and which warps and twists the lives not only of our Negro population, but sometimes of foreign born or even of religious groups.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)
“Law without education is a dead letter. With education the needed law follows without effort and, of course, with power to execute itself; indeed, it seems to execute itself.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“A man’s personal defects will commonly have with the rest of the world precisely that importance which they have to himself. If he makes light of them, so will other men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For every life and every act
Consequence of good and evil can be shown
And as in time results of many deeds are blended
So good and evil in the end become confounded.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)