Editing Widener Library (section)

===<span id="dual catalogs"></span>Parallel classification systems and dual catalogs===

[[File:HarvardUniversity WidenerLibrary CardCatalogs 1915.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.15|The original catalog room, {{shy|"though mag|nif|i|cent ar|chi|tec|tur|al|ly, looked [as though the catalog cases, with their 3796 drawers] had simply been dropped hap|haz|ard|ly into them."}}{{hsp}}{{r|metcalf1965|p=225}}{{r|lb_ad}} ]]

Like many large libraries, Widener originally classified its holdings according to its own idiosyncratic system{{mdashb}}the "Widener" (or "Harvard") system{{mdashb}}which (writes Battles) follows "the division of knowledge in its [early twentieth-century] formulation. The ''Aus'' class contains books on the [[Austro-Hungarian Empire]]; the ''Ott'' class serves the purpose for the [[Ottoman Empire]]. [[Dante]], [[Molière]], and [[Montaigne]] each gets a class of his own."{{hsp}}{{r|battles_unquiet|p=15}}

In the 1970s new arrivals began to be classified according to a modified version of the [[Library of Congress Classification|Library of Congress system]].{{r|wiegand|p=256}}{{ran|B|p=159}}
The two systems' differences reflect "competing theories of knowl{{shy}}edge{{nbsp}}... In a sense, the [old] Widener system was [[Aristotelianism|Aristotelian]]; its divi{{shy}}sions were empirical, describing and reflecting the languages and cultural origins of books and highlighting their relations to one another in language, place, and time; [the Library of Congress system], by contrast, was [[Platonic idealism|Platonic]], looking past the surface of language and nation to reflect the idealized, essential discipline in which each [item] might be said to belong."{{hsp}}{{ran|B|p=158-9}}

Because of the impracticality of reclassifying millions of books, those received before the changeover remain under their original "Widener" classifications. Thus among works on a given subject, older books will be found at one shelf location (under a "Widener" classification) and newer ones at another (under a related Library of Congress classification).{{r|movement|gewertz}}

In addition, an accident of the building's layout led to the development of two separate card catalogs{{mdashb}}the "Union" catalog and the "Public" catalog{{mdashb}}housed on different floors and having a complex interrelationship "which perplexed students and faculty alike." It was not until the 1990s that the electronic Harvard On-Line Library Information System was able to completely supplant both physical catalogs.{{ran|B|p=137,192}}