the pod bay door

:: Randy Cohen writes perhaps my favorite column, The Ethicist (ID and PW: podbay), for the NYTimes Magazine. He is the author of The Good, The Bad & The Difference: How to Tell Right From Wrong in Everyday Situations. In the Sept 7, 2003, issue of the NYTimes Magazine, he responded to a question from a high school student regarding the use of online resources at a university attended by her brother, by using his password to gain access. I work at a university with a large number of online resources, and wonder how often this happens, since we are unable to patrol who actually is using passwords when off campus. Here is the question and Cohen’s response:
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:: Well, I am proud, actually, but lately, my profession is doing what it can to make itself look, er, stoopid. First comes the librarian action figure, in which the action involves telling you to, basically, shut up. (Other superhero action figures save the world – our action figure tells you to stop talking.) Now comes word that OCLC, the Online Computer Library Center, is suing The Library Hotel in NYC for using the Dewey Decimal System as its theme. The Library Hotel divides each of its floors according to the DDC, meaning that each floor and room on that floor is dedicated to a specific subject in the classification.

OCLC owns the rights to the DDC, is concerned that people visiting the web site might think the hotel is connected with the owner of the classification system. From the hotel’s website:

Most library users know the general structure of Melvil Dewey’s decimal classification. First published in 1876, the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) divides knowledge into ten main classes, with further subdivisions. More than 200,000 libraries in 135 countries use the DDC to organize their book collections. Its simple and logical framework is based on the principle of decimal fractions as class marks, which are expandable to make further subdivisions.

The Library Hotel in New York City is the first hotel ever to offer its guest over 6,000 volumes organized throughout the hotel by the DDC. Each of the 10 guestrooms floors honors one of the 10 categories of the DDC and each of the 60 rooms is uniquely adorned with a collection of books and art exploring a distinctive topic within the category or floor it belongs to.

OCLC must see this explanation as a threat to the integrity of the DDC. Sheesh. Apparently OCLC is willing to settle with the hotel’s owners, according to its lawyers. I hope this happens quickly, so that OCLC can go back to its own business and end this nonsense. Interesting that there is no mention of this lawsuit on OCLC’s web site. I wonder why suing the Library Hotel is important to OCLC, but not important enough to merit one of OCLC’s press releases. (Thanks, Derryl.)