Remembering the Howard University Librarian Who Decolonized the Way Books Were Catalogued

Account of Dorothy B. Porter’s work building and organizing the Howard University collection that became the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, appointed 1930. It quotes Porter’s oral history in this form (verbatim to the capture at reference/docket/captures/unsearchable-2026-09-03/smithsonian_porter.html): “Now in [that] system, they had one number—326—that meant slavery, and they had one other number—325, as I recall it—that meant colonization.” It continues that in many “white libraries,” “every book, whether it was a book of poems by James Weldon Johnson, who everyone knew was a black poet, went under 325. And that was stupid to me.”

That rendering differs from the printed interview (Madison and Wesley, The Public Historian 17:1, 1995, p. 25; record madison-wesley-porter-oral-history-1995), which reads “Now, in the Dewey Decimal System” and “who everybody knew.” The article also says Porter classified “instead of using the Dewey system”; in the printed interview she says she adapted the Dewey system by subject. Kept as a secondary account; the printed interview governs quotation. Secondary source quoting a primary oral history.

Read again 2026-10-19 (T4, in the browser, for the 10/22 post). The page resolves with the same title, byline (Zita Cristina Nunes) and date (November 26, 2018). The “326” passage was NOT re-read on screen (page text blocked to the extension); the 2026-09-03 capture stands for its wording. No change to what this record states.