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May 31, 2007
Down with Dewey?
The Arizona Republic reports that the Perry Branch of the Maricopa County Library System will drop the Dewey Decimal system of organizing books and instead organize by topic just like book stores do.
It's an interesting experiment and one that could prove to be quite successful. What's lost here, though, is the fact that Dewey Decimal does organize materials by topic. If you take a look at the image at the top of this page, you'll see some books with labels having Dewey Decimal numbers of 320-point-something-or-other. The 320 indicates that these materials focus on topics relevant to political science. The number after the decimal point (the something-or-other) provides some focus -- perhaps a specific theory, event, etc....
The numbers also serve as physical addresses -- exact locations where you will find any given item. It works a lot like house addresses. Imagine a world in which we didn't have house addresses, but instead said things like, "They live in the Hilltop section of town", or "She lives near the hospital." This, I think, is where the shelve-by-topic experiment falls short. It's great for making generalizations, but not so great for locating specific items. It'll be interesting to see how this works out.
Posted by AnthonyMcMullen at May 31, 2007 2:45 PM
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Comments
This is sort of scary. I've always loved the Dewey Decimal system for that reason--I know I can find what I'm looking for, and maybe something I'm not looking for but could find useful. I can't tell you how many books I've found "by accident" thanks to the system--books that I've loved in both fiction and non.
Do you think there's an underlying reason for doing this? It occurs to me that libraries aren't getting traffic like the nearest Barnes & Noble--but I know people who love B&N because they can go there and read whatever they want for free. :-/ Could this be the library's attempt to appear more like a bookstore? (Even if it's just subliminal?) Are there really that -few- people who now use libraries who also know and understand the Dewey Decimal system?
Posted by: Karissa at May 31, 2007 8:37 PM
The motivation here, as I see it, is to make things easier for the library user thereby making a visit to the library a richer experience. And, yes, to make it look a little bit more like a bookstore too... Currently, there's quite a bit of discussion in libraryland regarding the library as "place".
It's important to remember the context here -- we're talking about a relatively small collection in a branch library of a public library system. They probably collect heavily in a few key areas (cookbooks, history, arts & crafts, gardening, "how to", self help, biographies, etc.) and ignore others altogether.
I think the organization by broad categories could work, but only for small collections (less than 30,000 volumes, maybe?). Larger, more specialized collections require higher degrees of granularity than a simple list of basic topics can provide.
Posted by: Tony at June 1, 2007 10:07 AM
I'd agree, Tony, that a bookstore-style arrangement would be fine for browsing for leisure reading, but a research collections should be kept in either LC or Dewey order.
Posted by: Dennis G. Jerz at June 1, 2007 10:36 AM
I understand what you mean, and I think the idea of having research collections in anything but the established systems would be a sign of the apocalypse... But I have to wonder if they're doing it with small libraries and hobbyist collections where will it stop? Then again, that's just my opinion. It'll be interested to learn how it plays out.
Posted by: Karissa at June 1, 2007 11:17 AM