[Publib] RE: Publib Digest, Vol 46, Issue 4

[Dale McNeill]

I personally love DDC.  But, goodness, I learned it as a child and
classified my own books at home.  Which is, any way you look at it, odd.
Even if you did it too, it's still odd!  :)

Now, without being all historical about it (and welcoming any correction), I
think it's worth thinking about the point of classification.  It gets back
to "Save the time of the reader."

Libraries, of course, used to have closed stacks.  Customers (insert your
word of choice, I'm just used to saying customers) would look in the
catalog, write down the needed information (often a number) and a page would
go look for the book.

This was a common thing in other businesses as well.  For example, when I
was a child (and I was born in 1961, so not that long ago), grocery shopping
worked this same way.  We would bring a list to the grocer and then go on
the next errand.  When we went back to the grocery store, Mr. Fairchild
would have the groceries boxed  and the amount of the bill added to
account.  (We always talked about a "bill" of groceries, not a "bag" or a
"box".)

And let me add here, that people didn't have a lot more time in those days.
They had a lot less, but fewer distractions and a bit more patience.

So, along comes this bright idea (back to libraries) of opening the shelves
to the public and shelving the books in some way that helped people in the
process of looking for them.  Now the catalog was less vital (think about
it, when you couldn't see the clothes in the department store, you spent
more time looking at and reading the catalog.) Classification became more
important, so that customers could browse the shelves and find books that
might interest them.

Dewey came up with a very flexible and expandable/contractible system of
organizing knowledge by aspect.  (Which is hard to explain to customers, but
is really more helpful than subject--why are there books with birds as the
subject in so many areas--because the aspect of knowledge that touches on
"birdwatching", "raising canaries", "painting birds", "bird poetry", etc.
are rather different.  And often only one of those is what the customer is
looking for.  And the person interesting in tending to geese is probably
more interesting in getting a book on goat raising than on bird poetry.
Though you never know.)

DDC allows for very local changes, which I've talked about here before.

But, is DDC the only way to arrange books (and other library materials) for
the convenience of our users?  Of course not.  As mentioned, there's LC's
classification system.  I love it for some subjects, find it unnecessarily
complex for others.  And there's UDC.  And others, including BISAC.

In every case, libraries should determine what makes the most sense now (and
looking forward, as it's expensive to change) as a way to arrange library
materials for the public in such a way that customers can quickly and
effectively find what they're looking for.  That will, obviously vary.  And
Jesse touches on many of the things that libraries should think about in
this regard: how large is the collection?  how are the customers using it?
how focused is the collection (10,000 books about canaries would require a
different sort of classification than 10,000 books about almost all
subjects), and so forth.

One system isn't better than another one, in general.  What matters, is
whether that system is best for those customers of that library.

Just my evening thougthts....

Dale

who has filed catalog cards, maintained a shelf list, organized storytimes,
managed a branch, managed a big division in a Central library, been
responsible for millions of books, and been in the Southlake Library, among
other things



On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 8:22 PM, Jesse Ephraim
<JEphraim at ci.southlake.tx.us>wrote:

> >With categories how else are they shelved? If I am looking for a
> >specific book on dogs it is not that helpful to say 'here are the
> >animal books, it should be here somewhere'
>
> A lot depends on the size of your collection and how most of your
> patrons are using it.
>
> In our case, the total number of items in our collection is no larger
> than what you would find in B&N (small library in a small town).  If you
> were to go to look at books on dog breeds and training, for example,
> there is no more than one shelf of them.  Even the largest specific
> subject areas of our collection - World War II, for example - don't take
> up more than 10 short shelves, at most.  If we were to put all the books
> in a particular subject area on the shelves in totally random order
> (which we wouldn't, of course), I could still locate a particular one
> within a few minutes, at most.
>
> As our collection stands, there is no need to go out to the nth decimal
> degree in Dewey numbers.  In fact, it can make the shelving more
> confusing for the patrons if we do so.  The degree of specificity we
> need can easily be done with more human-readable letter combinations.
> When it comes to non-fiction books, most of our patrons do not come in
> with a particular title in mind, unless it is on the bestseller lists.
> They mostly like to browse our non-fiction collection, like you would in
> a bookstore.  Specific requests are almost always for fiction books.
>
> Our library is literally a two minute walk from a heavily trafficed B&N,
> both in a very popular outdoor shopping center.  Our town is an affluent
> suburb where most patrons can afford to simply buy the books they want,
> if they choose.  Most of our patrons also patronize bookstores
> frequently, and are very comfortable in that environment.  It is common
> for them to tell us that they can always find what they want in B&N, but
> have trouble with Dewey in the library.
>
> As I indicated before, our situation is unusual.  Not many public
> libraries have dropped Dewey, so there is no good model for doing so -
> we are having to be creative as we move forward.  The system we are
> adopting is adapted for browsing, and would not be suitable for all
> libraries, particularly larger ones.   Though we did look at BISAC when
> coming up with our system, we did not adopt it wholesale.
>
> (My opinions are my own, etc.).
>
>
> Jesse Ephraim
>
> Youth Services Librarian
> Southlake Public Library
> 1400 Main St., Ste. 130
> Southlake, TX  76092
>
> Email:   jephraim at ci.southlake.tx.us
> Phone: (817) 748-8248
> FAX:    (817) 748-8250
> www.southlakelibrary.org
> uncommonly friendly service
>
>
>
>
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