Here's how I worked at SRHS to scale back the Dewey Decimal Classification System to create a collection that is relevant to the students and other users.
3. P O S T S E C R E T: 7 4 0 S N E A R
S K AT E B O A R D A RT &
I L L U S T R ATO R S
HOW TO SURVIVE A ROBOT
UPRISING: 818 NEAR THOREAU,
KARR, & SARTON
Pam knew that she needed to do something about her print collection. At the (NH) Seacoast Librarians meeting in Feb. 2013, she definitely knew it was time to overhaul the non-fiction collection. The meeting consensus was not to throw Dewey entirely out, but to certainly scale him back – think the Dewey Diet.
For example, when students come in to do their Renaissance project, they spend a good deal of time look through the stacks to find books. Renaissance & Art: 700s; & Science: 500s; & Women: 300s; & Religion: 200s; & Cities: 900sWhy can’t they be brought together on one shelf, so that they can spend more time using the resources rather than hunting for them.
Or this one – Postsecret near Skateboard Art & Children’s Illustrators & How to Survive a Robot Uprising bear Thoreau, Karr, Sarton
Now, we have many topics of books organized together in a manner that is sensible for OUR students. Ex: European History: Ancient Times, Middle Ages, Renaissance, European History
Specific Renaissance shelf
Curiosities & Oddities section
WithPostsecret & How to Survive a Robot Uprising
At Sanborn, fortunate to have space, but also took a lot of Collection Development
One large wall that was cleared as a result of rearranging
Total of 7 mobile carts available
Determine what students are always asking for and prioritize them – Graphic Novels, Manga, and SAT/GED/College Prep books were already sorted out in the Fall.
But now, more Dewey Diet sections were possible. Shakespeare: The plays, criticisms, graphic novels, No-Fear Shakespeares, Shakespeare biographies
Music books are ever popular and spanned the collection – biographies, histories, music compositionAre we getting the point?
Don’t try to be clever and cute – it only creates more confusion and makes the Diet pointless if you’re just coming up with a new coding system.
Mixing Bowl with Wisk or Cute book with fork; Surveyed a few students with the fork – not one got what the section the book would be in, even when we affixed it to a cookbook!!!! We went with the bowl & wisk.
Some cover the Dewey call number entirely. Some do not – Music didn’t because there are so many topics within the shelves, that we needed some organization. Images v. Words – We used words on all books along the wall because it was difficult to come up with an image. So we figured if we were stumped on the image, then students definitely wouldn’t understand the label.
Management Side: We replaced the entire call number in the instances where we covered the entire spine label with an image or words (Renaissance), but in others, we added a Prefix and kept the Dewey for the books that we did not cover the label entirely.
But users don’t know the difference – keeps confusion down!They typically find it all of their own. But other times we do need to direct them. Last Tuesday (April 9), juniors were researching the 1960s and one student came up to us to ask where the Woodstock book was – he said it was listed as in, and it wasn’t in the Music section. Pam & I both looked at each other, expecting him to have gone to the traditional stacks to look for the book, but he told us that he actually knew to go to the music cart. After a minute or two, he figured out that another classmate had the book – which means that 2 students know the new system and it’s only been 5 weeks! We wonder how many others know.
You’re probably wondering what’s in the rest of our non-fiction?
We added a subject shelf label to each shelf. They are still in Dewey order, but the subject labels certainly help browsing. Some were super simple - Folklore
Others, not so much.
Read an article about integrating QR codes within the library – surveys, new books – my thought – use them to promote library online resources!
Knew not to go QR code crazy – then it would be information overload and too complicated & confusing about which resource to use.Started with the basics – QR code how to on every other table (again, didn’t want to overload them)
This was my first sign to go up --- still my favorite.
Codes for Library Assistant’s reading blog & the catalog
As we knew the topics that we were creating sections for are hot topics in the library, it makes sense that we have a plethora of online resources dedicated to them.Rock&Roll in Music; Geography Databases in Countries; 1960s in Decades; Citation in Writing Skills
