Faith Lane Books

The Fresh Librarian

The Poet Genealogist

Dewey or Don’t We?

This is a standard joke in libraries….

True confession time, friends. I have always hated the Dewey Decimal system. I’m sure it was wonderful in 1876. And it is certainly better than stacks of unsorted books in random piles around the library. But, as a young child and as an adult, I learned to simply memorize the stacks where my favorite subjects lived. In small libraries this worked perfectly. In high school I needed to become more adept at using the DD system, because we were doing research papers. HINT: That was in the dark ages, when we also had to use a true card catalog!

Even in those high school years, the Dewey system still retained something of a logical structure. [WARNING: Heavy sarcasm coming right up!] Women, LGBT, and POC were not important enough yet to cause conflicts in the filing system; most people in my area were Christian, so finding books that were NOT based in Christianity was rare; and computer technologies had not yet been invented for the general public. The archaic cataloging system held up under those terms.

Now, in 2019? Oh, wow. Let me count the ways Dewey doesn’t work:

  • Too complicated for most library users
  • Intimidates the heck out of math-phobic folks, young and old [even though it is not math-based]
  • If you are researching “dogs” for example, you will have to visit many different sections to find your research: animals in the 500s; pets in the 700s; working dogs, famous dogs… all elsewhere in the stacks
  • Don’t get me started on emerging computer and digital technologies not being including with other technologies in the science section
  • And oh, those pesky people who are not white males. Where will we find them?

Look at the beginning. 000 is general information and at the front of the line is where someone arbitrarily decided to ‘stick’ computer science. Psychology is mashed with philosophy at 100, with religion at 200 in between, and then social sciences at 300. Wait. Isn’t psychology a social science? Another pet peeve: Should Great Expectations be cataloged as non-fiction literature? Or shelved with general fiction? There is nothing intuitive about Dewey, and the system worked best when librarians were in the business of protecting collections from the public. Clearly, we need to ditch Dewey as soon as we dare.

Changing several thousand library catalog entries, creating new spine labels, and installing new signage throughout the facility is a wearying and thankless task for long winter days, and we do not want to regret making the change. We need to select a more user-friendly system for our small public library. But what to choose?

Certainly not the Library of Congress classification, commonly used in academic libraries. There, computers are listed as “Calculating machines” and are found in the section on mathematics. Oh, and women? Look in Subclass HQ, Family. Marriage. Women. Lesbians? Until the 1970s, they were cataloged under Subclass HV: Social Pathology. Criminology. So wrong. Now, on most campuses, homosexuality is also listed in Subclass HQ. But apparently not actually IN the Library of Congress. Finally, even fiction works are mashed into the LC classification system.

Many small libraries are transitioning to Book Store classifications [BISAC]. In this system, for example, all things computer-related are cataloged and housed together, each with a call number of COM plus a six-digit number. The BISAC system [like LC] includes a numbering system for fiction works. In our library, we will need to thoroughly discuss whether re-cataloging fiction is necessary.

References

Book Industry Study Group. [2019]. BISAC subject codes. Accessed online at: https://bisg.org/page/BISACSubjectCodes

Lechtenberg, K. [2018]. Could Genre-based classification limit intellectual freedom? Intellectual Freedom [blog]. Accessed online at: https://www.oif.ala.org/oif/?p=13666

Library of Congress. [2019]. Library of Congress classification outline. Accessed online at: https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/

Lyttle, M.A. and Walsh, S.D. [2018]. Leaving Dewey for BISAC. Accessed online at: http://publiclibrariesonline.org/2018/11/leaving-dewey-for-bisac/

OCLC. [2019]. Dewey Decimal Classification [DDC] Summaries. Accessed online at: https://www.oclc.org/en/dewey/features/summaries.html

Stitt, S. [2018]. Metadata 101: How to create book metadata that will increase discoverability and enhance your marketing. Front Edge Publishing. Accessed online at: https://frontedgepublishing.com/metadata-101-how-to-create-book-metadata-that-will-increase-discoverability-and-enhance-your-marketing/

Tarsala, C.B. [2014]. BISAC basics. The Feral Cataloger [blog]. Accessed online at: https://cbtarsala.wordpress.com/2014/11/16/bisac-basics/