Photo by Sarah Reid (www.flickr.com/photos/sarahreido).

School librarians remain deeply divided over Dewey, but for most, its staying power is a matter of practicality. While the system is flawed, a complete overhaul of all those call numbers and spine labels is simply impossible. And yet, given CC’s requirements around informational texts, it makes sense for us to consider whether or not our current classification system best serves students’ interests. Dewey’s venerable system has supposedly been updated for our changing times—by adding even more places after the decimal. That’s hardly ideal for helping elementary school students find books. But with some technology and creative problem solving, relabeling an entire collection won’t be necessary.

Beyond Dewey, there are bigger changes afoot. MARC, the structure underlying the library catalog, is being challenged by a new metadata model: the Resource Description Framework (RDF). The scheme promises to provide not only a richer description of content, but also lends greater context to how specific content relates to other pieces of information. To learn more, visit the Library of Congress’s Bibliographic Framework initiative.

Beyond describing what a work is about, RDF and the Bibliographic Framework show users where they can find books and other materials locally. Holdings can have multiple location fields for Dewey, LC, and other classification schemes. Through semantic linking, one could also display the subject terms for a particular Dewey number. So there’s your subject-based cataloging without having to re-catalog.

There’s already a tool you can try that provides the subject-term equivalents for the top 1,100+ DDS numbers: dewey.info, a project of OCLC, steward of the DDS. So rather than chuck Dewey altogether, make use of the well-established subject hierarchy behind the numbers to update your library classification. Label shelf ranges and shelves with subject terms to help browsing students explore their interests without having to recreate every spine label and call number.

In the end, any evolutionary changes to library organization will require the support of industry service providers. Again, time becomes an issue if book jobbers don’t adopt a given system, requiring local processing. It isn’t reasonable to expect jobbers to be able to support a range of classification systems. For any system to be truly effective, it also needs to be supported by the online catalogs used by our students. Therefore it’s critical that AASL (the American Association of School Librarians) works together with vendors to address this issue.

As a wise colleague suggested, perhaps the best way to move forward with this discussion is to put the sacred cows back to pasture and simply sit down and talk about how we can best connect readers with books. No matter what classification system tickles your fancy, as long as we all agree that helping kids find books they love is our shared mission, then we can work together toward a common solution.

The continuing conversation about whether Dewey’s days are numbered (“Are Dewey’s Days Numbered,” Oct. 2012, pp. 24–28; “Summer Project: Kill Dewey,” Aug. 2012, p. 14) has been useful as I consider how to make my library’s collection more accessible. While I believe that Dewey still has its place, I’ve thought about fresh ways to meet the needs of my middle and high school students. As a result of the debate, I’ve added a lot more subject heading labels to my shelves, especially highlighting topics of high interest, and I’ve adjusted Dewey in the 800s section.

I abridged Dewey to 19 numbers in relation to literature, essentially eliminating the geographic/cultural separation of authors and literary eras, making this subject area an easy one for browsing. Instead of 810s for American authors, 820s for British authors, etc., all poetry by one author is under 821, and all collections of poetry are filed under 821.08, regardless of nationality or time period.

In addition, all literary criticism, without regard to the type of literature, is now shelved under 829 in the manner we file biographies, with the letters of the writer first, then the letters of the criticism’s author. A work of criticism on Elie Wiesel is now assigned the number 829 WIE BLO, with WIE placing all criticism on Wiesel together. BLO represents the critic’s last name. This book formerly was labeled 848.914 BLO. These changes make it easy for students to browse literary works by their author without knowing nationality or date, and to find literary criticism about Maya Angelou without deciding whether she is a poet or an essayist. Her poems are found with poetry, essays with essays, but all criticism about one author is shelved together.

I used the 820s because Shakespeare is too important to adjust. Shakespeare’s plays continue to be shelved under 822.33 SHA TEM (for The Tempest), and literary criticism for Shakespeare is shelved under 829 SHA and then the critic’s name.

A brief letter can’t describe the plan. We have 375 books in the 800 section, and it took seconds to reassign most books. Adjusting the online catalog records was also quick, but relabeling took longer.

Bill Fabian
Information Literacy Teacher/Librarian
McGinnis Middle School/
Buena Vista High School
Buena Vista, CO

Save Dewey redux

Sigh. I’m sure Scarlett Middle School’s library isn’t the only school library in Michigan in which the Dewey decimal system is used and taught. I wish Ms. LaPrise’s blanket statement (Letters, Dec. 2012, p. 10), “In Michigan, the students are frustrated because Dewey is not taught in their schools,” had been edited, as it is false.

Anne Colvin
Media Specialist
Scarlett Middle School
Ann Arbor, MI