Some suburban libraries begin turning away from the longtime classification system
by: Robert McCoppin
To find a favorite book in Elgin's Rakow Branch library, 6-year-old Rina Teglia marched straight to the "Ready to Read" section and picked out "Bathtime for Biscuit."
While she was at it, a nearby book titled "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" caught her eye, so she grabbed it to take home too.
"I like it a lot," Rina said of the library. "You can find books easily."
Score one for the library's bookstore-style layout. And shed a tiny tear for the Dewey Decimal Classification system, long the standard in the industry.
A handful of pioneering suburban libraries are transitioning from the librarian-loved but misunderstood Dewey to the type of organization system used by booksellers. The new layout groups books by subject rather than number, uses signs to highlight contemporary, popular categories, and displays books by their covers.
Critics say the new system is a nightmare for anyone trying to find a specific book that doesn't fit into an obvious category. Supporters counter that the system does what libraries should be doing: encourage people to read more books.
A library in south suburban Frankfort is among a small number of libraries nationwide that have switched entirely to the new format. Other libraries in Darien, Oak Park and Westmont are using it for parts of their collections, and Deerfield officials are considering it for the future.
Rakow, which is part of the Gail Borden Public Library District in Elgin, was designed to embody the new system when it opened in 2009.
Rakow is relatively small, with 32,000 items, but it attracts some 400 patrons a day who check out about 21,000 items a month, more than similar-size peers. Every fiction genre has a higher percentage of books checked out at Rakow than at Elgin's main library, and nonfiction gets checked out at almost twice the rate as at the Dewey-style main library. Part of the increase is attributable to Rakow stocking only the most popular, newer books, officials said, but the new system's appeal also plays a role.
Rakow uses a "de-emphasized" or "mash-up" system, in which books are grouped by category under large signs reading "In the News" for current events, or "New & Hot" for best-sellers, but are filed within each category by the Dewey numbers on the spines.
"For us, we can definitely say this appeals to people," Rakow library Director Margaret Peebles said. "They can pick up a book they wouldn't have found otherwise."
Still, Dewey remains by far the dominant system for organizing books. More than 200,000 libraries in 135 countries are estimated to use Dewey, making it the most popular book classification system in the world.
Named after the man who created it in the 1870s, librarian Melvil Dewey, the system groups all knowledge into 10 categories numbered 000 through 900, then subdivides further for each subject, moving from general to specific.
Dewey goes deeper and broader than bookstore headings, classifying books much more specifically, with 27,000 categories, compared with about 3,000 in the bookstore system, known as Book Industry Standards and Communications, or BISAC.
Long ago, most public libraries stopped using Dewey to group fiction books, instead putting them in alphabetical order by the author's last name. The new wave of non-Dewey classifications extends that concept to other popular subjects like diet and health or gardening, and sometimes pulls together books Dewey would keep far apart.
For instance, at Rakow, "Pack Your Bags" brings together travel books and language books, which would be separate under Dewey, but which people planning a trip often want together.
Some readers, like Gena McNamara of Elgin, remain skeptical.
While the system may be good for new books, McNamara questioned how easy it is to find works by genre, such as "Thriller" and "Horror," as she discovered when looking for movies.
"In whose eyes is it a comedy, a drama, or action?" she asked. "You'd have to look in three different sections … which is useless."
Some librarians share those concerns, calling BISAC part of a fad to dumb down libraries. They say libraries can be more user-friendly simply by putting better signs with subject headings on existing Dewey shelves.
Other librarians fear a lack of standardization will mean chaos when lending books between libraries, or for librarians working in different systems.
Rather than Dewey, most academic libraries use the Library of Congress classification, which is more efficient and specific for large collections and new technical material, but also more complex. The Chicago Public Library, which uses Library of Congress, tries to keep it user-friendly by separating the most popular or timely books into bookstore-style display areas.
The debate between Dewey and BISAC enflames passions in the stereotypically staid domain of librarians.
The Annoyed Librarian, who blogs anonymously for Library Journal, casts the debate primarily as research versus browsing: "…presumably the (academic) librarians are still interested in bringing order out of chaos instead of making the chaos more comfy. Saving the time of the reader isn't very important when the readers don't know what they want anyway."
Michael Gorman, past president of the American Library Association, says the trend follows a mistaken assumption that people are too dumb to grasp Dewey.
Libraries must cater not just to the majority, as bookstores do, Gorman said, but to those with more specialized interests, like genealogy or Greek archeology.
"I'd argue it's not very helpful," he said. "It's subjective. One could quibble with Dewey, but there is a logic to it, and you can train people very quickly to understand it."
Undaunted by criticism, librarians at the Frankfort Public Library District near Tinley Park converted their entire 29,000-piece adult collection to a Dewey-free system in 2009. They relabeled each spine and relocated each book, put new subject signs on each shelf and made new library maps. The effort took 18 months with the help of volunteers and cost $25,000.
When a patron searches for a book on a computer, a layout map shows where it's located, and color-coded signs show the location of each subject category. Following the change, circulation for the 2009-2010 fiscal year increased 8.5 percent, though many libraries have seen a spike in use during the recession.
The vast majority of Frankfort's readers, according to a survey, are not looking for a specific book, but are there to browse. Melissa Rice, head of adult services, said the new system is working well, though library Director Pierre Gregoire acknowledged he's "not thrilled" with it because it can be harder to find a particular book.
But reader Joan Wyzukovicz of Elgin, browsing at the Rakow library, prefers the new approach. "It presents itself nicely," she said. "I can look quickly. Occasionally, I find a surprise."
Supporters of the concept say libraries need to be more responsive to what general readers want.
Dewey can be "daunting" for readers and librarians alike, said Audra Caplan, president of the Public Library Association. Numbered systems are time-consuming for staff members to put on shelves and require regular "shelf-reading," in which staff members check to make sure the inventory is ordered correctly. If a book isn't in the right spot, it's basically lost. She said each library has to find the best way to meet its community's needs.
"My personal opinion is we can keep very high standards and not attract a lot of people to our libraries," she said. "A lot of times, we're responding to what librarians think customers need, as opposed to what customers think they need."
from: Chicago Tribune
No comments:
Post a Comment