Organizing the library by Dewey Decimals

An article was just posted in School Library Journal, "Are Dewey's Days Numbered?" one of many recently stating that they were doing away with the Dewey Decimal system to mirror a bookstore organization by subject, saying "we felt as if our library was focused on finding materials rather than actually using them."  Whenever I see these articles I think again about our library's organization and if it is meeting the needs of staff and students.  The interesting point to ponder, I think, is not necessarily whether this reorganization helps circulation and reduces student frustration, but does it help our students to think about how they search for information?

We want to teach inquiry and critical thinking skills and foster an appreciation of literature, as well as a love of books and libraries in general.  I feel that teaching students how to locate books using a system teaches the skill of finding information.  "Locate and access" is the third step in our Big6 approach to information literacy teaching.  If we make it easy to find books in the library, will students understand that sometimes they have to work hard to search Google or a database for the right website or article that answers their question?  An OPAC search is another opportunity to teach how to identify and answer their information needs.

It's not as if the books in our library are hidden away so no one can find them.  First of all, there are only 10,000 of them, which sounds like a lot, but 7,000 are Everybody and Fiction books, so that leaves 3.000 nonfiction books on about 60 shelves.  Students who want books about cars search for "cars" in the OPAC and find them on the shelf in the 629s.  I remind them that they know how to count to 999, which gives them the ability to find the book numerically.  Students who are too young to search the OPAC or count to 999 ask me where to find the books and then help each other when someone else has the same information need. I usually add a little information as we are looking (as short as ten seconds) showing them that similar subjects are grouped together with the book they are seeking, or pointing out the spine label.  Over seven years of mini lessons I hope I impart little bits of wisdom that add to the lessons we do about library organization and the OPAC.

I don't teach the Dewey Decimal System as separate lessons, in fact I barely mention Melvil Dewey, the creator of this admittedly imperfect system, at all.  Trying to fit everything perfectly into a system based on tens is impossible, but libraries need a common system so people can transfer skills and find information in any library.  People use numerical systems around the world, including money, weights and measures, etc., to provide a common language and understanding of relationships.

My students learn that Dewey is a numerical system for grouping like books together.  For example, all the big cat books can be found on the same shelf, so you can find books on lions, tigers and cheetahs all nearby.  This system can be searched online, but the numbers are for putting similar books together, and gives us an address for the book to easily find it and similar books on the shelf.

The article mentions that it would be difficult for a student to find a paper craft book and a sewing book together, because in Dewey they would be in different hundreds sections.  The limitation of Dewey and every system for organizing books is that you can't put every book that relates to another book together.  It is not three-dimensional.  The computer allows us to bring similar books together electronically that can't be physically together.  If you search "crafts" as a subject heading, you will find all those craft-related books, even if they aren't on the same shelf.  If we can't put all the books together on one shelf so we can browse easily, the computerized virtual version of the books can do this for us if we can search keywords and understand the results.  That is the focus of my teaching, to teach the searching skills and how to evaluate those results.

As long as my library mirrors other libraries, public and academic, in having a similar numerical order, my students will be able to use any library easily.  And they understand that if they have an information need, they know how to search for the answer to that need and how to locate information to answer their questions.  The "locate and access" step is one that eventually doesn't take much thought if students have practiced it in a variety of situations, and using the OPAC and Dewey Decimal System in my library give them that opportunity at least once a week for seven years.