Dewey Decimation

Well, even though this was the topic of the day two days ago, I think it’s still worth writing about. When the new Perry branch of the Maricopa County Public Library, in Gilbert, AZ, opens next month, its collection will not be classified using the Dewey Decimal System. It won’t use the Library of Congress Classification System, either, or the Bliss Bibiliographic Classification, or the Universal Decimal Classification, or any of the other myriad traditional library classifications. Instead, books will be arranged into about 50 broad sections and smaller subsections, and will then be arranged alphabetically by author’s last name, much as books are arranged in many bookstores.

Some librarians, on mailing lists and blogs, have expressed some reservations over this venture, citing concerns that it will make things more difficult to find and shelve, and that there is simply no need, since Dewey organizes materials more or less by subject anyway. Others have praised it as a great, user-centered innovation.

There are two reasons I’m excited about the Maricopa Library’s experiment:

More on those angry librarians in Sacramento

When I first wrote about the librarians in Sacramento who are circulating a petition protesting, among other things, the library’s collection development policy, I said that I thought the blog posts I had seen on the topic were fairly one-sided and unreflective, and I suggested that this was an example of what Steven J. Bell has called the “speech chill [of] the library blogosphere.” I still think that this was more or less true. But as I have been watching the issue more closely over the past few days, I have seen some really thoughtful discourse taking place on library blogs. And as my blogging feet are still quite tender, this has been an interesting lesson for me in the way discussion takes shape in the blog world.