So, this is the session that will most likely strike fear
into the hearts of many librarians everywhere; the session about abandoning
Dewey and moving towards a subject based categorization system based on
children…not on decimal points.
It happens all the time.
It happened to me about five times last week. A kid comes in with their parent and asks for
a truck book (or dinosaur, or super hero, or puppies). What do I do?
I take them to the easiest place…J nonfic. They choose a couple of books with lots of
pictures of trucks and detailed descriptions and then come back to the
desk. “Do you have more truck books?”
says the kid. And mom might add, “he
really wants something I can read to him.” I hear that and I think Picture Book. So then I have to go to the catalog and spend
an easy 10-20 minutes finding what’s in, where they are located, and pulling
them for the frazzled mom who wanted to get out of here 15 minutes ago.
Sure. We could
have a little “how to use the card catalog” lesson. And sure, I could write down a list for her
and have them pull them herself, but I’m not going to do that. She’s the one trying to find books for her
kid and I’m the one with the knowledge of where they are. Plus it’s just good customer service to spend
time with your patrons. And she has an
antsy kid. Oh, and let’s give that kid a
brand new baby sister. Because that is
very common at my library. Mom rarely
comes in with just one kid. Oh, and let’s
say that everyone else is at lunch and I’m the only one on desk and there are
three families wanting books only this family wants trucks and that family
wants dinosaurs and that family really is interested in books about the
seasons. This is going to take at least
an hour and meanwhile, I’m ignoring my other patrons and I’m not getting
anything else done.
What if instead, mom come up to the desk, asks for truck
books, and I walk her over to the Transportation section where all the truck
books are located. Mom is incredibly
happy because she can see a host of books all about all kinds of things that
her kid will like: trucks, trains, helicopters, motorcycles…oh, and here’s
Thomas! And here’s an information book
about submarines! She is empowered because
she now knows her new favorite section in the library. Kid is happy because he finds many new books,
fiction and nonfiction, that will satisfy his hunger to learn more about trucks
and other kinds of transportation. And I’m
happy because the next time they come into the library, they will zip right
over to the Transportation section, they will find what they want, and, aside
from me making sure that their visit is going well, I will not have to spend
hours each week pulling books for the same families. Instead, they will know what they want and
they will be able to go right to it.
Okay, obviously there are challenges. First thought? What sort of sections? Here are some used at some of the libraries
who presented:
Transportation
Celebrations
Growing Up / All About Me
Concepts
Favorites
Nature
Stories
Folk / Fairy Tales
Rhymes and Songs
Scary
Those are just ideas.
The school library who was represented uses a more detailed section
which you can learn about here. It is called Metis and it is fabulous.
Obviously, you would want to choose areas that work best
for your library.
Think about these facts…kids don’t learn decimals until
the 3rd or 4th grade.
So those children who are most likely looking for books about dinosaurs
are not likely to know how to find the nonfiction dino books using Dewey. Remember…decimals = 4th grade = 9
year olds. That’s 9 years of using the
library before we should expect them to be able to use Dewey. And how long do children use the kids’
section of the library? Until they are
12…maybe 14. So, that’s just another 3-5
years. Why not reorganize based on how
their brains are actually wired to accept information? Visually.
The are visual learners.
The libraries who presented made their own stickers and
color coded everything. The school even
color coded fiction vs. nonfiction so that patrons could easily recognize what
was what. There are a million different
ways to do it, but the main hurdle I see is looking at your collection based on
content and not based on reading level.
Of course, we’d still want to keep our Ready 2 Read section, but we
could absolutely expand our ABC / 123 section and just turn it into the
Concepts section complete with books about Opposites (how many times do we have
to pull those books Jaymi?) and Colors.
Our Picture Non-fiction section would obviously get redistributed into
the new “glens” (that’s what one library called them…we would probably use a
different word…we are arranging by subject? topic? Section? Something like that.) We already have the Youth
Bio section…all those 921s in the Picture Nonfiction section would move over
there and we’d never have to decide where to put those books again. All in the Famous People section (not
biography…Famous People). See? We already have these sections. We just need more.
Yes, there would be challenges. Yes, it would take some time and we’d have to
really be organized about it, create goals and deadlines and stick to
them. Yes, we would have to suspend some
other services at the same time we are working on this project. However, we could do it in 6 weeks. And look at the benefits. One library increased their circulation of
their picture books by 500%. Yes. You read right. Patrons are happy that they know where to
go. Children can learn more about themselves
and become more independent as they discover their favorite areas. Extensive weeding could go on at the same time.
Another thing. It’s
okay if our sections are a disaster all the time. As long as things are easier for the patrons
to find, we should be happy.
So, am I going to do this at my library? I would really, really like to.
