1. Alternatives to Dewey Reaching Forward South May 17, 2019
Time for an Upgrade
Connecting People -- Sharing Knowledge – Enabling Life-Long Learning
In this presentation I will take you through the whole process from start to (almost!) finish. Who we are, what we have, why we made this choice, and how we’re making the change.
Alternatives to Dewey
Reaching Forward South
May 17, 2019

2. Who We Are
The Vespasian Warner Public Library District serves 12,087 patrons across five communities.
16 staff (9 FT, 7 PT)
The Vespasian Warner Public Library District serves 12,087 spread across five communities. We have a collection of around 55,000 and an average annual circulation of 115,000.

3. Our Collection 55,000 total items
12,600 in non-fiction (adult, YA, juvenile; includes print and A/V)
426 in the Weinberg Library of Comparative Religion
Our non-fiction consists of around 12,600 items between adult, young adult, and juvenile.
426 in the Weinberg Library of Comparative Religion.

4. Why Change? DDC was not created for browsers
DDC often doesn’t make sense:
History of wars in 900s – Warfare in 300s
Gardening in 600s – Landscaping in 700s
Computer software in 000s – Computer hardware in 600s
DDC is Ethnocentric
Complaints from patrons
Our patrons should not have to memorize a secret code to access information!
DDC was created when stacks were closed to patrons. Patrons would browse the card catalog (which was not arranged by DDC), select what they wanted, and ask for a page to pull it for them. Having a highly specific number for library staff made sense. Dewey just doesn’t work for modern libraries. Our stacks are open and browsing accounts for 90% of our monthly checkouts.
Only 10% of our patrons search the catalog and place holds for the items they want. The rest browse.
Dewey often doesn’t make sense to the average patron. The history of wars are in the 900s, but warfare is in the 355s. Gardening is in 635, but landscaping is in 720. Computer software is in the 000s, but computer hardware is in the 600s.
Dewey is rather prejudiced. In religion, is reserved for the Bible and Christianity. All other religions in the world are in We have a comparative religion collection and DDC is basically useless for it because the numbers are so limited.
I have heard many times over the years from patrons that Dewey means nothing to them and they don’t understand it. Yes, we could theoretically train patrons on how Dewey works, but why? Why maintain a barrier to information for our patrons? Most will just give up rather than try to learn this antiquated system. We shouldn’t expect our patrons to have to memorize a secret code to access information.

5. Our New System No viable language-based systems
BISAC (Book Industry Standards
and Communications)as a starting point
When we first started looking at alternatives to DDC, we could not find anything that was simple and would work for our collection. We reached out to other libraries that no longer use DDC, but the systems they had weren’t quite what we were looking for. We finally ended up using BISAC as a starting point and changed it to fit our collection.
We dropped the numbers entirely. We pared down of the BISAC categories and renamed others. “Political science” became government. “Performing arts” became “entertainment”, etc. We also added a few categories, based on our collection, including “war” and “agriculture.”

6. Our New System
Eliminated some categories, created some, changed names for others
Juvenile and Adult systems are different because they are different collections
J DINOSAURS
Stegasaurus
Author
TRU CRI
Murder
Serial Killers
COL
Y/ WAR
WWII
Holocaust
FRA
The structure of the call number system is the same for juvenile and adult, but the categories are different. This is because these two collections are very different. Children have way more dinosaur books than adults, for example.
Our juvenile books start with a “J” then the main category, followed by a subcategory, if applicable. We write out the whole categories.
Our YA and adult books start with the main category, followed by one to two subcategories, depending on the book. We abbreviate the main categories, so they fit, but we have shelf labeling with the category written out.
All of our categories are color-coded, just to help make the categories distinct.
44 adult categories and 29 juvenile.

7. Here are some of our books in the wild.

8. The How Staff Buy-In Research and discussion Creating the system
Think like a patron
Reclassification
Before I did any research or thought about systems or anything else, I talked to my staff. Staff buy-in is critical for a project like this. They are the ones processing and shelving the books. They are the ones helping patrons find items. Most of the staff was on-board immediately. I had a one hold-out who admits that she just doesn’t like change.
At each staff meeting for the next few months, I shared my research into other classification systems and the staff discussed what they liked and didn’t like and the logistics of actually converting. Eventually, even my reluctant staff became enthusiastic about the project.
The next step was actually creating the system, which involved lots of research and going out into the stacks to see what we have. While working on this system, I had to get myself out of “Dewey Brain.” In DDC, literature is grouped by language family, then format, then time period I put off “Literature” for quite a while because I couldn’t decide what made the most sense: organizing by time period or location.. After stewing over it for a couple of months, I did what I should have done in the first place and asked my staff. They gave me the simplest solution and said I should organize by format, poems, plays, novels, and just call the novels “Classics”. As one of my staff pointed out, she couldn’t tell me off the top of her head what century Dickens wrote in or what country he was from, but she knows his novels are classics. It made so much sense for our collection and our patrons that I’m embarrassed that I didn’t think of it. Shaking that DDC mindset is hard, so be prepared.
Our mantra became “Think like a patron.”

9. Reclassification
When we were ready to roll, we started with the juvenile collection. It’s much smaller and turned out to be a good testing ground. All of the books were reclassified first. We tried it two different ways: on the book itself and in our ILS. I don’t know that one way was better than the other.

10. Labeling We used what we already had
Team effort: one employee prints labels, one puts them on.
New items classified with the new system, but processed normally.
We started with the new shelf and are working backwards, starting with War.
The shifting is never ending!
We already us an MS Word template for our spine labels. We just adapted it slightly for the new system. We found through trial and error that having one staff member make the changes in our ILS and print the labels, while another staff member pulls the books, puts the labels on, and reshelves them is the most efficient.
New items are classified in the new system and they are processed as normal- one staff member doing the processing from start to finish.

12. So. Much. Shifting.

13. Our patrons when we told them what we were doing:
Before we started on reclassification, we did some social media posts and a spot on local TV news. And the reaction for our patrons was “meh.” I was really surprised at the lack of reaction. Most of our patrons don’t care how we shelve our items. We did get a few good questions that we were happy to answer, but really, at the beginning, no one cared. When I started full-time at my library, our DVDs were shelved in accession order. I changed that to genre/title and had the same sort of reaction from patrons, so I shouldn’t have been surprised.

14. Our only negative comments were from retired librarians
Our only negative comments were from retired librarians. This one, who isn’t even in our area, felt the need to post: “It’s a sad day when you get rid of the Dewey decimal system. Shame on you.” On our Facebook page. She didn’t actually give us a reason that would should keep DDC beyond the fact that she will “always love Dewey.”

15. Our patrons after seeing the new system:
After the juvenile collection was done and patrons actually saw the new system, they loved it. We have gotten nothing but positive comments about how much easier it is for parents and children to find what they’re looking for.
It’s too early to tell with adults because everything is in chaos right now, but we will get there soon!

16. Questions? Bobbi Perryman Vespasian Warner Public Library District