Originally Posted February 11, 2014
The absolute longevity of Melvil Dewey’s Dewey Decimal Classification System (DDC) is a key concept that not only is embedded in the history of school librarianship and school library programs, but is still an important part of today’s 21st Century library. The relevance, however, is being challenged. When Dewey developed this system in 1873, he was working in the library at Amherst College. Up until this point nothing in existence suggested there was a relative location and relative index for shelf organization. Since its initial introduction, the DDC has been edited and expanded 23 times, with the most resent abridged version’s 2012 publication. In recent years, some librarians, in an effort to address the needs of their patrons, have experimented with genrefication. Genrefication is a model of classification in which shelf location is determined by genres, a style used by booksellers. Critics have declared the new system a nightmare, while supporters love the browsability of the shelves. The 2013 Midwinter Conference in Seattle, presented a variety of pros and cons on the validity of DDC vs. genrefication at a Hot Topics discussion session called “Dewey vs. Genre Shelving in School Libraries.” This past Midwinter 2014, I heard people complaining that they didn’t want to hear another word on the Dewey question. You might think that this was a negative, but from my perspective, I view this as a positive. Normally, in an informal disagreement, when the opposing side begins to say they don’t want to hear another word, that usually means they are being worn down and/or can’t yet admit they see some relevance in what they initially disagreed with.
Because there is no centralized commonly acknowledged organizational approach to this new phenomenon, librarians interested in genrefying their stacks are using a variety of approaches. Some are blending their fiction and nonfiction by genre; some are using established databases that organize books by subjects; and others are only genrefying their fiction shelves. Signage for genrefying does not have to change DDC, but some librarians at the 2013 Midwinter admitted that they have gone as far as to change their catalog’s MARC records according to subject. Paige Jaeger blogged on the AASL Forum in December 2012 that school librians have always de-deweyed informational, poetry, fiction etc., according the themed required subject (http://www.freelists.org/post/ntalibdir).
My library assistant is also the cataloger for my district. Her perspective on this is that it makes sense to organize the fiction and even the story collection according to genre, based on the fact that the most common request for books in our library is genre related. Our OPAC, however, is shared throughout the system, so to change a record or de-dewey nonfiction catalog-wise would cause chaos with Intra Library Loans in our district. No one would be able to find anything in the OPAC or know how many titles of what is available. This instantly brings to mind a critical need to align MARC record’s 655 so that if you’re looking for a subgenre such as Steampunk fiction, it’s given credit in the MARC records universally. As we all know, this is not the case. There are also disagreement on what book should be classified as what because many subgenre groups overlap.
And there it is in a nutshell, today’s 21st Century Dilemma: Do we or do we not Dewey? OR Dewey need to come to a consensus? Is it enough to simply ride on the most commonly asked genre-centered question from patrons to determine this answer on relevance of shelf classification? I personally say, let’s embrace genrefying. It’s the way reader advisory issues are leaning and should not be shoved under the table. Yet, there is no need to do away with DDC unless something that is more efficient and cost effective comes along. With little to no research available on how the organization of books impact students, there’s no pro or con evidence on why a school librarian should change the classification approach thus making the answer to this more opinion than fact.
