Casey Fox
IS 510
Thursday 6:30 pm
Exercise 2
There is no perfect solution to library arrangement and categorization -- very few books
ever fall into just one category, and catalogers, library staff and patrons alike will always find
issues with arrangement based on the thought processes and methods of their individual search
styles. I approached this project with this awareness in mind, but also of the firm belief that there
are lots of ways my library could be more browser-friendly and intuitive for patrons. My
preference would be to have a collection that is easily searchable but also conducive to browsing,
as patrons (myself included) often come to the library without a specific title in mind. There are
many things about the Dewey Decimal System that do not seem to have been developed with
browseability in mind and many other things my particular library does that can be roadblocks to
easy material discovery.
From a browsing standpoint, one of the biggest mistakes I feel my library makes is
separating books into what it terms “shelves” (or “j-shelves” or “e-shelves” in the Children’s
Room) and “q-shelves” (or “qj-shelves”, etc.). “Q” stands for quarto and is the designation for
oversized books that do not fit on the general shelves. I understand this is done to save space, but
patrons have a very hard time understanding that there are two different sections for every type
of book in the library. If a patron wants to browse the library’s entire collection Indian
cookbooks, he or she should not have to look in 641.5954 on the first floor and 641.5954 on the
second floor. I would strongly recommend interfiling oversized books, and believe that the space
lost would be worth increasing patrons’ ease of browsing.
In my experience, patrons do not have many problems searching and browsing fiction,
but nonfiction can be very intimidating for them, often to the point that they give up when faced
with a lengthy call number. While I may not be ready to give up Dewey completely, I have quite
a few alterations I believe would make for less intimidating and more intuitive searching and
browsing. As I work in the Children's Room, most of my suggestions and ideas have been
devised with children's needs in mind, but most of the issues I encounter can translate to adult
collections as well, and they are based on both my observations of patron interactions with the
library and my personal information behaviors and preferences.
I'll begin with one of the children’s room's largest nonfiction sections, 398 -- folktales
and fairy tales. I'm honestly surprised, based on the section's scope, that there are no sub-genre
classifications within it. As it is now, anything deemed a folktale, fairy tale, tall tale or fable is
placed in 398, 398.2 or 398.25 and arranged within the call number by the author's last name. As
a result, unless a patron is looking for a specific edition of a specific book by a specific author or
has absolutely no stipulations but that he or she wants a book of fairy tales, the 398 designation
is fairly useless. Different versions of Cinderella, for example, can be spread throughout the
section depending on whether it is Perrault's original story or an adaptation by a different author.
Additionally, some mythology books are cataloged in 398 and some are with religion in the
290s, and books about dragons and unicorns sit incongruously between fairytales and nursery
rhymes while Bigfoot resides with unsolved mysteries over in the 001 section. I understand the
logical arguments for such arrangements, but years of helping patrons who just want to know
where to find books about fantastic creatures or stories about princesses have convinced me that
such logic is not necessarily the best way of organizing information on a shelf.
Adding subcategories within 398 would allow fables, fairy tales, mythology, folk tales
and nursery rhymes to be grouped separately from each other, and within each group be arranged
by originating author (Grimm, Perrault, etc.) or geography (Native American folktales, Irish
folktales, etc.), thus making it vastly easier for a patron to browse multiple versions of Snow
White or compare different anthologies of Russian tales. Mythology should be in either religion
or folklore, but not both, and it might do better to have religion adjacent to folklore as the two
have been known to bleed into each other, both culturally and thematically. The patron benefits
to implementing such changes in the 398s would far outweigh the effort that would be required
in doing so.
While I do not necessarily feel that folklore, poetry, drama and graphic novels should be
taken out of the nonfiction category, it would be much more convenient for patrons to shelve
them near fiction. Patrons browsing for something to read for pleasure could very well be just as
happy to pick up A Streetcar Named Desire or Morte d’Arthur, but it may not occur to them
because, in my library at least, those items sit on a completely different floor from the novels.
Again, when one compares the ordered precision of Dewey with the reality of how people
actually seek library materials, the two often do not line up.
The biography section is another problematic area in my library. While most biographies
are shelved there alphabetically by the subject’s last name, the cataloging department has put
those of musicians and artists in the music and art Dewey sections, respectively. This separation
appears completely arbitrary to patrons -- why, then, are athletes not in the sports section? And
as the 920s (collected biographies) are shelved in nonfiction, across the building from biography,
they hardly ever circulate. In fact, the children’s 920 section has been practically weeded out of
existence in the past year because the books therein rarely check out. If I were able to rearrange
my library to better serve patrons’ actual information needs, I would do away with both the
biography section and the 920 Dewey designation in favor of mini biography sections at the end
of each nonfiction area. In my experience, far fewer people browse the biography section with no
particular person in mind than use it to find information on a specific person (or category of
people). This may be different on the adult shelves, but most children do not browse the
biography section for fun. Having scientist biographies on the shelf right next to books about
science and president biographies beside American history books would help patrons who are
doing research on certain subjects, yet still be easily searchable for those who are specifically
looking for biographies. One issue I could imagine coming up from this arrangement would be
for patrons who are specifically looking for biographies of African Americans or female
presidents, but adding metadata search fields such as “African Americans -- biography” or
“female political leaders -- biography” would be a relatively simple way to ease their search.
There are lots of minor changes I would make to better serve my own and my patrons’
information needs, but I will address one more major one in this paper -- difficulty in finding
picture books on specific subjects. I am responsible for preschool programming and many of my
patrons are teachers, and we often create programs based around themes. The existing search
system makes finding picture books about dinosaurs or sharing, for example, quite difficult. In
an attempt to help both myself and my patrons, I have been working for the past two years on a
series of theme-based booklists, and although they have proved very helpful, keeping them upto-date is difficult and I could never anticipate every theme an adult may come to the library
looking for. While I am not advocating doing away with picture book arrangement by author’s
last name, my library desperately needs better metadata designations for searching picture books.
Patron catalog computers allow for subject searches, and they can specify children’s materials,
but they cannot specify picture books only, meaning they have to wade through pages and pages
of nonfiction and chapter books about dinosaurs while trying to find books for their preschoolers.
Creating metadata fields such as “children’s picture books -- dinosaurs” and “children’s picture
books -- sharing” would go a long way towards helping teachers and other patrons develop
programming for young people.
My library has been cataloging and organizing its materials the same way for many years
and neither the metadata department nor the reference staff is particularly interested in changing
things. The result of this attitude, however, is a lack of examination into whether the way things
are done is actually the best for both staff and patrons’ information behaviors and search
techniques. The cataloging department staff does not receive patron feedback on its decisions,
nor is it aware of the questions we as staff receive on a regular basis regarding searching and
browsing. Unfortunately, this means it is almost completely removed from the reality of patrons’
needs and thus does not make them a priority. A complete change in the way the library arranges
items both physically and in the catalog is not necessary, but there are many alterations that
could be made based on actual patron and staff behaviors that would make their library
experiences much more rewarding.