Court Duvall LIS640 Section 03D Organization Assignment (#3)
My favorite local store is the ACTS resale shop in Aiken, South Carolina. ACTS is a
thrift store which operates very similarly to charity franchises like Goodwill or Habitat for
Humanity ReStore. That is, nearly all of the items for sale have been donated by members of the
community and the income from sales are used to support charitable endeavors. ACTS has a
wide array of products for sale that are primarily geared for home and family use. The most
reoccurring items for sale are clothing, housewares, furniture, electronic equipment, toys and
books, but the inventory of ACTS varies widely at any given time depending upon the items
donated.
I would define the current organizational scheme of ACTS as loosely ordered. I say that
because while I encounter floor space, tables or shelf units that have a clear scheme, such as a
dedication to dishes or books, I will often encounter other locations in the store that have the
same kinds of items. In other words, there are pockets of well thought out organization, but these
pockets of order make little sense in the grand ordering structure. This is likely due to a
combination of limited space and the random nature of donations.
The store has two front doors, one of which serves as the donation drop off point which
customers aren’t allowed to enter. This is important, as the checking of items for possible resale
occurs at this site and “before we can begin to organize any resource we often need to identify it”
(Glushko, 2013, 23). Upon entering the store, customers are greeted with a veritable maze of
tables, clothing racks, furniture, bins and wall mounted shelving units that must be navigated
with care. The point of sale location also doubles as the jewelry counter and is situated directly in
the center of this square room where the salesperson resides and can observe the entire room as
needed. At this point, however, there is no clear path for the customer to follow. Books can be
seen in the northwest and southwest corners and are separated by several wall-mounted shelf
units of kitchen appliances. There are at least seven or eight tables with assortments of dishes,
pots and pans, but these are scattered across the store, seemingly at random. Most of the
computer equipment and software is located on a shelf unit near checkout, but miscellaneous
computer peripherals can be found in other locations of the store as well. This is also true for
toys and sporting goods, as there seem to be dedicated spots for these two types of items but can
also be found in other locations. The clothing racks perhaps have the most consistent
organization scheme since all are found in one corner of the store. The remainder of the store is
comprised of random items on the shelf units mounted on the wall, furniture scattered around the
room (with other items for sale on them), and various milk-carton type bins filled with things
like cords or albums or hobby and craft type items. Additionally, it should be noted that there is
little ‘dead space’ in the room, so the store is cramped and awkward. In short, you have the
chance to encounter a wide range of things for sale, but to search for any specific type of item is
going to require walking around the entire store.
As ACTS is a non-profit, charitable organization aimed at providing low cost items to the
economically disadvantaged, my reorganization scheme will not be concerned with promoting
sales for profit, but will be primarily focused on making items easier to find by providing more
clearly defined locations and adding signage while keeping in mind customer traffic flow and
worker sightlines. Improving the organizational scheme in ACTS is important because
organizing items allows for an “order to be able to find and locate, or retrieve that required
information easily” (Rowley & Hartley, 2008, 4).
My plan for reorganization will be to tie the themes of the different types of materials
into singular locations, because “in an ideal world, categories are clearly demarcated bins, into
which any object addressed by the system will neatly and uniquely fit” (Bowker & Star, 1999,
11). I think the first step to achieving this goal would be to remove the necessity of furniture that
is on sale to also house other items for sale. This could be accomplished by introducing new
shelving units to rest on the floor space of the store, which is common for most stores of this
nature. In this scenario, all of the furniture could be moved to a location near the donation drop
off door, the primary reason being the ease of transferring furniture and other heavy items to and
from vehicles. The space lost by removing furniture as display tables would be recouped by
removing all of the carton bins off of the floor and into the new or existing shelving units. The
existing shelving units, combined with the new shelves, could then be “an intentionally arranged
collection of resources and the interactions they support” (Glushko, 2013, 6).
With the addition of shelving units, it then becomes a task of defining which shelving
units will contain what kind of items and the arrangement of the new shelves. I would place the
shelving units in a pattern that allows for the salesperson to be able to look down any row with
ease, as the salesperson is the only means of theft deterrence. With the allotment of a fair amount
of space between the central check out place and the wall from the shelving units, there should
be enough shelving units to house each primary material type. Additionally, these shelving units
will need signage on the endcaps which indicate what kind of materials are stored there. So, with
my example, there would be dedicated shelves for dishes and kitchenware, computer and
computer peripherals and programs, toys, other appliances, sporting goods and designated space
for miscellaneous items as they arrive in the store. The books on the wall mounted shelves could
be reorganized to be all together and the clothes could remain in their current position as they are
near the only dressing room. The space cleared on the wall mounted shelving units could then
house the bins that were previously existing on the floor and could also have labels demarcating
cell phone chargers, albums, etc. Finally, the jewelry counter could also remain at the point of
sale station as these items are small and could be easily stolen, so the proximity of these items to
the salesperson is vital.
I think my reorganized scheme would greatly help both the traffic flow problem of the
existing organizational scheme of ACTS, while improving the ability for customers and staff to
locate items that are of the same general type. Some of the charm of the store is, indeed, walking
around and looking at what all there is to offer. However, “To classify is human” (Bowker &
Star, 1999, 1). It’s obvious that the current scheme of ACTS has occurred through an emergent
pattern of organizing the best they could on a day to day basis, without any heed to long term
storage of materials. At the end of the day, providing an organizational structure in which
customers can get to the items they need is of the utmost importance.
Works cited:
Bowker, G. C., & Star, S.L. (1999). Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences.
Cambridge, (Massachusetts): MIT Press.
Glushko, R. J. (2013). The discipline of organizing. Cambridge (Massachusetts): MIT Press.
Rowley, J.E., & Hartley, R.J. (2008). Organizing knowledge: An introduction to managing
access to information. Aldershot, England: Ashgate.