[Web4lib] Innovation: NYT article on Dewey-lessArizonapubliclibrary

[Benjamin Daeuber]

I don't see many saying it won't work, it's just not that innovative.
You can organize your books however you want but it's not so different
from Dewey or LC that it constitutes innovation. 

And having computer terminals instead of card catalogs for lookups? Oh
my god, NO WAY...

Ben Daeuber
Technology and Electronic Resources Librarian
Fargo Public Library
701-541-3287
701-241-1490


-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of K.G. Schneider
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 10:08 AM
To: web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: RE: [Web4lib] Innovation: NYT article on
Dewey-lessArizonapubliclibrary

I find two things interesting about this discussion:

1. How heavily librarians seem invested in proving that this post-Dewey
classification model won't work in most situations; like... who cares?
If it
or some other model worked better than what we have, wouldn't we be
happy
for everyone concerned? 

Furthermore, I keep hearing arguments of where it WON'T work. How about
where it might work well? Dewey doesn't work for Harvard, either...
unless
I'm greatly mistaken. Other numbering schemes came about because we saw
problems with Dewey. 

How about working backwards from the premise that Dewey doesn't serve
users
as well as we'd like, which is something we know already? 

2. How some folks got their shorts in a bunch because I said Dewey is an
inventory system. That doesn't make us clerks! We're kind of stuck with
something Dewey-esque (BISAC, Dewey, somewhere in between) due to the
limitations of print publications, but that is no reflection on the
value we
bring to the larger information experience. It's just a blunt fact. 

I didn't take an oath of allegiance to Dewey or LC when I got my library
degree. I'm not a format queen, and I'm also not wedded to
classification
models, either. That's not the baricenter of my professional worth.

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at freerangelibrarian.com 

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