> Nathan wrote:
> It will be interesting to see if the following incident gives birth to
> others:
>
> http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0530nodewey0530.html
>
> --------
> There are a couple of things here. Firstly, it seems as if this is a public
> library. Iıve never worked in a public library, so I canıt comment from that
> side of the counter, but I do use my local public library a lot, and I can
> safely say that the fact the library uses Dewey is completely irrelevant to
> me. The collection is too small to need anything more than a cursory system
> for ordering books on the shelf, and I know the sections I use regularly so
> well I donıt really need a guide.
>
> Secondly, getting rid of Dewey is fine by me in terms of navigating shelves
> as long as there is an effective way of finding a specific book. Iıd be happy
> if this was done simply by some ID number which told me which shelf it was on.
> However, I recognise that for many Œbrowsing the shelvesı is still a major
> search technique. It seems to me that this reflects the inadequate nature of
> our online tools. In theory a computer should be able to slice and dice our
> collections in many more varied and interesting ways than a physical
> arrangement can, and should provide plenty of scope for searching, browsing
> and serendipity but clearly we are not delivering on this.
>
> This is an issue, as increasingly our shelves represent only a fraction of the
> material available to our users (for example, we have around 350,000 physical
> items, and through our subscription to Eighteenth Century Online, and Early
> English Books Online, at least another quarter of a million texts
> electronically and with journals the balance is even more towards electronic
> material).
>
> I should add finally that I think using Dewey as a way of physically ordering
> and locating books is a completely different matter to classification we
> have just merged the two while we have been limited to a single physical order
> for the books if we can successfully make an NGC that people use as
> naturally as they now browse the shelves, then we can split these things out.
>
> Owen
>
Owen Stephens
E-Strategy Co-ordinator
Royal Holloway, University of London
Egham
Surrey
TW20 0EX
Tel: 01784 443331
Email: owen.stephens_at_rhul.ac.uk
Received on Thu May 31 2007 - 13:53:09 EDT