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Death to DeweyDesigning libraries so you can find stuff IntroductionI am really pleased to be presenting at the second ALIA Top End Symposium. Last year was a great success, and this year is even bigger and better. Thank you to the organising committee, and all the others who have given their time. Why death to Dewey?
Yes?
This paper is going to explore an alternative approach, to the Dewey decimal classification system, in the design of modern library collections. Living roomsWhat are 'living rooms'? It is a concept that relates mainly to public libraries. Some of you will know that the network of public libraries in the Northern Territory (PLNT) invited a marketing and retail consultant, John Stanley to the Northern Territory. You may have read his column in Australian Library and Information Association's (ALIA) inCite magazine. I came to public libraries on the tail end of this, but John Stanley had people talking about 'living rooms'. About not using the Dewey decimal classification system to arrange books (items). Not knowing anything about it, I thought the man must be mad! How could that work? The only thing I could relate it to was bookshops. They don't use Dewey, yet it is easy to locate books. Hands up if you think you could walk into a bookshop and find a book about rugby union, without asking the staff for assistance? How? You look at the signs that indicate subject area. Most likely it would be a sign that says 'sport'. You would also look at the covers of the books, to find a relevant book. If bookshops can do it, maybe libraries can too? Newcastle Region LibraryYes it may work in bookshops, but how could it work in libraries? There are different issues in libraries. I was unconvinced but curious, and interested to learn, so I started investigating the topic. I was really lucky to work with Leah Potts, a library technician at the Charles Darwin University library. Before she came to the Territory, she worked in the Newcastle region library. She loved this dynamic, well funded, public library. She talks of magazines being on the shelf ready to be borrowed, the same day they are on the newsagent shelves! Of multiple copies magazines in the one branch! Of loans figures through the roof! Wow! And they used living rooms. Leah put me in contact with Sue Ryan, who is a librarian at Newcastle public libraries. Sue wrote a thesis on collection management, and was involved in the re-organisation of the library, using the living room approach, ten years ago. Sue kindly shared her work. This presentation is based on the Newcastle region libraries work, and my interpretation of it. I am certainly not an expert, and I have not seen a library that is set up in the living room style. I am just sharing what I have learnt. After talking to Leah and Sue, reading, and brainstorming ideas with various people, over time, I became aware that, it wasn't a totally new concept at all. We already use the living rooms concept to a certain extent. To Easy! Hands up who has a reference collection in their library? Who has a biography collection? Some type of special collection? A Northern Territory Collection? Why have they been separated? Various reasons: to meet the needs of our customers; promote special material; make it easier for customers to find books on the Northern Territory... These are distinct collections from the main non-fiction collection. And they are called by names rather than Dewey numbers. The living room concept is just an extension of that. Just more, smaller, distinctly named collections or groupings of books by subject categories, just like they are in bookshops. So the non-fiction collection could contain living rooms/reader interest areas/shelf locations called:
We will look at complete lists of reader collection areas, a little later. Dewey lives on!And despite the title of this paper, the Dewey decimal classification system is used, just like it is in the reference or biography collections. The title of the paper was just to get your attention. As you know these collections have a whole range of Dewey numbers, from the 000s through to the 999s. Imagine a war and weapons reader interest area. All items about war and weapons would be collected from the 350s, 620s, and 940s of the non-fiction collection, and place them on some spare shelving you just happened to have laying around. These books keep these Dewey numbers. The catalogue still shows the relevant call number, and in some way identifies it as belonging to a war and weapons living room. The items are still arranged in Dewey order on the shelves within that war and weapons living room. Although it is a narrower range of Dewey numbers, it is the same approach as a reference or biography collection. Results!Why bother reorganising our libraries, when we are already have more than enough work to do? Because it works! It gets results!
Why does it work?To gain a greater understanding of why it works, let's look at research into customer behaviour in libraries. A large percentage of public library customers are 'browsers'. Baker (1993), as quoted from page 7 of the Newcastle Region Library's collection management report, found browsers 'experience feelings of confusion and inadequacy when faced with large collections of books, making it difficult to make a choice'. The web address is at the end of this paper, so you can read the entire report if you wish. What does this mean for libraries? Frustrated customers don't return. And not being able to make a decision results in no loans. Great books may turn into old, unwanted books without ever being used. Scarce resources such as money and processing time have been wasted. From the same page of this report: 'The larger the collection the greater potential for information overload...browsers prefer to make choices from a smaller subset of a collection'. We all know about information overload. The living room/book shop approach breaks down the larger fiction and non-fiction collections, and creates 'smaller subsets'. It assists decision-making. The outcome is increased loans, and repeat customers. So ok, maybe it can work in public libraries, but what are the practical issues? The remainder of this presentation is going to look at a step by step process, of how a library may go about implementing this change. Step 1: weed We all know processing books, and moving books is time consuming. Weeding first, reduces the workload. We have also just been seen that 'less is better' for our customers too. We can reduce information overload, and encourage customers to borrow by reducing the number of choices they have to make. From page eight of the same Newcastle report: It is 'possible to reduce the number of items on the shelf, ... without reducing the number of items readers want'. There are lots of strategies for reducing information overload, such as weeding, living rooms. Step 2: reader interest areas How would you divide up the larger fiction and non-fiction collections? What subject areas would you use? What would you name them so they are meaningful and intuitive? The next four slides show how the Newcastle libraries divide their collections. Adult Fiction
Newcastle maintains a general adult fiction collection for all those hard to classify books? Children's Fiction
Children's (recreational) non-fiction
The rest of the junior non-fiction was located in the other non-fiction living rooms. Adult non-fiction
Although subject categories were uniform throughout each of the branches of the Newcastle libraries, each branch used only categories that were appropriate to their size and collections. Issues such as collection size, community profile, shelf space, and library layout, would need to be taken into account when making decisions on living rooms and terminology. Living rooms, unfortunately, do not solve all the problems of Dewey. For example, where would you put a book about bushrangers? In a crime, Australiana, history, or biography living room? However, this difficulty is easily accommodated in the living room approach. 'Difficult to place' books are moved to increase usage. We do this a little bit now. For example, Dewey numbers are changed if a book is 'lost' in a particular Dewey area, and is not being used. So if the bushranger book was originally placed in the 'biographies living room' but isn't being borrowed, it is moved to 'Australiana', and its performance monitored. The book is wasted if it sits on the shelf unused, just because it is in the 'right' place. In this approach books can have several 'right' places. The 'if it isn't moving, move it!' approach is significant, because of an underlying public library concept. Generally speaking, the charter of public libraries is not 'collecting' but 'lending'. Public libraries want books to be borrowed or used. They do not 'collect' books for 'research' or 'archival' purposes, apart from a few exceptions, such as local history collections. They are circulating libraries, hence the importance of loans statistics as a performance measure. So in a way, it is ultimately the customers who decide which living room or reader interest area a book is located. They vote with their library cards. Step 3: cataloguing So once the living rooms or reader interest areas have been identified, each book has to be assigned to these living rooms. How? Firstly determine what topics are appropriate to each reader interest area, and then look at the corresponding Dewey numbers. It is likely that each reader interest area will have only one, two or three core Dewey areas. In the example above, a war and weapons living room, had items from the 350s, 620s, and 940s. And, as we have seen above, some books or Dewey numbers could fall into several living rooms. The location of each item also has to be identified on the catalogue. How is this done? There are various options; a lot will depend on the features of the catalogue. Newcastle uses the Dynix system. In the slide you can see how a three-letter code HEA (Health) in a field called 'shelf'. 
Another method is using the same three-letter code, as a prefix to the call number. Step 4: end processing We also need to know where to re-shelve the book, so the living room has to be identified on each book. Again there are various options:
Whatever system is used, it needs to be easily altered, so those 'hard to place' books can be efficiently moved from one area to another, as required. Step 5: do it Two procedures would be needed to make the transition: one for processing new items, and one for processing the existing items already on the shelves. Examples of other issues to be addressed would be: do shelves get moved to create a distinct space? How do you communicate to the public that books maybe missing from the shelves, because they are being processed into the new living room. Do you start with a small living room first, or the one that will make the most impact? Shake it up!
Step 6: promote it Signage is obviously an integral part of this approach, as it is in bookshops. Living rooms provide a fantastic marketing opportunity. It could be one huge promotion like the Darwin City Council (DCC) libraries revitalisation project, or maybe an individual launch of each reader interest area or living room, as they are created. Spin offs. Aside from making it easier for the public to locate books in the library, and increasing loans there are also other positives:
Collection maintenance is such a big, time-consuming job, any efficiencies are good. More information? This is the website for one of the Newcastle collection management reports, if you are interested: http://www.ncc.nsw.gov.au/services/culture/library/publications/collection.cfm Navigate from this web page, to the catalogue, to check out how living rooms look on their item records. I have another Newcastle report, which is more focused on living rooms or reader interest arrangement, than the report available on their website. If you are interested please contact me and I can e-mail it to you. As I said, I am not an expert. I just chose to take this opportunity to share information I gathered. Talk to Leah, as she is very experienced. Sue Ryan is happy for people to contact her. I have her e-mail address. Lyn and Elizabeth also have more up-to-date and real experiences, from their recent New Zealand John Stanley tour. Maybe others have extra or different knowledge, experience, and ideas too, that they are willing to share. It is interesting to be talking about approaches that are ten years old. It would be great to be leading and moving past other libraries 'down South' and 'over East', rather than just catching up. Maybe the Northern Territory challenge is not just 'switching tracks', but 'steaming on ahead'. I hope this presentation has interesting, and helpful to you. Thank you for your time. Julie Adams September 2004 BiographyJulie holds a Bachelor of Occupational Therapy and Graduate Diploma of Science (Information Services) degree. She started work in libraries shelving at the Northern Territory Library, and working on the circulation desk of the Charles Darwin University Library. She worked in various types of libraries during her time as a trainee librarian with the Northern Territory library and information service. She has also worked as a reference librarian with the Charles Darwin University and Darwin City Council libraries. Her professional areas of interest are reference and training. And despite having the best job in the Territory, she would still rather be sailing.
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