If you're reading this blog post, you're likely already aware of some of the downsides of the Dewey Decimal System, like how often people bring it up when they find out that you're a librarian.
Other downsides include, but are not limited to:
- Eurocentrism
- Bigotry
- Confusion
- Lack of forethought (cramming the whole internet into the 00s)
- Significant portions of US history shelved in the 300s instead of the 900s because they relate to "social issues"
The list goes on. If you're looking for more in-depth information on this topic, I highly recommend Kelsey Bogan's Ditching Dewey blog posts (post 1, post 2, post 3).
Aside from those larger Dewey issues, I have also struggled as a librarian trying to help students find things organized by the traditional DDC. I lost track of the number of times I would get asked for World War II books and say, "Well, you'll check here, and here, and here... " Or students students to the 600s for books on dogs and cats, but telling them to head back to the 500s for other pets like fish. And as someone who studied comparative religions in college, I was driven absolutely batty by the 200s. The 000s made me so crazy I made a TikTok about it. (I actually made a handful of Dewey-related TikToks.)
Our library has tall shelves that line the walls and form a bit of a frame around the main space of the library, and couched within them is a section of short shelves. Previously, the tall shelves held non-fiction while fiction was crammed on the short shelves.
During the lulls of the 2020-2021 school year, my colleagues and I slowly undertook the process of genrefying our fiction collection. As part of that reorganization process, we decided to move fiction to the tall shelves (and I am so glad we did; we get so many compliments on how inviting our color-coded genre labels make the library look) and non-fiction to the short shelves.
And, being the masochist I am, I thought, "well if I'm touching every non-fic book to move it anyway, why not just reorganize Dewey while I'm at it!"I am glad I did it. It makes so much more sense to me, and I think it's easier for my students to navigate. But the way I did it was arduous, especially with a non-fiction collection that hovers around 8,000 items.
I knew I wanted to keep a decimal system, so I started with a spreadsheet. My primary goals were to make it make sense, to keep the hundreds-level categories as similar as possible, and to keep to an absolute maximum of 3 numbers after the decimal. I took every book in a hundreds-level category off the shelf and put them all on tables, tops of bookshelves, the floor-- I was doing most of this work when our students were taking finals, so they weren't using the library-- and then tried to put them in groups that made sense (if they weren't already sensical; Dewey's system wasn't all bad). As you may imagine, some areas were easier to work with than others.
My overarching categories ended up as such:
- 000s Information & Computer Science
- I devoted the entire 000s to information technology, leaving plenty of room for growth. And thank goodness, because hello AI!
- 100s Traditions, Folklore, and the Unexplained
- I kicked philosophy to the 200s (ways of understanding existence) and psychology to the 600s (health and wellness), then scooped the unexplained from the 000s and combined it with traditions & folklore out of the 300s.
- 200s Mythology, Religion, & Philosophy
- This section was where I really got to put my BA to good use. I tried to give each belief system equal weight and respect.
- 300s Society & Social Issues
- I hated the 300s. I still kind of dislike them, honestly, but I did my best. I moved military to the 900s (with war, so that makes sense), and I tried to contextualize "social issues" based on their historical and current arguments in a way that (hopefully) doesn't reinforce marginalization, because a person's identity is not, in and of itself, a social problem.
- 400s Languages
- I basically left the 400s alone. As they exist, they're incredibly Eurocentric, but my collection really only contains books in the languages our school offers (currently German, French, Japanese, and Spanish), and they're not in high demand.
- 500s Math & Science
- A lot of the 500s stayed the same. I did add a section (my 560s) specifically for climate and environment because our Bio classes have a climate research project. I also put all the animal books in the 590s regardless of domestication status.
- 600s Health, Wellness, & Self Help
- I look at our revamped 600s as the "take care of your physical and mental self" section. Medical information flows into psychology flows into mental health flows into self-help flows into life after high school. I also love that physically, this section wraps around a common hangout area in our library, so students can see these resources without having to dive into shelves and dig around.
- 700s Arts, Hobbies, & Recreation
- Our 700s became the "what you might do in your spare time" section, including the usual 700s things like art, music, and sports, and adding in cooking, gardening, pop culture, and fandoms. Sidenote: our graphic novels had long-since been broken out of their 741.5 DDS category into a GN section.
- 800s Literature
- This was another section that I attempted to make a little less Eurocentric. Rather than subdividing by geographical origin, I subdivided by literature type or topic. Now all our poetry is in the 830s, plays are 840s, etc.
- 900s History & Geography
- I spent so much time deliberating over how to organize the 900s. I knew I wanted all the WWII books together, so I gave the 910s to military, weapons, and major wars (defining "major" as wars my students would be aware of, which is inherently US-centric but also best serves my population). But beyond that, should I turn it into a global timeline? Or keep but tweak the geographical categories and subdivide those chronologically? I ultimately went with the latter option, making sure to leave room for the 21st century and beyond.
Upsides:
- it's easier for students to find what they're looking for without having to hunt in multiple sections
- the spine labels are easier to read and reshelving is easier because the decimals only go out 3 places max
- there's less bias in the system
- there's more room in this system for future-facing topics
- my brain feels better when I think about the system
Downsides:
- it's wholly my own system, so whoever replaces me (in the distant, distant future) is going to hate me (but at least there's a spreadsheet!)
- I can't rely on others' cataloging for my non-fic
- my bias is built into the system, but hopefully I kept it to a minimum by trying to best serve my population
- we had to replace nearly every non-fiction spine and barcode label in our library (the 400s and some of the 500s didn't change)
- it took a loooong time, including nearly every day in the summer of 2021
- trying to figure out how to redo the 300s and the 900s broke my brain a little bit
If you are considering adapting or ditching Dewey, I would definitely recommend it! I would only caution you to research a few different ways of reorganizing your non-fiction and really ponder what will work best for you and your library population. And finally, make sure you have plenty of time!
