[Sigia-l] About bloody time?

[Andrew Boyd]

On 7/17/07, Ziya Oz <listera at earthlink.net> wrote:
> But the new library in this growing Phoenix suburb has gone a step further.
> It is one of the first in the nation to have abandoned the Dewey Decimal
> System of classifying books, in favor of an approach similar to that at
> Barnes & Noble, say, where books are shelved in ³neighborhoods² based on
> subject matter.
>
> Does he think his approach could signal the death of Dewey in libraries
> across the nation?
>
> ³I think it could be,² Mr. Courtright said. ³And it probably should be.²
>
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/14/us/14dewey.html>

not to deliberately upset the LIS faction, but... the Library 2.0
mantra goes something like this:
Any single categorisation system is doomed to failure. DDC was one
way, it should never have been the only way, and yet it (despite its
flaws) serves as a way to physically segregate books. Have the
hierarchical taxonomy of your choice, but then let us find what we
need in a way that we can use. Or accept that Amazon is the new
Library and stop pretending to help, and instead relegate yourself to
a collection maintenance role. Make your catalogues freely available
in a way that we can use.

Cheers, Andrew

---
Andrew Boyd
http://facibusreviews.com