[Sigia-l] About bloody time?

[Gordon Joly]

At 15:00 +1000 17/7/07, Andrew Boyd wrote:
>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 "neighborhoods" based on
>>  subject matter.
>>
>>  Does he think his approach could signal the death of Dewey in libraries
>>  across the nation?
>>
>>  "I think it could be," Mr. Courtright said. "And it probably should be."
>>
>>  <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


A thought: that the indexing system and the shelving system could be 
different? You maintain a database of the books, and the system tells 
you which shelf to place a book on.... users have access to the 
system as well.


Gordo

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