[Sigia-l] About bloody time?

[William Denton]

On 16 July 2007, Ziya Oz 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.

I understand that in this library all of the (for example) history books 
are shelved together and arranged in alphabetical order by title.  I don't 
think users will find this remotely helpful.  I hope the library does lots 
of research into user satisfaction and reports on their findings next 
year.  How many people want Tutankhamen, the 1837 Rebellion, the Mughal 
empire, the Korean War, the Highland clearances, and the founding of the 
Japanese Diet all ordered by title, with no two books on the same subject 
beside each other?  That helps no-one.

Ranganathan's PROLEGOMENA TO LIBRARY CLASSIFICATION gives lots of rules 
about how to arrange things when building a classification scheme:

 	http://www.miskatonic.org/library/prolegomena.html

This Phoenix library violates all of them.

Bill
-- 
William Denton, Toronto : www.miskatonic.org www.frbr.org www.openfrbr.org