Rangeview Library District, CO, First System To Fully Drop Dewey

WordThink is adaptation of book industry headings

Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 6/5/2009

• Goes beyond example in Maricopa
• Largest collection: 85,000 items
• Labels added by vendors, staff

The six-branch (plus bookmobile) Rangeview Library District, Adams County, CO, will be the first library system in the country to fully drop the Dewey Decimal Classification in favor of a system adapted from that used in the book industry. While Dewey has been dropped in some smaller branches, Rangeview’s biggest building will have 85,000 items.

Rangeview’s WordThink system, like that in the Perry branch of Maricopa County Library District, outside Phoenix, draws on BISAC (Book Industry Standards and Communications). 

However, while Maricopa follows BISAC subject headings very closely, Rangeview spokeswoman Stacie Ledden told LJ, “We’ve narrowed and adjusted some of those categories. In some cases this required us to create more specific categories than Maricopa uses while in other cases we created our own categories for easy browsing.”

“For instance, materials on parenting and child rearing were in two different categories at Maricopa because BISAC classifies them under two different subject headings,” she said. “WordThink places them in a single main category called ‘Parenting.’”

Beginning in two branches
So far, Rangeview's Perl Mack branch (38,000 items) and the new Bennett branch (25,000 items) use WordThink and, by the end of the year, all branches will use the system.

Rangeview, serving a growing community just north of Denver, is building three new branches, two of them replacements. The new Wright Farms library will have 85,000 items in its Opening Day collection.

“At Rangeview, our main focus is to provide exemplary service to our customers,” said director Pam Sandlian Smith. “WordThink is just one more example of how Rangeview puts its customers first.”

Vendor cooperation
Rangeview’s vendor Baker & Taylor already has access to the BISAC subject headings, so B&T converted those to WordThink from the list provided, said Ledden.

“The materials for our Opening Day collections already have the WordThink labels included on them,” she added. “For those materials we already had in-house that needed to be converted, we automatically created the new labels from our MARC records.”

ILS changes
As for the library’s Horizon ILS, Rangeview’s collection development team has been working for months to change the records. “They started by changing records in batches by Dewey range, and then revisited the materials in each category to confirm they were in the right place,” Ledden said.

“Of course, in sections of Dewey like the ‘generalities,’ they needed to examine each record to find the best fit in the new system," she said. "As each branch is converted, the call numbers are changed in the ILS. From a technical standpoint, there were small tweaks necessary to make to the ILS like changes to display the call numbers properly. There will be future changes necessary for statistics that we’re still working on.”

Other changes afoot
Some other libraries, according to Rangeview, are experimenting with BISAC: Frankfort Public Library District, IL; Richmond Public Library, BC; and Arapahoe Library District, CO. 

(See comments below and also on Metafilter.)