Classified Information | Peer to Peer Review
Barbara Fister, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN -- Library Journal, 10/08/2009
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While doing some research for a Library Journal article on libraries that are replacing or modifying the Dewey Decimal System in favor of bookstore-inspired simplified shelving, I created a survey to hear from librarians in the trenches. Since some of the discussion lists where I posted the link include academic librarians, I polled them, too, with a slightly different set of questions. In part, I wanted reassurance that our students aren't alone in finding LC classification baffling. They seem positively nostalgic for 300s and 900s. When showing first year students the ropes, I typically hear muttered variations on "this Library of Congress thing is dumb. What's wrong with Dewey, used by every other library in the universe?" Like, duh.
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Interestingly, librarians in public and academic libraries agree on one thing: our catalogs don't help. According to the public librarians who responded to my survey, the most common reason patrons have trouble finding non-fiction is "trouble understanding the online catalog." Academic librarians found students don't write down the entire call number (or, as some pointed out, write down the wrong numbers. Sorry, but the barcode won't help you out once you're in the stacks.)
We have a supply of scratch paper recycled from our old shelf list, so I am reminded regularly of one advantage the cards had that I've never seen replicated in an online catalog. The call number is shown in the same arrangement as it is on the spine label. What's on the card matches what's on the book. What a concept. That jumble of letters and number may make no logical sense, but at least it's recognizable.
Some catalogs are beginning to offer a practical solution. One librarian reported that having an option in their catalog to send the call number as a text message was immensely popular with students. For a generation that no longer wears watches because they use their cell phones to tell time, having the catalog deliver the right number in its entirety to a device that you can hold as you stare at the shelf makes a lot of sense.
The other major reason that academic librarians agreed was a problem for students was being confused by two, three, and four digit numbers. (See "why don't you use Dewey, duh?" above.) Added to that, students may think there might be some secret code behind the letters used by LC. Q is for . . . science? As one librarian pointed out, "the case of 'M' for music doesn't help here!"
Uncool
Just as public librarians report, academic librarians feel students are intimidated by a system they don't understand. In some cases students may avoid the humiliation of showing their ignorance by just not using books as sources. If you're sitting at the computer typing things, at least you appear to know what you're doing, and appearances count for a lot when you're eighteen or nineteen years old.
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Perhaps that's not surprising, given the mass migration from print to online collections. Five years ago in response to a standard question on our library session evaluation form, first year students reported that finding articles in periodicals was the most confusing thing about the library. Now that they almost always find their articles online, understanding call numbers and finding books on the shelves is reported as their chief source of confusion.
Eventually, that confusion diminishes. "It's like a lot of things in life," one librarian wrote. "The first time is difficult, the more knowledge you have the easier. Better signage many places would help." And, in fact, many librarians said they had added descriptive signs to the shelves to facilitate browsing and, perhaps, signal there really is a method to our madness.
Still, there's always a student who approaches the reference desk to ask sheepishly, yet slightly proud, as if they've gamed the system somehow, "I'm a senior and I haven't actually had to look up a book before. How does this work, exactly?"
Complexity in all things
In part, books themselves—long, complex, dense with ideas—are intimidating. Professors have told me they have to explain to their classes that it's possible to use a book for information without having to read the whole thing cover to cover. It's okay, they reassure their students. It isn't cheating.
The sheer size and complexity of an academic library collection is also likely to be a part of the problem. "We have mostly non-traditional students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, frequently first-generation college attendees," one librarian commented. "Most students find books and libraries intimidating and unfamiliar. I think that's the higher hurdle, not the classification system. Any system would be a hurdle, short of closed stacks with book delivery." Another added, "I think that our students expect that the shelves would be like a bookstore and they do not always understand why a topic such as medical marijuana can be found in the H's, K's, and R's."
And then there's the fiction syllogism: "The library has no fiction section; therefore the library has no fiction." A survey conducted by students in a class I taught on books and culture found that a surprising number of undergraduates thought we simply didn't buy novels. I mean, this is college, after all. Who has time to read?
Students aren't the only ones who think it should be simpler, one respondent pointed out. "Several years ago a faculty member, with a number of her students, asked me where books by a certain author would be located. I offered to look it up in the catalog so she would have the exact call number. She was insistent that I tell her where so I explained the possibility of it being on reserve, in reference, in the reading room or in the stacks and that's why we would look it up to know for sure. Still she was insistent so I said the circulating literature books were mainly on the 5th floor and she stomped off."
Would adopting Dewey solve the problem for students and faculty? Probably not. Some of the academic librarians responding to the survey work at community colleges where Dewey is used, but as one of them pointed out, "they don't understand it either."
Barbara Fister is a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN, a contributor to ACRLog, and an author of crime fiction. Her next mystery, Through the Cracks, will be published by Minotaur Books in 2010.
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