Firstly a big thanks to all the people who replied to my posting last month
about changing/simplifying classification systems. Here is a condensed
summary of all the responses I got
The overall feeling was that to reduce the level of classification could
lead to more problems in locating stock than having more specific
cataloguing (we already have 10 shelves of film studies videos at 791.437
how many shelves if we merged that down to 791 or even 790!)
Many people expressed an opinion that they felt the article in Update had
some major flaws in its arguments with one comment that "The author needs to
address his library skills if he can't locate items in a collection of that
size!". Another comment was how would word labels fit on a spine in a
readable format without hiding title information.
Several people also felt that the criticism of Dewey is unfounded as it does
well what it is supposed to do in as much or as little detail as your
service requires.
There were some responses from people who are currently looking at changing
their classification scheme and the vast majority of these were people
looking to change from UDC to DDC
On the subject of the time taken to do a reclassification scheme several
people were kind enough to share their experiences.
One institution changed from DDC to Library of Congress and had a separate
run for the LC stock rather than inter-filling or changing everything over
at once
Another changed 60,000 volumes from UDC to DDC. Planning took 7 months but
the process only 4 weeks.
Finally, another lis-linker has worked on a couple of reclassification
projects and said that 3 people working exclusively at the task can
re-process approximately 1500 items a week (data-processing, re-shelving and
labelling) though any shelf moving programmes would have to be taken into
account as there are likely to be some items moving into spaces that don't
currently exist!
Again, my thanks to everybody who responded
Tom
---
Tom Butler
Acquisitions Librarian
West Thames College
London Road
Isleworth
Middlesex
020 8326 2282
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