Dear Lawrence
Back in 1994 I reclassified a small psychiatric nursing library (3000+ titles) from Barnard to the local variant of NLM. It took me several months working on my own. I seem to remember starting at bookcase number one and working my way through the collection. I was doing retrospective cataloguing as well as classification; I didn't have to catalogue everything, though, as I was able to import records from a union database for some of the items. I had to label the shelves carefully to minimise user confusion. It helped that the library was very quiet and I was able to help users find things if they got stuck.
best wishes
Catherine
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Catherine Ebenezer
Information Systems Manager
Royal College of Midwives
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-----Original Message-----
From: Jones, Lawrence D Q [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 23 March 2006 13:56
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Reclassification project
Our library is planning to reclassify its book collection from an
in-house scheme to NLM. There will be over 9000 items to reclassify.
I have found references to a handful of articles which look useful but
would like to know if any of you have had any direct experience with
reclassifying a library book collection. Some questions I would like to
get answers to include:
- How many books did you reclassify and how long did it take to
reclassify them?
- How many staff members were involved in the reclassification project?
- How was the project organised? (e.g. did you reclassify particular -
well-used - subject areas first or did you start at bookcase no.1 and
work your way through your collection until you reached the last
bookcase? Did you use another system?)
- In retrospect, would you have organised the project differently?
- What were the implications and ramifications of the reclassification
project for staff and patrons? (e.g. was your service disrupted? If so,
in what way was it disrupted and how did you overcome the disruptions?)
- How did you manage with having two classification schemes temporarily
running side-by-side? (e.g. were your users confused? Did you develop
any strategies to help overcome any confusion?)
Regards,
Lawrence Jones
Principal Library Assistant
St Mary's Campus Library
Imperial College London
Norfolk Place
London
W2 1PG
P: 020 7594 3692
F: 020 7402 3971
E: [log in to unmask]
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