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http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0530nodewey0530.html Gilbert library to be first to drop Dewey Decimal *Yvonne Wingett* The Arizona Republic May. 30, 2007 12:00 AM When the new Gilbert library opens next month, it will be the first public library in the nation whose entire collection will be categorized without the Dewey Decimal Classification System, Maricopa County librarians say. Instead, tens of thousands of books in the Perry Branch library will be shelved by topic, similar to the way bookstores arrange books. The demise of the century-old Dewey Decimal system is overdue, county librarians say: It's just too confusing for people to hunt down books using those long strings of numbers and letters. Dewey essentially arranges books by topic and assigns call numbers for each book... "A lot of times, patrons feel like they're going to a library and admitting defeat because they don't understand Dewey Decimal and can't find the book they're looking for," said Marshall Shore, adult service coordinator for the Maricopa County Library District and driving force behind the idea. "People think of books by subject. Very few people say, 'Oh, I know Dewey by heart.' " <cont at website> I wonder how succesful this will be, especially considering libraries DOES NOT EQUAL bookshops! And, based on my own visual research in a Waterstones at the weekend, PEOPLE ARE ALSO ASKING FOR HELP FINDING BOOKS IN BOOKSHOPS! There are any number of valid complaints that can be made about Dewey, or LoC or whatever but the advantage they all have is that at least one person in the user/librarian combo will have an idea where the book should be, and it doesn't rely on the staff member necessarily knowing their way around the library they are working in that day. I do wonder whether this will achieve anything, the customers presumably too scared to ask for help with Dewey will presumably be too scared to ask for help with a purely subject arrangement. -- - -- Loz "Brighton is the receptacle of the fashion and off-scouring of London. The magnificence of the sea…is drowned in the din and tumult of stage coaches, gigs, flys etc., and the beach is only Piccadilly or worse by the seaside." - John Constable, in a letter, 1824