This comes from geniuses who see the poor signage at their libraries as an indication that they need to reinvent classification. Would it be so hard to put subject headings next to every numeric Dewey reference to help the poor patron?

This is similar to the Maricopa County library reference conundrum. The district uses ‘customer service’ desks, staffed by a mixture of librarians (with their master’s degrees), para-professionals and library assistants. They handle everything from circulation transactions to collecting fines to explaining how the library computers work to fixing the copy machine to answering reference questions.

From the public side of the ‘customer service’ desk, these folks are all the same. The person who took your 10 cent fine is now telling the another patron how to find an atlas containing a map of Iraq. Is it any surprise that the next person in line cannot tell the difference between a circulation clerk and a skilled reference professional?

Kind of makes you queasy, right in the MLS.

No surprise, then, that people figure that everyone who works at the desk is a librarian. All of which serves to reduce appreciation for what good librarians can bring to their patrons.

Gilbert’s decision sounds a lot like the teaching profession’s decision to use the so-called New Math in the 1960s. That didn’t turn out too well for anyone. I’m concerned that this story will end up the same way, with patrons more confused about their library, its staff and its purpose.

What a shame to upend the whole library because you’re not willing to purchase appropriate signs without blaming it on the Dewey Decimal System.

Just to play devil’s advocate though, here’s a couple of wrenches:
- If we group fiction by genre, where do we put fiction that crosses genre-lines? Like Romance Sci-Fi novels?
- How far can we trust the categories provided by the publisher? Should we trust them at all? Do we continue to classify things based on Dewey and then just use the words instead of the numbers?
- Will we have to continue using spine labels just to have the location easily accessible (in other words, there won’t be a time/money saving attribute since we’ll still use labels)
- If we cease with the spine labels, will this slow shelvers down because there’s no standardized spine layout/font?
- How deep do we go into the classification? Main Subject - Sub-subject - Author? Sub-sub-subject (now I sound like an EAD markup)

Of course, the answer to all of these may be “Do it the way the bookstore does” … plus we have the added benefit of having a readily accessible OPAC for searching if a title doesn’t show up in the category a patron expects. I never had any luck with that in bookstores, but it works well in libraries.

But overall, I believe that such librarians are abandoning their mission of organizing information to make it more accessible. However, I could be suaded by research that demonstrates improvements in findability.