Ditching Dewey Revisited – ASLA Webinar
Date Attended: 21 April 2025
Content Focus: Exploring innovative organisation methods – genre-based shelving, interest-driven layouts, and curriculum-aligned systems – to enhance information literacy and better support diverse students.
Type: Recorded Webinar
Length: 1 hour
Audience: Teacher Librarians, educators, and school leaders.
Organisers: Australian School Library Association
Presenters:
Renee Jones (ASLA Director)
Sonja Brownbridge (ASLA Secretary)
Lizzy Martin (NSW Primary Teacher Librarian; Bachelor of Education and Graduate Diploma of Information Science)
Reflection:
The Ditching Dewey webinar hosted by ASLA was aimed at demonstrating the benefits of moving away from categorizing nonfiction using the Dewey Decimal Classification, and instead classifying to meet the research needs and interests of library patrons.
I was interested in understanding the struggles and benefits of leaving DDC behind as a library system, as I have always found it to be problematic and inaccessible as social norms change. As an aspiring Teacher Librarian, I truly believe in the need for genrefication, especially within school libraries, as I currently find many children and young people who visit my public library often ask for specific genres of books such as “books about soccer,” or “books about Buddhism,” ultimately finding it difficult to browse and find books on their own.
This webinar discussed how the DDC system is inaccessible for children and young people to understand and doesn’t support intuitive collection groupings. The hosting Teacher Librarian, Lizzy Martin, also noted how the original Dewey Decimal Classification system was Western-centric and continues to remain aligned with the social standards of the time of conception, in which multiculturalism and representation were undervalued, and racist and sexist ideals permeated.
This webinar delved into the how and why of changing a school library nonfiction classification system, with Lizzy Martin delving into the processes she went through to determine what topics and classification headings suited her library community, and aligned with the school curriculum, in order to provide ease of browsing, access, and intuitive searching.
The webinar noted alternative classifications systems which inspired the categorisation chosen by Lizzay Martin, such as Metis and BISAC, which I am highly interested in researching myself. I also really enjoyed understanding how she chose headings which were accessible concepts for her primary-aged library patrons, and how these could be sub-categorised.
I am excited to continue researching this topic as a personal interest project, and hopefully implement a non Dewey Decimal Classification system into any school library I may work at in the future in my library career.
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