Dewey Decimal Classification System (Dewey/ DDC) is one of the essential tools libraries worlwide use to organise their collection.
DDC uses a series of numbers to describe the discipline/ field of study of an item, book, DVD etc. The system comprises of 10 classes/ disciplines (000-900), which each can be divided into 10 divisions, which each can also be divided into 10 sections, giving 3 whole numbers. Extra numbers, after the decimal point may be added to give greater detail such as topical, geographical or language aspects. For example:
900 History
990 History of other areas
994 Australian History
994.01 Early history to 1788
Like all systems, DDC is not a perfect, and has many issues including: being outdated, no flexibility especially to sensitive topics, not user friendly and productive for browsing, and elements of bias, sexism and racism.
A movement towards ditching DDC altogether (including the non-fiction collection) is one of the ways the libraries are doing to address these issues.
A few libraries such as Maricopa county (Arizona) and Greenwood (Indiana) in America, Markham (Ontario) public libraries in Canada, and Melbourne public libraries in Australia have removed DDC from all their collections, fully or partially and replaced it with a word-based/ subject-based classification system they created, inspired by the bookshops classification system (BISAC) and other libraries, as demonstrated by this week’s “article” (link below).
These libraries found that these changes made the collection user-friendly, made browsing easier and, changed the way borrowers interact with the collection thus increasing borrowing and their confidence.
Of course, as demonstrated by our discussion, not everyone is happy by these changes. Or noticed or cared if Dewey is used, or how it is used.
So does using or not using DDC to organise the library’s collections really matter, especially to borrowers, in the long run?
“Article” – WTHR. (2020, Feburary 5). Ditching the Dewey Decimal System. YouTube.