This is a fascinating discussion. My immediate reaction was good luck to that
library and its patrons, I can never find what I am looking for in big bookstores
and when I ask a staff member , the two of us end up running all over the store.
The second reaction was, why don't they just put up signs for browsing like we do
in our library. We have laminated shelf cards decorated with clip art for easy
spotting of popular subjects like dinosaurs, planets, lizards, pets, poetry, and
cooking. I am puzzled as to the insistence that we must slavishly follow the
numbers provided for the books by the Library of Congress. I know my collection, I
know how our population looks for books. No , I don't need a Dewey number that
separates out lizards of North America. All my lizard books are together alpha by
author. And yes, I have that penguin book in non-fiction with the Grolier penguin
books. And I am willing to bet that we have more penguin books than that public
library in our 66,000 volume children's collection.
I also am a big fan of whatever fulfills your needs. I put together a small
preschool library for a school. It would have been pretty silly to use Dewey for
that collection. We labeled picture books with a big letter to be shelved alpha by
author and color coded non-fiction in the large preschool curriculum categories,
Animals, Concepts, Science, etc. with spine labels and coordinated shelf labels.
Lisa
Lisa Von Drasek
Children's Librarian
Bank Street College of Education
School for Children Pre-K- 8
610 West 112th St
NY NY 10025
lisav@bnkst.edu
212 875 4452
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