Connecting Students to Books by Doing Away with Dewey

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEikfkyUo84

My first task when I took the position as the library tech was to remove all the books from the bookshelves so that shelves could be removed for new carpeting--quite an undertaking! I soon discovered that there were literally thousands of outdated books (some as old as 50 years!!) and this was the perfect time to weed! Once library renovation was over (thankfully it was done during the summer so I was able to start reshelving once school started), I began to realize that many books I would put together did not share similar dewey numbers (my career section is a perfect example.) So I made the decision to curate our physical collection into categories for nonfiction books (later I also organized the fiction collection into genres). Once I created my categories, I created subcategories in the Destiny Discover database so students could look up a specific book. (How To Create Sublocations in Destiny)

This, of course, took lots of time, which thankfully my principal provided. But as a result of this curation, I became very familiar with my new library and I saved lots of time directing students to the books they wanted quickly and easily. Most students who come to the library are limited on time and don't want to have to search the database to find books of interest. This system was designed more like a bookstore, which made browsing much easier and more efficient for my patrons (including teachers.)

To familiarize students with how the library is organized, I give them a tutorial on how to browse the library (Part 2 explains how to used the online database to find a specific book they're looking for--the sublocations I created in Destiny Discover that details the genre or nonfiction section in which to find the book.)

The only regret I have is that I didn’t do even more weeding from the very beginning. And I have found less expensive ways to color code the books according to section since then. Let me know if I can help you with a similar project or if you’ve come up with a really cool system of organizing your library--I’d love to share and glean ideas from you!