5 Organizing Library Materials with Patrons’ Experience in Mind
“There’s a serendipity to real life that the Internet can’t duplicate. Do you use the library? For anything? Well, sometimes you end up picking up the book next to the one you were looking for, and it’s that book that changes your life.”
― Laura Lippman, Hardly Knew Her
Chapter Overview
The purpose of this chapter is to:
Cover the basics of traditional and alternative classification systems.
Describe the library tech duties that are typically associated with maintaining the stacks.
Include insights from other library techs who have experienced changes in classification systems at their libraries.
Most library tech jobs in public services will include responsibility for keeping the materials organized by following the library’s classification system. Some library tech jobs may include working on projects to reorganize the library using a different classification system. And a few library techs may even have responsibility at some point in their career for deciding to change the way materials are classified and organized in the library. This chapter will help you to understand the purpose and value of library classification systems as part of Access Services.
Traditional Library Classification Systems
When libraries are very small (a few hundred titles, for example), it does not matter so much how you organize them because even though patrons will not be able to find what they are looking for on their own, someone with a lot of experience working in that library can come to know pretty much all of the titles and their locations. But for most libraries, it would be impossible for even experienced workers to find specific titles if the books were not organized in a standardized way. One reason that libraries are useful is because they use classification systems to organize their books. Classification is “the process of expressing a resource’s ‘aboutness’ in a single string of letters, numbers or both” using a standardized set of subjects into which every new book added to the library has to fit (Hirsh, 2018, p. 480). Without a classification system, it would not be possible to find all the books on a desired topic.
A substitute elementary school LMT I interviewed for this textbook described a time when she filled in at a school library that had no classification system at all. From what she observed, when coming to the library to check out books the students were encouraged to browse through the whole library looking for books that caught their eye and to re-shelve the library books according to their own thoughts about where the book should be. If a student wanted to read a book about something in particular, the LMT would not be able to readily assist them and she would also not be able to recommend a specific book to a student looking for suggestions about what to read next. This is an extreme and unusual example, but it highlights the role that classification plays in making a library useful, what would happen without a classification system, and why traditional library classification systems are still used almost universally despite their drawbacks.
Dewey Decimal Classification System
When I tell people I am a librarian, about half the time they try to find common ground with me by mentioning the Dewey Decimal System (the other half of the time they ask me why we still need libraries when “everything is available online,” *sigh*). Dewey Decimal call numbers are definitely one of the things that people who do not work in libraries think about when they hear the word “library”. That may be because most of the people who learn about libraries in the United States learned about them when they were in elementary school and most elementary schools use Dewey to classify their non-fiction collection into general subject areas.
The Dewey Decimal Classification System is named after Melvil Dewey, who created the system in the 1870s and who also created many other library standards, including rules about the handwriting style that library workers were supposed to use to write on catalog cards. He had a lot of influence on what has been called the feminization of the library profession. Before he started training library workers, most people who created and maintained libraries were scholars and most scholars were men. But Melvil Dewey felt that libraries’ future success depended on standardization and that standardization was easier to achieve by putting trained women into librarian positions because they would follow rules, whereas male scholars were not likely to change how they were working just because Dewey said it would be better. Dewey was a well-documented sexist and cultural chauvinist. There are a lot of books and websites you can read about Melvil Dewey and the explanation I have provided here is what has stuck with me from reading and hearing about Dewey throughout my career in libraries.
Dewey’s classification system is based on his own interpretation of the major subjects of human knowledge and inquiry. It is made up of 10 general areas of knowledge and those areas are subdivided according to Dewey’s views on how that field of knowledge has developed into various facets. The 10 general areas of knowledge are:
100s Philosophy and psychology
200s Religion
300s Social sciences
400s Language
500s Natural sciences and mathematics
600s Technology (applied sciences)
700s The arts and recreation
800s Literature and rhetoric
900s History and geography
1000s Biography and genealogy
The subdivisions for each subject area vary based on the facets of that knowledge that Dewey and subsequent system revisers have identified in each subject area. For example, the 500 area about natural sciences and mathematics includes a subdivision for Math (510s) that is further subdivided into Geometry (516s) as well as Algebra, Calculus, etc. One example of the way that Dewey’s personal biases have limited the usefulness of his classification system is that his “classification of religion is the 200s but “Christianity” takes up the entire section except for 290, which is reserved for the remainder of all the world’s religions” (Valdes, 2023, p. 133).
Dewey call numbers are assigned to books to describe each book’s main subject. Almost no library patrons and very few library workers who are new to the profession have memorized the Dewey call numbers’ meanings. Most likely if you work in Access Services in a library that uses Dewey, you will quickly memorize the general subject areas but you will never memorize the exact meanings of the numbers that correspond to the subdivisions. That is okay. Instead of focusing on learning the meanings of the call numbers, most library workers are better off spending their time reviewing how to put call numbers in the correct order, because it is not intuitive and can be confusing for a while. According to Evans, Saponaro, Christie, and Sinwell (2015), Dewey call numbers “may present more problems in shelving because of the numbers to the right of the decimal point. It is important for shelvers to remember that, because the numbers are decimal fractions, a number like .16 is smaller than .9 and will file before the latter” (p. 135). So 581.16 would be on the shelf to the left of 581.9. With frequent practice, reading and putting call numbers in order may become easy, but at first it takes most people a lot of concentration to make sure they are applying the rules accurately. This is one reason why libraries ask patrons not to re-shelve the books they looked at. It is not always obvious to patrons which order the numbers go in.
Library of Congress
Library of Congress Classification System is used in most academic libraries. Academic library catalogers have long preferred it to Dewey because it can be more precise since it has more subjects in its classification scheme. This is considered to represent the way academic knowledge is organized better than Dewey call numbers can. The Library of Congress Classification is used by the Library of Congress, which “provides Congress with objective research to inform the legislative process, administers the national copyright system, and manages the largest collection of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in the world” (USAGov, n.d.). When the Library of Congress was first established in 1800, “books at LC were organized by size and, within each size group, by accession number” (Robare, Arakawa, Frank & Trumble, 2007, p. 2-5). So all the big books were together and all of the small books were together and all of the medium books were together and then within those sections of the library, the books were in order by when they were received, since a sequential accession number was assigned to each book based on when it was added to the collection. This is an acceptable way to organize a library just to store books, but it does not create any meaningful relationships among the books on the shelves. Classification was necessary so that books would be together for reasons that have to do with their subjects, not just their sizes. When the Library of Congress bought Thomas Jefferson’s personal library in 1815, they started using his own idiosyncratic classification system (Robare, Arakawa, Frank, and Trumble, 2007, p. 2-7). But the number of books in the Library of Congress grew rapidly throughout the 1800s and so they needed a new classification system by the early 20th century.
Between 1899 and 1901 the Library of Congress head cataloger and the chief classifier developed their first classification system based on modifying a classification system called Expansive Classification by Charles Cutter published in 1882 (Robare, Arakawa, Frank, and Trumble, 2007). Charles Cutter’s book described the classification system that he developed for the libraries he led (LaMontagne, 1961). As the Library of Congress subject specialists worked on developing a list of what should be included and how it should be organized in each classification category, they “consulted bibliographies, treatises, comprehensive histories, and existing classification schemes in initially determining the scope and content of an individual class and its subclasses” (Robare, Arakawa, Frank, and Trumble, 2007, p. E-12). The process of developing the classification system lasted well into the 20th Century. They consulted these outside sources rather than just using their own reasoning and judgement so that the subject classes and their subclasses would be based on patterns in how these subjects had been studied, not just on their own knowledge as subject experts.
The broad subjects used in the Library of Congress Classification System are designated by letters instead of numbers and Library of Congress call numbers are a mix of letters and numbers. The 21 general categories of knowledge are:
A – GENERAL WORKS (like encyclopedias)
B – PHILOSOPHY. PSYCHOLOGY. RELIGION
C – AUXILIARY SCIENCES OF HISTORY
D – WORLD HISTORY AND HISTORY OF EUROPE, ASIA, AFRICA, AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND, ETC.
E – HISTORY OF THE AMERICAS – Pre-Columbian and Overall U.S.
F – HISTORY OF THE AMERICAS – Local U.S. and North and South America
G – GEOGRAPHY. ANTHROPOLOGY. RECREATION
H – SOCIAL SCIENCES
J – POLITICAL SCIENCE
K – LAW
L – EDUCATION
M – MUSIC AND BOOKS ON MUSIC
N – FINE ARTS
P – LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
Q – SCIENCE
R – MEDICINE
S – AGRICULTURE
T – TECHNOLOGY
U – MILITARY SCIENCE
V – NAVAL SCIENCE
Z – BIBLIOGRAPHY. LIBRARY SCIENCE. INFORMATION RESOURCES (GENERAL)
Library of Congress call numbers go in order by letter first, because that is the first element of the call numbers. After looking at the letter, then, like Dewey, the first numbers that appear in Library of Congress call numbers are treated as whole numbers and the second numbers are treated as decimal values. The following call numbers are in the correct order. The element of the call number that is used to put it in the right place relative to the books around it is in bold type:
K 3240.F88 2000 | KF 843.5.U58 2007 | KFD 401.A6 H65 2002
K comes before KF which comes before KFD. In putting these call numbers in order, you don’t have to look at the rest of the call number elements because the first ones are all different.
K 5.D45 2023 | K 23.A3 1987 | K 452.3.C9 1997
All these call numbers start the same way, so then you use the next element of the call number to put them in order. Numbers in this part of the call number are whole numbers so 5 is smaller than 23 which is smaller than 452.
HA 211.B37 | HA 211.L5 1944 | HA 211.M33 2011
All these call numbers start the same way, with HA 211, so then you use the next element of the call number to put them in order. B comes before L which comes before M.
L 901.C33 2002 | L 901.C813 1971 | L 901.C9 2010
All these call numbers start the same way, with L 901.C, so then you use the next element of the call number to put them in order. This is an example of needing to remember that these numbers are decimal fractions, so .33 is smaller than .813 which is smaller than .9.
Patrons’ experiences with Dewey and LC
Library techs are often the first people who patrons ask for help in the library. And asking for help finding a book or other item on the shelf is one of the most common types of assistance that patrons request. So library techs often become experienced at explaining the library’s classification system to patrons. Although the school LMTs who I interviewed for this book reported that most students do a pretty good job of using their library’s classification system to find the books they want, techs at public and academic libraries reported that many patrons need assistance to find books because they do not know how to use call numbers to find books on the shelves. Library classification systems are not intuitive and so even though many people who are educated in the United States learn how to navigate a library’s classification system in school they are often not retaining the skill into adulthood. When you are working with the public, remember to ask patrons if they would like help locating the book on the shelf that you have just helped them to identify in the online catalog. Like many things in the library, you will likely find yourself explaining the same process to different people multiple times every day and you will even find that you are explaining the same process to the same people when they return to the library on different days. This is a normal part of providing customer service and if it feels frustrating to you, then you may need to consciously find ways to make it meaningful to yourself so that the people you are helping feel welcome and supported, not like they are bothering you by asking for help.
Although library classification systems benefit library workers by ensuring that every item in the library has a designated location and benefit patrons by putting books on related topics together, the complexity of library classification systems can present a definite barrier for many library users. Call numbers are difficult for some users to read and interpret because they are printed small and require a great deal of focus to notice the subtle differences and find exactly the one they need.
Having to ask for help to locate specific books can also make patrons hesitant or embarrassed if they are looking for books on a sensitive topic, including topics like sexuality, domestic violence, health conditions, etc. Since most people using public libraries and even a lot of students at academic libraries are not interested in taking the time to learn the classification system, it is not reasonable to expect patrons to learn Dewey or LC just so that they don’t have to ask for help finding materials that may embarrass them. Instead, some libraries are adopting alternative classification systems that organize the library in a way that is more intuitive for users so that they can be more self-sufficient in the library. And even in libraries where it is not feasible to change the classification system, some library techs are noticing repeated questions about specific sensitive issues and then creating book displays that feature a few books on those topics so that people can find them just by walking through the library instead of having no choice but to ask for help.
Alternative Classification Systems
FindIt!
FindIt! is a classification system that uses words instead of numerical or alphanumerical codes. It is a lot like the Book Industry Standards and Communications subject headings system used in many bookstores (Valdes, 2023). According to Wen-ying Lu, Nicole Pasini, and Sandy Wee (2014), the San Mateo County Library team that implemented FindIt!, the “word-based classification system allows library users to easily browse, discover, and help themselves” because FindIt! organizes the library into “neighborhoods that are subdivided into classes,” which is another way of saying the collection is divided into categories and subcategories. The categories and subcategories that the library uses to organize the books are defined in detail by the librarians and these definitions are called “scope notes,” which the techs doing the cataloging of new books and the Access Services techs helping patrons understand the classification system all use to “understand the logic of the system and guide them all in making consistent decisions” about which books belong in each subcategory of the library (Lu, Pasini, and Wee, 2014). When patrons search the library’s online catalog, they see the names of the book’s categories and subcategories. Once they know the words that describe the book, they can use the signs the library added to the stacks, designating the location of each neighborhood and class. If you are interested, you can see how books get classified in FindIt! without call numbers by searching San Mateo’s library system for a popular nonfiction title that a lot of the branches are likely to have (like Marie Kondo’s 2016 Spark Joy), and then clicking on Availability by Location.
Chris Lu, a senior librarian in the Belmont Library in the San Mateo County Library system, explained, “Find It! in our non-fiction areas tries to assign a single word (or a compound word) to a specific book and each of these words exist in a “neighborhood.” Each neighborhood is thought to help group similar topics together and allow patrons to find materials that are related more easily. ‘Lifestyle’ is a neighborhood that is composed of words like ‘Cooking’ ‘Gardening’ ‘Pets’ ‘Home’, and ‘Craft.’
Lu explained,
To bring this all together, the Little Book of Goat Yoga would be labeled as such:
Health
Exercise
Yoga
-Books that share the same spine label are then alphabetized by title.
Neighborhoods also govern our picture books categorization in a similar but more broad way. Find It! assigns topics to each picture book and that dictates where in the library they are shelved. For these neighborhoods, there are color-coded, illustrated stickers to help littles more easily associate books from the same neighborhoods. Some examples of picture book neighborhoods include: ‘Play’, ‘Feelings’, and ‘People and Places.’
Genrefication
Genrefication and FindIt! have a lot in common because both re-organize the library in a more patron-focused way, using words instead of call numbers to create categories and put the books in order. But FindIt! focuses mostly on reorganizing non-fiction books while genrefication focuses more on reorganizing fiction books. Genrefication refers to organizing the fiction books according to their genre. Common genres are Mystery, Sci Fi & Fantasy, Classics, etc. This is often how bookstores organize their fiction books, but many libraries that use the Dewey Decimal Classification System continue to organize their fiction collection only by author’s name, which would mean mixing romance, mystery, science fiction and classics together. Libraries that use Library of Congress Classification organize fiction in a different way, bringing together literature books with literary criticism about those books. Genrefication helps people who want to browse to find more books like the ones they already enjoyed.
Brian Deer Classification System
In Dewey and Library of Congress classification systems, books about Indigenous people and first nations are almost always classified in history or social science, even if the books are actually about current issues, health, research methods, education, relationships, religion, philosophy, etc. This limitation of the common classification systems is a problem in any library. And it makes Dewey and Library of Congress impossible to use in libraries that specialize in books that are by, about, and for native people. In the 1970s, Brian Deer, a Kahnawá:ke librarian in Canada, created a new framework for classifying library collections and so the Brian Deer Classification System is named after him. Unlike Dewey or Library of Congress, the Brian Deer Classification is not a standardized set of subject headings but is a framework for developing a local classification system that will share characteristics in common with other libraries that also implement the Brian Deer approach to classification.
The Brian Deer Classification System allows more detailed indicators about the people who are the subject (and sometimes the authors) of the book, the places written about in the book, the time when the book was written as well as the time that the book is about, and the format of the book. This means that the experience of browsing a collection organized according to the Brian Deer framework will be very different from browsing for the same books in a library that uses Dewey or Library of Congress. Users are more likely to find similar books together, which is one of the purposes of classification, and the system “attempts to demonstrate relationships and preserve logical groupings” (Cherry, 2015, p. 1) of books that “center Indigenous knowledge structures” (Edwards, 2021, p. 6), which Dewey and Library of Congress would ignore and therefore distort because of their standardization. Libraries that use the Brian Deer Classification System assign call numbers to books, but the system is intended to make browsing easier so that patrons do not have to rely on the catalog to find what they want.
Though it is unlikely that you will encounter the Brian Deer Classification System during your career in libraries, it is an important example of how traditional classification systems are limited and how new classification systems are still being created. By keeping the library’s users’ needs in mind, library workers can make local decisions that make the collection more useful and welcoming to patrons. I recommend reading more about the Brian Deer Classification System if you are interested in cataloging and technical services, since it offers an interesting example of a unique hierarchical classification structure (Cherry, 2015).
Adopting a New Classification System
Changing the classification system for a whole library or even for part of the collection, like the fiction section, is a process that takes time and has a lot of steps. For example, to transition a fiction collection from the traditional way to the genrefied way requires that the library staff identify what genre each book fits into, then they have to change the book’s catalog record to show this information, and then each book has to be relabeled and new signs need to be added to the shelves to correctly show each genre. A large remodeling project or new library construction can be a good time to make a massive change to the library’s classification system. In this section, I provide additional details about libraries that have made this switch and what benefits the workers there have noticed.
Moving to FindIt!
Changing a library’s classification system from Dewey to FindIt! requires time to develop the neighborhoods and classes, create clear documentation about the scope of each neighborhood and class, re-classify all of the non-fiction adult and children’s books in the catalog, re-label all of the books, shift and re-shelve the collection, and create clear signage to make it easy for patrons to find the subjects they are looking for. San Mateo County Library system has a floating collection and a centralized location where all of the books can be processed, so when they were ready to switch from Dewey to FindIt!, the collections at each branch were sent through for reprocessing in batches and then sent back to any library that had space to hold them. Some Marine base libraries, on the other hand, closed during the time when the transition to FindIt! was underway (Commandant of the Marine Corps, 2015).
San Mateo County Libraries
Portola Valley branch was the first of the San Mateo County libraries to transition to FindIt! and the San Carlos branch followed (Annual Report, 2013). The San Mateo County Library reported that children’s and adults’ non-fiction book circulation immediately increased at Portola Valley (Annual Report, 2013, p. 7). The San Mateo County Library System transitioned all of its branches to the FindIt! classification system in the spring of 2015 (FindIt! FAQ, n.d.). Last year the Belmont Library branch re-organized their collection one more time. They still use the FindIt! categories, but they no longer organize their collection into neighborhoods of clusters of subjects. Using a system of neighborhoods, you would put books on the broad categories of Art and Music next to each other. But the Belmont staff reported that it was too time consuming to reshelve the books because the neighborhoods seemed to be located randomly, making it difficult to memorize the locations (Lu, 2023). So now the Belmont library is organized alphabetically by the names of the broad categories, meaning, for example, that Art is located near Biographies and Music is located near Medicine. This has streamlined the re-shelving process at Belmont, but the other San Mateo County Library branches still use neighborhoods because they are working well at those sites (Lu, 2023).
Marine Corps Libraries
In 2015, the Department of the Navy decided that all general libraries on Marine bases would transition to the FindIt! classification logic, with a modified set of categories and subcategories called Semper FindIt! that provided the level of detail that the libraries needed in order to effectively organize the large collections of military history and leadership books that Marine base libraries have (Commandant of the Marine Corps, 2015, p. 1 – 2). As Danielle Davis, the Lead Library Programming Technician at Patrick J. Carney on Camp Pendleton explained, “after our transition to Semper FindIt!, patrons come up a lot less to the desk and they’re able to browse and see our different categories and explore without having to interact too much with people and that could also relate to their privacy.”
Overall, the libraries that have changed from Dewey to FindIt! report that it has had the benefits they hoped for: allowing patrons to be more self-guided and increasing circulation.
Moving to Genrefication
Many school libraries have switched to genrefying their fiction collection instead of just keeping it one collection in alphabetical order by author. As I mentioned above, typical genre categories for fiction include mystery, adventure, science fiction, fantasy, classics, etc. One elementary school LMT I who I interviewed for this textbook explained that she is seeing a lot of good information about genrefication on the library social media accounts she follows, but she cannot imagine finding the time to do it. Such a large-scale change may require additional help in the library and will likely require at least a one-time budget to cover the cost of new labels and signs. Some libraries are able to make a big change like this during renovations or new construction, and Christina Lorenzo, a Library Assistant at a public library, explained that her library was able to switch to genrefication in the children’s fiction collection because the library was closed to the public in 2020 due to COVID restrictions but staff were still working and were able to tackle time-consuming projects.
Although the initial time investment may be high, the benefit or genrefication is that patrons, especially children, will be able to explore and pick out books on their own. School library workers who have written about genrefying their collection report that students require less help from the staff when choosing books and that more books get checked out (Cornwall, 2018; Torres 2021). LaDonna Hankins-Ramirez, a high school LMT II I interviewed for this textbook, explained that she genrefied her library’s fiction collection to help students who “have a hard time reading and figuring out what they want to read. That way the kids can go, ‘Oh, I like that kind of stuff” and explore the types of books they already know that they enjoy. Since she is the only staff person in the library, it is important to her that students can usually find what they need without her assistance so that she can help students with other needs.
Stacks Maintenance
Classification systems, whether traditional or alternative, make it possible to organize books on the shelves in the first place. Access Services workers need to carry out continuous stacks maintenance to make sure that the shelves are clean, tidy, organized, and easy for patrons to navigate. Stacks maintenance includes re-shelving books, signage and wayfinding, shelf-reading, cleaning, and shifting.
Signage and Wayfinding
Signage means the decisions about what and how many signs to post in the library.
Wayfinding means how the design of your library helps people find their way to the things they are most likely to need, including bathrooms, exits, help desks, photocopiers/computers, and different parts of the collection. Wayfinding includes signs but also uses other visual cues to make it easier for patrons to move through the space purposefully.
Signage and wayfinding are part of stacks maintenance and Access Services because some tasks of stacks maintenance, like shifting, can require changes to signs. And the facilities maintenance responsibilities of Access Services workers include noticing when patrons are struggling to understand the layout of the library and coming up with ways to improve their experience.
One reason that patrons have trouble finding what they are looking for is because the signs in the library are not clear or descriptive enough. All libraries can benefit from better signage and wayfinding indicators, but public and academic libraries especially suffer from having not enough signs or not the right signs since their buildings are sometimes quite large and many people who use them do not do so regularly enough to become quickly knowledgeable about where everything is located. Public library techs I interviewed for this textbook said that even patrons who do not know how the library is organized can still easily understand where the children’s library is and where the adults’ library is, which makes sense because signage and wayfinding are very clear in these instances. The children’s library is often more brightly colored, has smaller furniture, lower shelves, and other visual indicators that it is designed specifically for children, so it’s easy for patrons to recognize. Good signage and wayfinding throughout the library would apply these same visual principles of indicating differences to make it easier for patrons to understand how the rest of the library collection is organized.
According to Mark Aaron Polger (2022), Outreach Librarian at the College of Staten Island, there are five steps to analyzing and deciding how to improve signage and wayfinding in a library:
Research your audience. This can include library techs’ observations about how people are using the library and what directional questions they commonly ask.
Analyze the data. This requires finding patterns in the observations and other data, including the results of patron surveys.
Develop a wayfinding document that maps out your users’ pathways. This can be visual or narrative and describes common ways that people enter and proceed through the space to accomplish goals like checking out books, using computers, reading magazines and newspapers, and so forth.
Select decision points. Decision points are the places in the library where patrons will decide to turn left or right, go up a set of stairs or not, look for someone to answer their question, and so forth. Decision points are the most important places to put signs because they are the places where people are looking for indications about how to make their decisions. Decision points also take into account the sight-lines, which means what a patron can see when positioned in a specific place in the library. When people can see a help desk from where they are standing in the library, a sign may not be necessary, but when people are deep into the library and cannot see where they can go for assistance, signs become more important.
Select sign types. Many libraries fall into the problem of having many different types of signs created at different times and for different purposes. As much as possible, signs should be standardized to have one uniform look, since this makes them easier to understand. And they should be big enough and have enough color contrast to be legible to most people without serious visual impairments. If colors are being used to convey meaning on the signs, it is also necessary to only use colors that are not affected by most color blindness. Ideally, library signs should be designed and produced professionally, but you can find guidelines online if you have to make your own. The organization of which your library is a part may already have standards for signs and may already have companies that they use for producing signs. So if making decisions about signs is one of your responsibilities, make sure to talk with your supervisor to find out what policies and practices you should be following.
Shelf Reading
Shelf reading is the process of looking at each book on the shelf to see if it is in the right location. If the book has been put in the wrong place, then the worker who is shelf-reading removes it and puts it in the correct location. Shelf reading requires ready knowledge of the classification system so that you will notice when a call number is out of order. Shelf reading is also the time to look for books that may have slipped behind the shelf. While shelf reading you might also notice damaged books to pull for repair or replacement. Many libraries assign workers to carry out shelf reading when they are not busy with other tasks, or on a weekly or monthly schedule.
Cleaning
Library books get dusty even in libraries that are well-used. So it’s important to schedule times to dust the books and, every few years, vacuum the books and shelves to prevent the build-up of dust and debris. When I was a shelver at the University of California, San Diego Geisel Library I took part in a large-scale cleaning project that included an industrial vacuum. I would have benefited from gloves, goggles, and a face mask, too, because it was surprisingly filthy work.
Shifting
As books get added to the library’s collection, other books should be systematically weeded. But many libraries acquire more books than they weed. And some sections of the library’s collection will grow much faster than other sections, even with regular weeding. Shifting the books is the process of moving large numbers of books to make appropriate room for them on the shelves. Books that are tightly packed on library shelves are not only hard for patrons to browse and hard for library workers to re-shelve, but they are also getting damaged from being squeezed. Sometimes thousands of books have to be shifted in order to fill up empty spaces in one section to make enough room in another section. Shifting usually results in the need for updated signs to accurately indicate what range of call numbers or subcategories are on each shelf.
Weeding
At some libraries, library techs will also be responsible for or involved in the process of weeding the collection. Weeding is selecting books to remove from the collection and is usually considered part of collection maintenance rather than stack maintenance. But weeding is an important part of making room for new books on the shelves. Weeding usually targets misleading, ugly, superseded, or trivial items or any other items that are irrelevant to the library’s patrons (“Weeding”, n.d.).
Studying User Experience & Library Access Services
User experience, sometimes abbreviated to UX, is a concept commonly used in developing new technologies. By observing how people interact with the technology, including hardware and software, developers and engineers can make changes that will improve the overall product and result in a better experience for users. The concept of studying user experience to make improvements that are based on users’ own goals and interests is also applied to libraries where workers want to make changes but want to be careful not to make changes based only on their own preferences or just the complaints of the most vocal patrons. The library workers mentioned in this chapter who have changed their classification system used their observations and research studies about patrons’ user experiences to make their decision.
Smaller changes can also be made in libraries that are not ready to move to an alternative classification system. Sometimes libraries can benefit from the user experience lessons that have been learned by studying customers in retail settings. Allison Marie Fiscus, a public library manager in Ohio, highlights visual merchandising techniques that have been perfected by observing their effects on bookstore customers’ experience. Libraries often use temporary book displays to get patrons interested in books they may not have thought to look for. Before setting up a book display, Fiscus (2018) emphasizes the importance of observing your library’s patrons, especially “how your customers move through the library,” taking “an hour every day for a week” to “sketch a heat map of where your customers travel upon entering the building” (p. 36). Fiscus (2018) recommends using these patterns to set up book displays where they will get the most attention, not just where you have space. Fiscus’ suggestions are a great example of learning from users’ experience to make decisions that will get you closer to your Access Services goals because you have invested the time to really know how patrons use the librar.
Learning Call Numbers and Shelving
To see more call numbers and practice putting call numbers in order, try the Library of Congress Tutorial from Kent State University or the Shelving with Dewey Self-paced Course from WebJunction. If you are reading this book in print, access these training materials in Canvas where the reading assignment is posted for the week.
References
Annual Report. (2013). San Mateo County Library. https://smcl.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/22/2016/04/2013-Annual-Report.pdf
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